"A Daily Rate."

[Cover Illustration]

“A Daily Rate.”

By Grace Livingston Hill

AUTHOR OF “A Chautauqua Idyl,” “In the Way,” “Lone Point,” “Katharine’s Yesterday,” etc.

The UNION PRESS Philadelphia. •1122 CHESTNUT STREET•

[Copyright, 1900, by The American Sunday-School Union.]

A Daily Rate

Chapter I.

The world would not have looked quite so dreary to her perhaps, if it had not been her birthday. Somehow one persists in expecting something unusual to happen on a birthday, no matter how many times one has had nothing but disappointment.

Not that Celia Murray was really expecting anything, even a letter, on this birthday, though she did stand shivering in the half light of the dim, forlorn front room that served as a parlor for Mrs. Morris’ boarding-house, watching for the postman to reach their door. She did it merely because she wished to be near, to get the letter at once,—provided there was a letter,—and not that she really hoped for one.

It was Saturday evening, and the close of a half holiday in the store in which she usually stood all day long as saleswoman. The unusual half day off was on account of some parade in the city. Celia had not spent her afternoon at the parade. Instead, she had been in her small, cold, back bedroom in the third story, attending to various worn garments which needed mending. They had been spread out on the bed in a row, and she had gone steadily down the line putting a few stitches here, a button there, and setting in a patch in another, counting every minute of daylight hoping to finish her work before it faded, for the gas in her room was dim, the burner being old and worn out. She tried to be gay over the work. She called it her “dress parade.” She knew it was the best way in which to accomplish as much as she wished to do.

And now it was six o’clock, and she had turned down the wretched, flickering light in her room and descended to the parlor to watch for the postman.

He was late to-night, probably on account of the parade. She leaned her forehead against the cold glass and looked out into the misty darkness. Everything was murky and smoky. The passers-by seemed tired and in a hurry. Some had their collars turned up. She wondered where they were all going, and whether there were pleasant homes awaiting them. She let her imagination picture the homes of some. There was a young working man hurrying along with breezy step and swinging dinner pail. He had not been to the parade. His parade was at home awaiting his coming,—a laughing baby, a tidy wife, and the house redolent of fried onions and sausage. She had passed houses often at night where these odors were streaming forth from quickly opened and closed doors. The young man would like it; it would be pleasant to him. And the thought brought no less cheer to the watching girl because to her this supper would not be in the least appetizing.

There passed by a strong old German, a day laborer perhaps. She pictured the table full of noisy children of various ages, and the abundance of sauerkraut and cheese and coffee and other viands set out. Then came a stream of girls, some clerks like herself, and some mill girls. On other evenings they would present a different appearance, but many of them to-night were in holiday attire on account of the half holiday which had been generally given throughout the city. These girls, some of them, had homes of more or less attractiveness, and others, like herself, were domiciled in boarding-houses. She sat down on one of the hard haircloth chairs and looked around that parlor. In the dimness of the turned down gas, it appeared more forlorn than usual. The ingrain carpet had long ago lost any claims to respectability. It had a dragged out, sodden appearance, and in places there were unmistakable holes. These, it is true, had been twisted and turned about so as to come mostly under the tables and sofa, but they were generally visible to the casual observer. The parlor suite of haircloth, by reason of being much sat upon, had lost the spring of youth, and several of the chairs and one end of the sofa looked like fallen cake. There was an asthmatic cabinet organ at the end of the room which had been left by some departing boarder, (under compulsion) in lieu of his board. There were a few worn pieces of music scattered upon it. Celia knew that the piece now open on the top was that choice selection “The Cat came back,” which was a great favorite with a young railroad brakeman who had a metallic tenor voice and good lungs. He was one of the boarders and considered quite a singer in the house. There was a feeble attempt at the æsthetic in the form of a red, bedraggled chenille portière at the doorway, bordered with large pink cabbage roses. The mantel had a worn plush scarf embroidered in a style quite out of date and ugly in the extreme. On it stood a large glass case of wax flowers, several cheap vases, and a match safe. Over it hung a crayon portrait of the landlady’s departed husband, and another of herself adorned the opposite wall, both done in staring crayon work from tin types of ancient date, heavily and cheaply framed. These with a marriage certificate of the clasped-hand-and-orange-wreath order, framed in gilt, made up the adornments of the room.

Celia sighed as she looked about and took it all in once more. It was a dreary place. She had been in it but a week. Would she ever get used to it? She did not curl her lip in scorn as many other girls would have done over that room and its furnishings. Neither did she feel that utter distaste that is akin to hatred. Instead was a kind of pity in her heart for it all, and for the poor lonely creatures who had no other place to call home. Where there is such pity, there is sometimes love not far away. She even rose, went to the doorway and looped the loose, discouraged folds of the chenille curtain in more graceful fashion. Somehow her fingers could not help doing so much toward making that room different.

Then she sighed and went to the window again. She could see the belated postman now across the street. She watched him as he flitted back and forth, ringing this bell and that, and searching in the great leather bag for papers or packages. His breath showed white against the dark greyish-blue of the misty evening air. His grey uniform seemed to be a part of the mist. The yellow glare of the street-lamp touched the gilt buttons and made a bright spot of the letters on his cap as he paused a moment to study an address before coming to their door.

Celia opened the door before he had time to ring and took the letters from his hand. There were not many. The boarders in that house had not many correspondents. She stepped into the parlor once more, and turned up the gas now for a moment to see if there were any for herself. Strange to say, there were two, rather thin and unpromising it is true, but they gave a little touch of the unusual to the dull day. She noticed that one bore a familiar postmark and was in her aunt’s handwriting. The other held the city mark and seemed to be from some firm of lawyers. She did not feel much curiosity concerning it. It was probably some circular. It did not look in the least interesting. She pushed them both quickly into her pocket as the front door opened letting in several noisy boarders. She did not wish to read her letters in public. They would keep till after supper. The bell was already ringing. It would not be worth while to go upstairs before she went to the dining-room. Experience taught her that the supper was at its very worst the minute after the bell rang. If one waited one must take the consequences, and “the consequences” were not desirable. The meals in that house were not too tempting at any time. Not that she cared much for her supper, she was too weary, but one must eat to live, and so she went to the dining-room.

Out there the gas was turned to its highest. The coarse tablecloth was none of the cleanest. In fact, it reminded one of former breakfasts and dinners. The thick white dishes bore marks of hard usage. They were nicked and cracked. There were plates of heavy, sour-looking bread at either end of the table. The butter looked mussy and uninviting. The inevitable, scanty supply of prunes stood before the plate of the young German clerk, who was already in his chair helping himself to a liberal dish. The German clerk was fond of prunes, and always got to the table before any one else. Some of the others good-naturedly called him selfish, and frequently passed meaning remarks veiled in thin jokes concerning this habit of his; but if he understood he kept the matter to himself, and was apparently not thin-skinned.

There was a stew for dinner that night. Celia dreaded stews since the night of her arrival when she had found a long curly hair on her plate in the gravy. There were such possibilities of utility in a stew. It was brought on in little thick white dishes, doled out in exact portions. There were great green fat pickles, suggesting copper in their pickling, and there was a plate of cheese and another of crackers. A girl brought each one a small spoonful of canned corn, but it was cold and scarcely cooked at all, and the kernels were large and whole. Celia having tasted it, pushed her dish back and did not touch it again. On the side table was a row of plates each containing a slim, thin piece of pale-crusted pie, its interior being dark and of an undefined character. Celia tried to eat. The dishes were not all clean. Her spoon had a sticky handle and so had her fork. The silver was all worn off the blade of her knife, and she could not help thinking that perhaps it was done by being constantly used to convey food to the mouth of the brakeman with the tenor voice.

One by one the boarders drifted in. It was surprising how quickly they gathered after that bell rang. They knew what they had to depend upon in the way of bread and butter, and it was first come first served. Little Miss Burns sat across the table from Celia. She was thin and nervous and laughed a good deal in an excited way, as if everything were unusually funny, and she were in a constant state of embarrassing apology. There were tired little lines around her eyes, and her mouth still wore a baby droop, though she was well along in years. Celia noticed that she drank only a cup of tea and nibbled a cracker. She did not look well. It was plain the dinner was no more appetizing to her than to the young girl who had so recently come there to board. She ought to have some delicate thin slices of nicely browned toast and a cup of good tea with real cream in it, and a fresh egg poached just right, or a tiny cup of good strong beef bullion, Celia said to herself. She amused herself by thinking how she would like to slip out in the kitchen and get them for her, only—and she almost smiled at the thought—she would hardly find the necessary articles with which to make all that out in the Morris kitchen.

Next to Miss Burns sat two young girls, clerks in a three-cent store. They carried a good deal of would-be style, and wore many bright rings on their grimy fingers, whose nails were never cleaned nor cut apparently—except by their teeth. These girls were rather pretty in a coarse way, and laughed and talked a good deal in loud tones with the tenor brakeman, whose name was Bob Yates, and with the other young men boarders. These young men were respectively a clerk in a department store, a student in the University, and a young teacher in the public schools. Celia noticed that neither the student nor the school-teacher ate heartily, and that the young dry goods salesman had a hollow cough. How nice it would be if they all could have a good dinner just for once, soup and roast beef, and good bread and vegetables, with a delicious old-fashioned apple dumpling smoking hot, such as her aunt Hannah could make. How she would enjoy giving it to them all. How she would like to eat some of it herself! She sighed as she pushed back her plate with a good half of the stew yet untouched, and felt that it was impossible to eat another mouthful of that. Then she felt ashamed to think she cared so much for mere eating, and tried to talk pleasantly to the little old lady beside her, who occupied a small dismal room on the third floor and seemed to stay in it most of the time. Celia had not yet found out her occupation nor her standing in society, but she noticed that she trembled when she tried to cut her meat, and she was shabbily clothed in rusty black that looked as if it had served its time out several times over.

Mrs. Morris came into the dining-room when the pie was being served. She was large and worried-looking, and wore a soiled calico wrapper without a collar. Her hair had not been combed since morning and some locks had escaped in her neck and on her forehead and added to her generally dejected appearance. She sat down heavily and wearily at the head of the table, and added her spiritless voice to the conversation. She asked them all how they enjoyed the parade and declared it would have been enough parade for her if she could have “set down for a couple of hours.” Then she sighed and drank a cup of tea from her saucer, holding the saucer on the palm of her hand.

It all looked hopelessly dreary to Celia. And here she expected to spend the home part of her life for several years at least, or if not here, yet in some place equally destitute of anything which constitutes a home.

Except for her brief conversation with the old lady on her right and a few words to Miss Burns, she had spoken to no one during the meal, and as soon as she had excused herself from the pie and folded her napkin, she slipped upstairs to her room, for the thought of the two letters in her pocket seemed more inviting than the pie. She turned the gas to its highest though it did screech, that she might see to read her letters, and then she drew them forth. Her aunt Hannah’s came first. She tore the envelope. Only one sheet and not much written thereon. Aunt Hannah was well, but very busy, for Nettie’s children were all down with whooping cough and the baby had been quite sick, poor little thing, and she had no time to write. Hiram, Nettie’s husband, too, had been ill and laid up for a week, so aunt Hannah had been nursing night and day. She enclosed a little bookmark to remember Celia’s birthday. She wished she could send her something nice, but times were hard and Celia knew she had no money, so she must take it out in love.

Hiram’s sickness and the doctor’s bills made things close for Nettie or she would have remembered the birthday, too, perhaps. Aunt Hannah felt that it was hard to have to be a burden on Nettie, now when the children were young and she and Hiram needed every cent he could earn, but what else could she do? She sent her love to her dear girl, however, and wanted her to read the verse on the little ribbon enclosed and perhaps it would do her good. She hoped Celia had a nice comfortable “homey” place to board and would write soon.

That was all. The white ribbon bookmark was of satin and bore these words:

“His allowance was a continual allowance . . . a daily rate. 2 Kings xxv. 30,” and beneath in smaller letters:

“Charge not thyself with the weight of a year, Child of the Master, faithful and dear, Choose not the cross for the coming week, For that is more than he bids thee seek. Bend not thine arms for to-morrow’s load, Thou mayest leave that to thy gracious God, Daily, only he says to thee, ‘Take up thy cross and follow me.’”

Chapter II.

Celia read the words over mechanically. She was not thinking so much of what they said, as she was of what her aunt had written, or rather of what she had not written, and what could be read between the lines, by means of her knowledge of that aunt and her surroundings. In other words Celia Murray was doing exactly what the words on the white ribbon told her not to do. She was charging herself “with the weight of a year.” She had picked up the cross of the coming months and was bending under it already.

Her trouble was aunt Hannah. Oh, if she could but do something for her. She knew very well that that little sentence about being a burden on Nettie meant more than aunt Hannah would have her know. She knew that aunt Hannah would never feel herself a burden on her niece Nettie,—for whom she had slaved half her life, and was still slaving, unless something had been said or done to make her feel so; and Celia, who never had liked her cousin-in-law, Hiram, at any time, for more reasons than mere prejudice, knew pretty well who it was that had made good, faithful, untiring aunt Hannah feel that she was a burden.

Celia’s eyes flashed, and she caught her hands in each other in a quick convulsive grasp. “Oh, if I could but do something to get aunt Hannah out of that and have her with me!” she exclaimed aloud. “But here am I with six dollars and a half a week; paying out four and a quarter for this miserable hole they call a home; my clothes wearing out just as fast as they can, and a possibility hanging over me that I may not suit and may be discharged at any time. How can I ever get ahead enough to do anything!”

She sat there thinking over her life and aunt Hannah’s. Her own mother and Nettie’s mother had died within a year of each other. They were both aunt Hannah’s sisters. Mr. Murray did not long survive his wife, and Celia had gone to live with her cousins who were being mothered by aunt Hannah, then a young, strong, sweet woman. Her uncle, Mr. Harmon, had been a hard working, silent man, who had supplied the wants of his family as well as he could, but that had not always been luxuriously, for he had never been a successful man. The children had grown fast and required many things. There were five of his own and Celia, who had shared with the rest,—though never really getting her share, because of her readiness to give up and the others’ readiness to take what she gave up. Somehow the Harmon children had a streak of selfishness in them, and they always seemed willing that aunt Hannah and Celia should take a back seat whenever any one had to do so, which was nearly all the time. Celia never resented this for herself, even in her heart; but for aunt Hannah she often and often did so. That faithful woman spent the best years of her life, doing for her sister’s children as if they had been her own, and yet without the honor of being their mother, and feeling that the home was her own. She had never married, she was simply aunt Hannah, an excellent housekeeper, and the best substitute for a mother one could imagine. As the children grew up they brought all their burdens to aunt Hannah to bear, and when there were more than she could conveniently carry, they would broadly hint that it was Celia’s place to help her, for Celia was the outsider, the dependent, the moneyless one. It had fallen to her lot to tend the babies till they grew from being tended into boys, and then to follow after and pick up the things they left in disorder in their wake. It was she who altered the girls’ dresses to suit the style, and fashioned dainty hats from odds and ends, turning and pressing them over to make them as good as new for some special occasion. And then when it came her turn, it was she who had to stay at home, because she had nothing to wear, and no time to make it over, and nothing left to make over, because she had given it all to the others.

Then had come the day,—not so many weeks ago: Celia remembered it as vividly as though it had happened but yesterday; she had gone over the details so many times they were burned upon her brain. And yet, how long the time really had been and how many changes had come! The boy came up from the office with a scared face to say that something had happened to Mr. Harmon, and then they had brought him home and the family all too soon learned that there was no use in trying to resuscitate him,—all hope had been over before he was taken from the office. Heart failure, they said! And instantly following upon this had come that other phrase, “financial failure,” and soon the orphans found they were penniless. This was not so bad for the orphans, for they were fully grown and the girls were both married. The three boys all had good positions and could support themselves. But what of aunt Hannah and Celia? Nettie and Hiram had taken aunt Hannah into their family, ill-disguising the fact that she was asked because of the help she could give in bringing up and caring for the children, but Celia had understood from the first that there was no place for her.

She had been given a good education with the others, that is, a common school course followed by a couple of years in the High School. She had her two hands and her bright wits and nothing else. A neighbor had offered to use her influence with a friend of a friend of a partner in a city store, and the result was her position. She had learned since she came that it was a good one as such things went. She had regular hours for meals and occasional holidays, and her work was not heavy. She felt that she ought to be thankful. She had accepted it, of course, there was nothing else to be done, but she had looked at aunt Hannah with a heavy heart and she knew aunt Hannah felt it as keenly. They had been very close to each other, these two, who had been separated from the others, in a sense, and had burdens to bear. Perhaps their sense of loneliness in the world had made them cling the more to each other. Celia would have liked to be able to say “Aunt Hannah, come with me. I can take care of you now. You have cared for me all my life, now I will give you a home and rest.” Ah! if that could have been! Celia drew her breath quickly, and the tears came between the closed lids. She knew if she once allowed the tears full sway, they would not stay till they had swept all before them, and left her in no fit state to appear before those dreadful, inquisitive boarders, or perhaps even to sell ribbons in Dobson and Co.’s on Monday. No, she must not give way. She would read that other letter and take her mind from these things, for certain it was that she could do nothing more now than she had done, except to write aunt Hannah a cheering letter, which she could not do unless she grew cheerful herself.

So she opened the other letter.

It was from Rawley and Brown, a firm of lawyers on Fifth street, desiring to know if she was Celia Murray, daughter of Henry Dean Murray of so forth and so on, and if she was, would she please either write or call upon them at her earliest possible convenience, producing such evidences of her identity as she possessed.

The girl laughed as she read it over again. “The idea!” she said, talking aloud to herself again as she had grown into the habit of doing since she was alone, just to feel as if she were talking to some one. “If they want to identify me, let them do so. I’m not asking anything of them. If I’m I, prove it! How very funny! What for, I wonder? There can’t be a fortune, I know, for father didn’t have a cent. I’m sure I’ve had that dinged into my ears times enough by Nettie, and even Uncle Joseph took pains to tell me that occasionally. Well, it is mysterious.”

She got up and began to walk about the room singing to herself the old nursery rhyme:

“‘If it be me, as I suppose it be, I’ve a little dog at home and he’ll know me; If it be _I_, he’ll wag his little tail, And if it be _not_ I, he’ll bark, and he’ll wail.’

“Dear me!” said Celia, “I’m worse off than the poor old woman who fell asleep on the king’s highway. I haven’t even a little dog at home who’ll know me.” She sighed and sat down, picking up the white ribbon that had fallen to the floor. Then she read it over again carefully.

“How like aunt Hannah that sounds!” she said to herself, as she read the poem slowly over, “‘Child of the Master, faithful and dear.’ I can hear aunt Hannah saying that to me. She was always one to hunt out beautiful things and say them to me as if they had been written all for my poor self. If aunt Hannah had ever had time, I believe she would have been a poet. She has it in her. How entirely I have been doing just exactly what this poem says I must not do: choosing my cross for the coming week. Yes, and bending my arm for to-morrow’s load. I have been thinking what a dreary Sunday I should have, and wondering how I could endure it all day long in this ugly, cold room. And I won’t stay down in that mean parlor and listen to their horrible singing. It wouldn’t be right anyway, for they have not the slightest idea of Sabbath keeping. Last Sunday was one hurrah all day long. I wonder what that verse at the top is—‘His allowance was a continual allowance.’ I declare I don’t remember to have ever read it before. But trust aunt Hannah to ferret out the unusual verses. I must look it up. Second Kings: who was it about, anyway? The twenty-fifth chapter. Oh! here it is!” She read:

“‘And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evil-me-rodach king of Babylon in the year that he began to reign did lift up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison;

And he spake kindly to him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon;

And changed his prison garments: and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his life.

And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.’”

Celia paused and read the verses over again.

She began to see why her aunt had sent it to her, and more than that why her heavenly Father had sent it to her. It was the same thought that was in the bit of a poem. God was taking care of her. He was a king and he was able to lift her head up out of prison, if this was a prison, and set her even on a throne, and change her prison garments, and more than that give her an allowance of grace to meet all the daily needs of her life. A continual allowance: she need never worry lest it should give out. It was “all the days of her life.” And aunt Hannah was his also. He would care for her in the same way. There was nothing to be done but to trust and do what he gave her to do. Perhaps it was unusually hard for her to do that. She had always been so accustomed to looking ahead and bearing burdens for others and planning for them. She recognized her fault and resolved to think more about it. Meantime, obviously the next duty for her to perform, and one by no means a cross, was for her to write a long cheery letter to aunt Hannah, who she could easily see was homesick for her already, though it was but a week since they had been separated. She gathered together her writing materials, drew her chair a little nearer the poor light, put on her heavy outdoor coat, for the room was chilly, though it was only the latter part of October, and began to write; thinking meanwhile that she could perhaps make a pleasant Sabbath afternoon for herself out of the study of Jehoiachin, who was so much a stranger to her that she had hardly remembered there was such a person spoken of in the Bible.

The letter she wrote was long and cheerful. It abounded in pen pictures of the places and things she had seen, and it contained descriptions in detail of the different boarders. She tried not to tell the disagreeable things, for she knew aunt Hannah would be quick to understand how hard it all was for her to bear, and she would not lay a feather’s burden upon those dear hard-worked shoulders. So she detailed merry conversations, and made light of the poor fare, saying she had a very good and a very cheap place they all told her and she guessed they were right.

She also drew upon her imagination and described the dear little home she was going to make for aunt Hannah to come and rest in and spend her later years, and she told her she was going to begin right away to save up for it. She made it all so real that the tears came to her eyes for very longing for it, and one dropped down on the paper and blotted a word. She hastily wiped it out, and then took a fresh page, for aunt Hannah’s eyes were keen. She would be quick to know what made that blot. She paused a minute with her pen in air ere she closed the letter. Should she, or should she not tell aunt Hannah of that letter from the lawyers? No, she would not until she saw whether it came to anything, and if so, what. It might only worry her aunt. There were worries enough at Hiram’s without her putting any more in the way. So she finished her letter, sealed and addressed it, and then ran down to put it in the box.

As she returned from her errand into the misty outdoor world, and closed the door behind her shivering, glad she did not have to go out any more, she met the tall, lanky cook in untidy work dress and unkempt hair. Celia noticed instantly that it was curly hair and black, like the one she found in the stew the night she came. She was passing on upstairs but the cook put out her hand and stopped her.

“Say,” she said in familiar tones, “I wish you’d jes’ step into Mis’ Morris’ room and stay a spell. She’s ben took dreadful sick this evenin’, and I’ve ben with her off an’ on most all the time, an’ I’ve got pies yet to bake fer to-morrow, an’ I can’t spend no more time up there now. She ought to have some one, an’ the rest seems all to be gone out ’cept that ol’ lady up there, an’ she’s gone to bed by this time, I reckon.”

Celia could do nothing but consent to go, of course, though the task looked anything but a pleasant one. Mrs. Morris had never struck her pleasantly. She enquired as to the sickness. The woman didn’t exactly know what was the matter. No, there had not been any physician sent for. “There wan’t no one to go in the first place, and, secondly, doctors is expensive things, take ’em anyway you will, medicine and all. Mrs. Morris can’t afford no doctors. She’s most killed with debt now.”

Celia turned on the stairs, and followed the woman’s direction to find Mrs. Morris’ room. Over in her mind came those words she had read a little while ago.

“Daily, only, he says to thee, ‘Take up thy cross and follow me.’”

She smiled, and thought how soon the cross had come to her after she had laid down the wrong one of a week ahead, and tapped softly on Mrs. Morris’ door, lifting up her heart in a prayer that she might be shown how to do or say the right thing if action were required of her. Then she heard a strained voice, as of one in pain, call “Come in,” and she opened the door.

Chapter III.

Mrs. Morris lay on her unmade bed, still in the soiled wrapper. Her expansive face was drawn in agony and she looked white and sick. She seemed surprised to see Celia, and supposed she had come to prefer a request for another towel, perhaps, or to make some complaint.

“You’ll have to ask Maggie,” she said without waiting to hear what the girl had to say. “I can’t talk now, I’m suffering so. It’s just terrible. I never was so sick in me life.”

“But I’ve come to see if I can’t help you,” explained Celia. “Maggie told me you were sick. Tell me what is the matter. Perhaps I can do something for you. I know about sickness and nursing.”

“Oh, such awful pain!” said the woman, writhing in agony, “I suppose it’s something I’ve et. Though I never et a thing, all day long, but a little piece of pie at dinner to-night and me tea. Me nerves is all used up with worrying anyway, and me stomach won’t stand anything any more.”

Celia asked a few practical questions, and then told her she would return in a minute. She found her way in haste to the kitchen, though she had never before penetrated to that realm of darkness—and dirt. She ordered Maggie peremptorily to bring her a large quantity of very hot water as soon as she could, and send somebody for a doctor. Then she went up to her own room and hastily gathered a bottle or two from her small store of medicines and a piece of an old blanket she had brought from home. She hesitated a moment. She ought to have another flannel. The woman was too sick to find anything, and she had said she did not know where there were any old flannels. It was necessary. She must take up this cross to save that poor woman from her suffering and perhaps save her life, for she was evidently very sick indeed. She waited no longer, but quickly took out her own clean flannel petticoat. It was nothing very fine, and was somewhat old, but it was a sacrifice to think of using any of her personal clothing down there in that dirty room, and for that woman who did not seem to be scrupulously clean herself. However, there was no help for it, and she hurried back as fast as she could. She gave the poor woman a little medicine which she thought might help her, and she knew could do no harm till the doctor could get there, and then plunging the cherished blanket into the hot water, she wrung it as dry as she could and quickly applied it to the seat of pain, covering it with the flannel skirt. She knew there was nothing like hot applications to relieve severe pain. She saw by the look of relief that passed over the sick woman’s face that the pain had relaxed to some extent. After a moment, Mrs. Morris said:

“I don’t know as you’d a needed to send for a doctor, this might have helped me without him. I can’t bear to think of his bill. Bills’ll be the death of me yet, I’m afraid.”

But a spasm of pain stopped her speech, and Celia hastened to repeat the applications.

It was some time before the doctor arrived. The girl had to work fast and hard. It was evident when he came that he thought the patient a very sick woman. Mrs. Morris realized this, too. After the doctor was gone and Celia was left alone with her, she asked her if she supposed the doctor thought she was going to die.

“Though I ain’t got much to live for, the land knows—nor to die for either for the matter of that.”

“Oh you forget!” said Celia, reverently, aghast that one should speak in that tone of dying, “There is Jesus! Don’t you know him?”

The woman looked at her as if she had spoken the name of some heathen deity, and then turned her head wearily.

“No,” she said, “I don’t suppose I am a Christian. I never had any time. When I was a girl there was always plenty of fun, and I never thought about it, and after I got married there wasn’t time. I did tell the minister I would think about joining church the time of my daughter’s funeral, but I never did. I kind of wish I had now. One never is ready to die, I s’pose. But then living isn’t easy either, the land knows.”

A grey ashen look overspread her face. Celia wondered if perhaps she might not be dying even now. She shuddered. It seemed so terrible for any one to die in that way. She had never been with a very sick person near to death, and she did not know the signs well enough to judge how much danger there might be of it. She felt however that she must say something. The woman must have some thread of hope, if she should be really dying. She came close to her and took her hand tenderly.

“Dear Mrs. Morris! Don’t talk that way. Dying isn’t hard, I’m sure, if you have Jesus, and he’s always near and ready, if you will only take him now. I know he helps one to die, for I can remember my own dear mother, though I was but a little girl. She had a beautiful look on her face, when she bade me good-bye, and told me she was going to be with Jesus, and that I must always be a good girl and get ready to come to her. She looked very happy about it.”

Mrs. Morris opened her eyes and gave her a searching look. Then she said in a voice half-way between a groan and a frightened shout:

“Why do you talk like that? You don’t think I am dying, do you? Tell me, quick! Did the doctor say I was going to die? Why did he go away if that was so? Send for him quick!”

Then the inexperienced young girl realized that she had made a mistake and been too much in earnest. There was danger that the woman might make herself much worse by such excitement. She must calm her. To talk to her thus would do no good. She must wait until a suitable season.

“No, Mrs. Morris,” she said, rising and speaking calmly, “he did not say so, and I do not believe you are going to die. You must not get so excited, or you will make yourself worse. Here, take your medicine now, for it is time. I did not mean you to think I thought you were dying, and I’m sorry I spoke about my mother’s death, it was very foolish of me. Please forget it now. I only wanted to tell you how Jesus was standing near ready to be a comfort to you always, whether you lived or died. But now you ought to go to sleep. Would you like me to sing to you? Is the pain a little easier? The doctor said you must lie very quiet. Can I get you anything?”

By degrees she calmed the woman again, and then sat down to watch and give her the medicine. There seemed to be no one whose business it was to relieve Celia. Maggie put her head in the door about midnight to say she was going to bed now and had left a fire, if any more hot water was needed. Celia sat there gradually taking in the fact that she was left to sit up all night with this sick woman, an utter stranger to her. It was scarcely what she would choose as a pleasant task. But she recognized it as the cross the Master had laid upon her with his own hand, and there was a sense of sweetness in performing this duty which she would not have had otherwise. It occurred to her that it was well this was Saturday night instead of some other, for she could ill afford to sit up and lose all her sleep when she had to stand at the counter all the next day. She smiled to herself in the dim light and thought this must be part of the Master’s plan, to fix it so that she could do this duty and her others also. This was all he asked her to do, just what she had strength for. He gave her the daily allowance of that. But what if she should have to sit up to-morrow night? “Daily, only, he says to thee,” and “Thou mayest leave that to thy gracious Lord,” came the answering words, for now she knew the little poem by heart. She went upstairs, hastily changed her dress for a loose wrapper, and secured her Bible and one or two articles which she thought might be useful in caring for the sick woman. When she came down again Mrs. Morris seemed to be asleep, and Celia settled herself by the dim light with her Bible. She felt that she needed some help and strength. She had not read long when Mrs. Morris said in a low voice, “Is that the Bible you’ve got? Read a little piece to me.”

Celia hardly knew where to turn for the right words just now, but her Bible opened easily of itself to the twenty-third psalm and she read the words in a low, musical voice, praying the while that they might be sent of the Spirit to reach the sick woman’s heart. When she stopped reading Mrs. Morris seemed to be asleep again, and Celia settled herself in the least uncomfortable chair in the room, and began to think.

But she had not long for this occupation, for this was to be a night of action. The terrible pain which for a time had been held by some powerful opiate the doctor had given when he first came in, returned in full force, and the patient soon was writhing in mortal agony once more. Celia was roused from her thoughts. She called Maggie and sent for hot water and the doctor again, and it was not until morning was beginning to stain the sky with crimson that she sat down to breathe and realize that Mrs. Morris was still alive. It seemed almost a miracle that she was, for the doctor had said when he arrived that there was doubt whether he could save her.

Early in the morning Miss Burns came in to relieve her watch, and Celia snatched a little sleep, but she found on awaking that she was needed again. Mrs. Morris had asked for her. She went down to the breakfast table and found, what she had not supposed possible, that the breakfast was so much worse than former breakfasts, since the mistress was sick, that it was hardly possible to eat at all. It seemed that Mrs. Morris had made some difference in things, though Celia had thought the night before that they could not very well be much worse. She had yet to find that there were many grades below even this in boarding-houses.

The Sabbath was not spent in studying Jehoiachin. It was full, but not with attending church services. She did not stay in her cold little room. She would have been glad to have been allowed to flee to that refuge. Instead, she made her headquarters in Mrs. Morris’ room and from there she began by degrees to order things about her, for Mrs. Morris seemed to have placed all her dependence upon her. It was she who answered the questions of Maggie about this thing and that, and who kept the entire list of boarders from coming in to talk to Mrs. Morris and commiserate her. She also cleared up the room and gave a touch of something like decent care to the sick woman and her surroundings. Once or twice the patient opened her eyes, looked around, seemed to see the subtle difference, and then closed them again. Celia could not tell whether it pleased her or whether she was indifferent. But it was not in Celia’s nature to stay in a room and not make those little changes of picking up a shoe and straightening a quilt and hanging clothing out of sight. She did it as a matter of course.

Occasionally, when she had time to do so, she wondered what aunt Hannah would think if she could see her now, and she smiled to think that this was just what she seemed to have had to do all her life,—give up to help other people. Then she thought perhaps it was the most blessed thing that could happen to her.

Occasionally there would come to her a remembrance of that letter from the lawyers, and she would wonder what it meant, and how she could possibly go to work to find out.

Sunday evening she sat with her landlady for a couple of hours. The pain seemed to be a little easier, though she had spent an intensely trying day. She seemed worried and inclined to talk. Celia tried to soothe her and persuade her to get calm for sleeping, but it was of no use.

“How can I sleep,” answered the woman impatiently, “with so many things to fret about? Here am I on me back for the land knows how long, and the doctor wanting me to go to the hospital. How can I go to the hospital? What will become of me house, and me business if I up and off that way? And then when I get well, if I ever do, what’s to become of me? Me house would be empty, or me goods sold for grocery debts and other things, and I should starve. I might as well take the chances of dying outright now as that. I know I’d die in the hospital anyway, fretting about things. That Maggie never could carry on things, even if I was only to be gone two days. She never remembers to salt anything. Those two girls from that three-cent store have been complaining about the soup to-day already. They say it was just like dish water. And that German fellow came and told me to-night, with me lying sick here, that he’d have to leave if things didn’t improve. He said I ought to get better help! Think of it! How am I going about to get help and me on me back not able to stir? I don’t much care if he does leave, he always ate more than all the rest of them put together. But land, if I should get well right away and keep on, I don’t see where I’m coming to. There’s bills everywhere, milk and meat and groceries and dry goods. I don’t know how I’m ever to pay ’em. It’ll be just go on and pay a little, and get deeper into debt, and pay a little of that and make more debt, till I come to the end sometime, and I s’pose it might as well be now as any time.”

Poor Celia! She had no words ready for such trouble as this. Debt had always been to her an awful thing, a great sin, never to be committed. She never realized that there were people to whom to be in debt seemed the normal way of living from day to day. She tried to think of something comforting to say, for how could a woman get well with such a weight as this on her mind? It would do no good to quote verses of Scripture about taking no thought for the morrow, nor to quote that sweet poem of hers about not bearing next week’s crosses. The poor woman would not understand. She had not so lived in the past as to know how to claim the promise of being cared for. She would scarcely understand if Celia tried to tell her that if she would but cast her care now on Jesus he would help her in some way at once. This was what she longed to say, but her experience of the night before led her to fear saying anything which might excite the poor nervous woman.

“How much money do you need to pay all your debts and set you straight again?” she asked, thinking a little opportunity to go over her troubles might quiet her.

“Oh, I don’t know,” wailed the poor woman. “If I just had a thousand dollars, I’d sell out me business and go somewhere and get out of it. Things seem to be getting worse and worse.” She began to cry feebly, and Celia was at her wit’s end. Everything she said seemed to make matters worse. Suddenly she began to sing in a low soft voice,

“Jesus, Saviour, pilot me, Over life’s tempestuous sea.”

Her voice was sweet and pure, and the woman paused to listen while Celia sang on until she fell asleep.

Chapter IV.

Celia discovered that the firm of lawyers who had written her, had their office in a building not many blocks from Dobson and Co.’s store. She felt anxious to find out what they wanted of her, and so the next morning she obtained permission for a few minutes’ extra time at the lunch hour and hastened there.

She reached the number at last, and searched the dirty sign board for the names “Rawley and Brown.” There it was almost the last one on the list, “Fourth floor, back.” She climbed up the four flights of stairs, for the elevator was out of order and arrived panting before the dingy office. When she entered the room, two elderly men sat at desks on which were piled many papers, and each was talking with a client who sat near his desk. They did not cease their talking with these men until Celia had stood for some moments by the door. Then the elder of the two looked over his glasses at her, and she ventured to say she was Miss Murray come in response to their letter. She was given a chair and asked to wait until Mr. Rawley was at leisure, and in the course of a few minutes both the clients had withdrawn, and she was left alone with the two lawyers. Over in the corner behind a screen, she could hear the click of a typewriter and see the top of a frizzy head which she knew must belong to the operator, probably the one who had written the letter to her.

Mr. Rawley at last turned to her and began a list of questions. Celia answered everything she could, wondering when this mystery would be explained. As soon as she had finished telling Mr. Rawley the names of her different living relatives, he cleared his throat and looked at her sharply and yet thoughtfully:

“Miss Murray,” said he, as if about to ask something very important, “did you ever hear your father speak of having a great uncle?”

Celia paused to think a moment. She had been but ten years old when her father died. She could remember some conversations between her father and mother about relatives whom she had never seen. She searched her mind.

“I’m not sure about the ‘_great_’ part of it. He might have been a great uncle, but I know there was one father called uncle Abner. He must have died long ago. He was a very old man then. I can remember father saying laughingly to mother one day that he would never see anybody prettier than she was, not if he lived to be as old as uncle Abner.”

“A-ahem!” said Mr. Rawley, uncrossing his feet and recrossing them again and putting his two thumbs together as he looked at them seriously under his bushy eyebrows. “Yes. Ah! Well, and did that uncle have any—ah—heirs?”

Celia wanted to laugh. She had already begun to plan how she would make aunt Hannah laugh by a letter she would write describing this interview with the lawyers, but she kept her face straight and answered steadily.

“I do not know.”

“Well, I must say, my dear young lady,” remarked Mr. Rawley, after a somewhat prolonged pause, “that your evidence is somewhat—that is to say,—inadequate. You could hardly expect us, with so little to go upon—that is to say, without more investigation, you could hardly expect us——”

“You forget, sir,” said Celia, really laughing now, “that I have not the slightest idea what all this is about. I expect nothing. I came here to be informed.”

The old lawyer gave her another searching look and then seemed to conclude that she was honest.

“Well, young lady, I think I may safely tell you this much. There was property of Mr. Abner Murray’s, which naturally descended to his only son. This son had been in India for years. He did not return at his father’s death, and in fact his whereabouts was not definitely known, until a very short time ago, when positive information of his death without heirs was received. The property would then revert to Mr. Abner Murray’s next of kin, and his heirs. Mr. Abner Murray had a brother, who is supposedly your father’s father. If this should prove to be the case, through his death and your father’s, his only heir, you being the only living child of your father, the property would naturally fall to you. Do you follow me closely?”

Celia looked at Mr. Rawley respectfully now and very gravely. The matter had taken on a different aspect. It was a complete surprise. She had not even in her wildest dreams allowed herself to hope for any such thing. Fortunes only fell to girls in books, not to flesh-and-blood, hard working, everyday girls.

She looked at the lawyer in silence a minute and then she smiled gravely and said:

“That would be very nice if it’s true. I wish it might be. And now I suppose you are done with me for the present, until you have investigated the truth of my statements.”

Mr. Rawley seemed surprised that she took it so coolly and asked no more questions. She rose as if to go. The truth was she had caught a glimpse of the clock and she saw that she had barely time to reach her counter before the limit of her nooning would be over, and she had had no lunch. Her position might be forfeited if she exceeded her time. That was worth to her at present all the mythical fortunes that the future might hold for her. So, without more ado, she hurried away, and, not even stopping for a single bite to eat, laid aside her wraps and was in her place behind the counter when the minute hand pointed just one minute after the time allotted her.

It was a very busy afternoon. She had not much time to think. Everybody seemed to want ribbons. “Perhaps I shall be in a position to buy some of these yards myself, instead of measuring them off for other people, some time, if that old Mr. Rawley ever finds out whether _I_ am _I_,” she thought to herself as she skillfully clipped off two yards of blue satin and three yards of pink taffeta.

“Property!” he had said. What did property mean? Had great uncle Abner left an old house standing somewhere, which would be of no earthly use to anybody unless sold, and bring nothing then? Or perhaps it was some musty old library. She had no faith that there was much money. Such things did not run in their family. It would turn out to be very little. But oh, what if it should be something worth while? What, for instance, if it should be a thousand dollars! What might she not do? Why, a thousand dollars would enable her to do some of the nice things she longed so to do. She could bring aunt Hannah here to the city, and set up a tiny home with her in it somewhere. With that much money to start on, they could surely make their living, she in the store and aunt Hannah at home sewing. It flashed across her mind that that was just the sum Mrs. Morris had wished for. She had said if she only had a thousand dollars she could pay her debts and have enough left to start on and get out of her uncomfortable life.

How nice it would be if she, Celia, could have money enough to say, “I have the thousand dollars, Mrs. Morris, and I will give it to you. You may pay those people and go away to some more quiet, restful life.” Then how delightful it would be to take that poor miserable boarding-house and make it over. Make the boarders’ lives cheerful and pleasant, give them healthful food and clean, inviting rooms to live in! What a work that would be for a lifetime! If she ever did get rich, she believed she would do just that thing. Hunt up the most wretched boarding-house she could find and take it, boarders and all, and make it over. She believed she could do it with aunt Hannah’s help. Aunt Hannah could cook and plan, and she could execute and beautify. The thought pleased her so well that she carried it out into details, during the long walk back to her boarding-house that night. She even went so far as to think out what she would give them for dinner the first night, and how the dining-room should appear—and how their faces would look when they saw it all. What fun it would be! Miss Burns should have something every night that would tempt her appetite, and the poor old lady in the third story should be given the very tenderest cut in the whole steak, so she need not tremble so when she cut it. And there was that poor young school-teacher, he needed rich creamy milk. She had heard him decline the muddy coffee several times and once he asked if he might have a glass of milk, and Maggie had told him they were all out of milk.

She debated whether she would retain her position in the store and decided that she would for a time, because that would give her a chance to carry out some plans without letting the boarders know who was at the bottom of it all. Things should not be changed much at first, except that everything should be made entirely clean and wholesome. Then gradually they would begin to beautify. Perhaps the others would help in it. Perhaps she could lure the young man from the dry goods store into spending an evening at home and helping her. She had a suspicion that he spent his evenings out, and remained late in places which did him no good, to say the least. It would do no harm for her to try to get acquainted with him and help him, even if she never got a fortune to enable her to raise her neighbors into better things. She would begin the reformation of young Mr. Knowles that very evening, if there came an opportunity. With these thoughts and plans in mind she completed her long walk in much shorter time than usual and with a lighter heart. It did her good to have an interest in life beyond the mere duties of the hour.

She found Mrs. Morris in much the same state of depression as on the day before. The doctor had urged again that she go to the hospital for regular course of treatment. She was as determined as ever that she would not, or rather _could_ not do it. She wanted Celia to come and sit with her. She had taken a liking to her new boarder, and she did not hesitate to say so, and to declare that the others were an unfeeling set who bothered her and didn’t care if she was sick. Celia tried to cheer her up. She gave her a flower which one of the other workers in the store had given her, and told her she would come up after dinner was over. Then she went down to the table, and found Mr. Knowles seated before his plate looking cold and coughing. She wondered if her opportunity would come. His seat was at her left hand. They exchanged some remarks about the weather, and Celia told him he seemed to have a bad cold. He told her that was a chronic state with him, and then coughed again as he tried to laugh. She entered into his mock gaiety, and told him that if his mother were there she would tell him not to go out that evening, in such damp weather and with that cough.

His face grew sober instantly, and he said very earnestly:

“I suppose she would.”

“Well, then, I suppose you’ll stay in, won’t you?” said the girl. “It isn’t right not to take care of yourself. The wind is very raw to-night. Your cough will be much worse to-morrow if you go out in it. You ought to stay in for your mother’s sake, you know.”

It was a bow drawn at a venture. Celia stole a glance at him. He looked up at her quickly, his handsome, gay face sober and almost startled.

“But mother isn’t here,” he said, his voice husky. “She died a year ago.”

“But don’t you think mothers care for their sons even after they have gone to heaven? I believe they do. I believe in some way God lets them know when they are doing right. You ought to take care of yourself just the same, even if she is not here, for you know she would tell you to do it, now wouldn’t she?”

“Yes, I know she would,” he answered, and then, after a minute’s pause, he added, “but it is so hard to stay in here. There is no place to sit and nothing to do all the evening. Mother used to have things different.”

“It _is_ hard,” said Celia, sympathizingly, “and this is a dreary place. I’ve thought so myself, ever since I came. I wonder if you and I couldn’t make things a little pleasanter for us all, if we tried.”

“How? I’m sure I never thought I could do anything in that line. How would you go about it?”

“Well, I’m not just sure,” said Celia, thinking rapidly and bringing forth some of her half made plans to select one for this emergency. “But I think we ought to have a good light first. The gas is miserable.”

“You’re right; it is that,” responded Mr. Knowles.

“Didn’t I see a big lamp on the parlor table?”

“Yes, I think there is a lamp there, but it smokes like an engine, and it gives a wicked flare of a light that stares at you enough to put your eyes out.”

“Well, I wonder if we couldn’t do something to cure that lamp of smoking. I’m somewhat a doctor of lamps myself, having served a long apprenticeship at them, and I think if you’ll help me I’ll try. I have some lovely pink crepe paper upstairs that I got to make a shade for my room, but I’ll sacrifice that to the store if you can get me a new wick. What do you say? Shall we try it? I’m sure Mrs. Morris won’t object, for it will save gas, besides making things pleasanter for the boarders. I have a book I think you will enjoy, after the lamp is fixed for reading. If you are going to be a good boy and stay at home to-night I’ll bring it down.”

The young man entered into the scheme enthusiastically. He was a very young man, not more than nineteen, or Celia would not have cared or dared to speak to him in this gay, half-commanding way. But she had been used to boys, and to winning them to do what she wished, and she won her way this time surely. The young man was only too glad to have something to keep him in, and his heart was still very tender toward his lost mother. Celia saw that he would not be hard to influence. She wished she were wise and able to help him. Her soul felt with oppression the need of all these other souls in this house with her, and she wished to be great and mighty to lift them up and help them. How strange it was that the way kept opening up before her for daily helping of others. She seemed to be the only Christian in this house full of people. What a weight of responsibility rested upon her if that was so. How she ought to pray to be guided that she might be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove; that she might, if possible, bring each one of them to a knowledge of Jesus Christ. And what was _she_ to do all this? A mere weak girl, who was discouraged and homesick, and could not get enough money together to keep herself from need, perhaps, nor grace enough to keep her own heart from failing or her feet from falling. What was _she_ to think of guiding others? How could she do all this work? She must shrink back from the thought. She could not do it. It was too much. Ah! She might leave all that to her gracious Lord. She had forgotten that. All he wanted her to do was to take the duty of the hour or the minute and do it for him. What matter whether there were results that showed or not so long as he was obeyed? When she slipped up to her room for that pink crepe paper she knelt down and asked that it and the book and the lamp and her little effort for the evening might be blessed. Then she went down to conquer that lamp.

Chapter V.

“For the land sake! Yes,” said Mrs. Morris, turning wearily on her pillow, “do what you please with it. I wish it was a good one. I’d like to afford a real good one with a silk shade with lace on it, but I can’t. There’s lots ought to be done here, but there’s no use talking about it. I’m clean discouraged anyway. I wish I could sell out, bag and baggage, and go to the poorhouse.”

“Oh, Mrs. Morris, don’t talk that way!” said Celia, brightly. “You’ll get well pretty soon. Don’t think about that now. We’ll try to keep things in order till you are able to see to them yourself. And meantime, I believe I can make that lamp work beautifully. I’ll come back by and by and report progress. Now eat that porridge. I know it can’t hurt you. The doctor told me it would be good for you. I made it myself, and it’s just such as aunt Hannah used to make for sick people. There’s nothing like twice boiled flour porridge. Is it seasoned right? There’s the salt.”

Then she flitted downstairs to the lamp.

Young Mr. Knowles was already on hand with the new wick he had purchased at the corner grocery, having carefully taken the measure of the burner.

Celia with experienced hand soon had the lamp burning brightly. Frank Hartley, the University student, had been attracted by the unusual light and declared he would bring his books down to the parlor for a while. It was cold as a barn in his room anyway. He and Harry Knowles stood by watching with admiring eyes, as Celia’s fingers, now washed from the oil of the lamp, manipulated the pretty rose-colored paper into a shade, and when it was done, with a gathering string, a smoothing out on the edges and a pucker and twist here and there, and then a band and bow of the crepe paper, it all had looked so simple that they marveled at the beauty of the graceful fall of ruffles, like the petals of some lovely flower.

She put the promised book in Harry Knowles’ hand, a paper-covered copy of “In His Steps,” and saying she would come down later to see what he thought of the story, she slipped away to Mrs. Morris’ room. She must get time to write to aunt Hannah some time to-night about her visit to the lawyers, for aunt Hannah might have some evidence which would serve her in good stead, but this duty to the sick woman came first. She turned her head as she left the room and saw the two young men settling themselves in evident comfort around the bright lamp. The school-teacher, George Osborn, came in the front door just then, and catching the rosy light from the room stepped in, looked around surprised, then hung up his hat and went in to stand a minute before the register to warm his hands. It was a touch of cheer he had not expected. Presently he went upstairs and brought down a pile of reports he must make out, and seated himself with the other two around that light.

Celia upstairs was telling Mrs. Morris about the lamp, how well it burned, and giving a glowing account of the three young men seated around it. Mrs. Morris listened astonished.

“Well, I’ve told them boys time an’ again that they ought to stay at home, but they never would before. It must be some sort of a spell you’ve worked on them. Of course, that teacher he stays up in his room a lot. But he’s trying to support his mother and put his brother through college, and you can’t expect much of him. He’ll just give himself up entirely to them and that’ll be the end of his life. There’s always some folks in this world have to be sacrificed to a few others. It’s the way things are. I’m one of those meself, though the land knows who’s the better for me being sacrificed. It does seem as if I had had to give up every blessed thing I ever tried for in me life. Just set down a while. I feel a little easier this evening and I’ve been a-doing a powerful lot of worrying all day. I haven’t a soul to advise me that knows anything. You seem to be made out of good stuff, and you’ve been real good to me, and I just wish you’d tell me what you think I ought to do.”

Celia sat down. She wondered what could be coming next. It was strange to have her advice asked this way. Coming out into the world alone to earn one’s living places a great many responsibilities upon one sometimes. She felt very incapable of advising. She felt she had not wisdom to settle her own life, let alone another’s, and one so much older than herself, that it would seem as if experience ought to have taught her much. But she tried to be sympathetic, and told Mrs. Morris to tell her all about it, and she would do the best she could. In her heart she prayed the Father that she might have wisdom to answer wisely.

“Well, you see it’s this way. I’m just deep down in debt. I told you that before. It’s been going on worse and worse every year, and every year I’d hope by the next to make the two ends meet somehow. But they never did. I’ve cut down and cut down. And then I got left two or three times by boarders going off without paying what they owed after I had trusted them a long time. There was that Mr. Perry now, he left that old rickety organ. It was well enough to have an organ for the boarders, but you see I couldn’t afford to have one. If I could have, I’d have bought a new one, you know. Well, things like that have happened time and again. Once a woman who recited pieces for a living came to the house. She had a lot of dirty satin clothes, and afterward she left quite suddenly and I never knew she was gone till a man came for her trunk. Of course I got the trunk for her board. She had been here two months and only paid one week’s board, kept putting me off and off. When I had that trunk sold at auction it brought me in just one dollar and sixty-two cents. What do you think of that? And she had the second story front alone too; and _airs_, why she’d have her breakfast sent up every morning about ten o’clock. She made me think she was a great woman. Well, I learned better. But it does seem as though I’ve had more trouble with folks. There was the time the woman was here with her little girl, and the child took scarlet fever and the Board of Health came in and sent everybody off, and scared them so ’twas a long time before I could get them back. Well, there’s been a plenty of other things just like that. You don’t wonder, do you, that I’m in debt? The worst of it is it’s been getting worse and worse. That Maggie just wastes everything she lays her hands on, and I don’t know’s I’d better myself any if I tried to get somebody else. There’s always changes and new things to buy. Now what would you do? You see it’s this way. I’ve got a sister out west that lives by herself in a little village. She’s a widow and she’s got enough to live on, and she’s written to me to come out and live with her, and she thinks I could get a little sewing now and then, and I could help her in her house. I can’t ask her for money, for I haven’t got the face to, having asked her once before. Besides, she’s not one to give out and out that way, even if she could afford to, which I guess she can’t, though she’d be willing and glad to give me a home with her. I’m too proud to borrow what I know I never could pay, and I won’t skip out here as some would and leave me debts behind me. I’m honest, whatever else I ain’t. Now what would you do? No, I don’t own this house; if I did I’d been bankrupt long ago with the repairs it needs, that I couldn’t get out of the landlord. But I took it for the rest of the year, and the lease don’t run out till April, so you see I’m in for that. It’s just the same old story. ‘A little more money to buy more land, to plant more corn, to feed more hogs, to get more money, to buy more land, to feed more hogs.’ Only, I always had a little less of everything each time. Now Miss Murray, what would you do if it was you?”

“Haven’t you anything at all to pay with? No,”—she hesitated for a word and the one she had heard that day came to her—“Haven’t you any property of any sort? Nothing you could sell?”

Celia was always practical. She wanted to know where she stood before she gave any advice. Mrs. Morris looked at her a moment in a dazed way, trying to think if there was anything at all.

“No, not a thing except my husband’s watch and this old furniture. I suppose I might sell out me business, but nobody would buy it and I’d pity ’em, poor things, if they did.”

She talked a long time with the woman, trying to find out about boarding-houses and how they were run. Before she was through she began to have some inkling of the reason why Mrs. Morris had failed in business and was so deeply in debt. She was only a girl, young and without experience, but she felt sure she could have avoided some of the mistakes which had been the cause of Mrs. Morris’ trouble. Finally, she said in answer to the twentieth “What would you do if you was me?”

“Mrs. Morris, I don’t quite know till I have thought about it. I will think and tell you to-morrow, perhaps, or the next day. It seems to me though, that I would stop right now and not run on and get more deeply in debt. That cannot better matters. I think somebody might buy your things, and—some way might be found for you to pay your debts,—but, in the first place, you must get well, and we’ll do the very best we can to get on here till you are well enough to know what you will do. Now may I read to you just a few words? And then you ought to go to sleep. Just you rest your mind about all those things, and I promise you I will try to think of something that will help you.”

She turned to the little Bible she had brought in with her and read a few verses in the fourteenth chapter of John “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.”

She was very tired when she reached her room that night. The letter she intended to write to aunt Hannah was still unwritten. The book she had taken from the public library to read was lying on her bureau untouched. She had been bearing the burdens of other people, and the day had been full of excitement and hard work. She threw herself on her bed, so nervously tired that she felt convulsive sobs rising in her throat. What had she done? She had promised to think up some way to help Mrs. Morris. Mrs. Morris was nothing to her, why should she take this upon herself? And yet she knew, as she asked herself these questions, that she had felt all along that God had as truly called her to help that poor woman as ever he had called her to sell ribbons for Dobson and Co., or to help aunt Hannah with the mending. She had not wanted to do it, either. It was very unpleasant work, indeed, in many ways, and had required sacrifices of which she had not dreamed when she began. There was the pretty lampshade she was planning to have. She had given that up for the general good of the house. Now, when she got the lamp she intended to buy at a cheap sale somewhere, she would have to wait till she could afford more paper and a frame for her shade. Well, never mind! She surely was repaid for that act, for those young men had enjoyed it. How much pleasure a little thing can give! How many things there were about that house which might be easily done to make things brighter and pleasanter, and how much she would enjoy doing them,—if aunt Hannah were only here! How nice it would be if she had some money and could buy Mrs. Morris out and help the poor thing to get off to her relatives, and then get to work and make that house cheerful and beautiful and a true home for its present inmates. How aunt Hannah would enjoy that work too! It was just such work as would fulfill that good woman’s highest dreams of a beautiful vocation in life.

Suddenly Celia sat bolt upright on the hard little bed, and stared at the opposite wall with a thoughtful, and yet energetic expression on her face.

“What if it should!” she said aloud. “What if there should be some money, say as much as a thousand dollars, and maybe a little over, for an allowance lest we might run behind. Wouldn’t that be grand! Oh, you dear old uncle Abner, if it proves true, and if you up in heaven can see, I hope you know how happy you’ll make several people. I’ll do it, I surely will! And aunt Hannah shall come and run the house and be the housekeeper, and maybe we can get old Molly, for I’m certain we never could do a thing with that Maggie, she’s so terribly dirty, and Molly would leave anywhere to be with aunt Hannah! There now, I’m talking just as if I was a ‘millionairess’ and could spend my millions. I ought not to have thought of this, for it will turn my head. I shall be so disappointed when Mr. Rawley tells me, to-morrow or next day, that I’m not myself, or that the property is some old hen house and a family cat, that I’m afraid I shall not be properly thankful for the cat. I wonder if it isn’t just as bad to take up the happy crosses for the coming year as the uncomfortable ones. I wonder how that is. I must think about it. Meanwhile, aunt Hannah must be written to, for Mr. Rawley wanted those marriage certificates she has, and somehow I feel quite happy.” She sprang from the bed and jumped around her room in such a lively fashion that Miss Burns who roomed below wondered what was the matter.

Writing to her aunt sobered her down somewhat. She began to think of herself a little.

“Celia Murray, do you know what you are doing?” This was what she heard whispered to her from behind. “You have come to the city to earn your living, and you have come here to board, not to nurse sick landladies, nor to become a guardian angel for stray young men, nor to exercise the virtue of benevolence. You must think of yourself, somewhat. How in the world will you ever be fit for your work if you spend so much time and energy on working for other people and staying up nights? Had you not better seek out another boarding-house? There must be plenty in this city, and probably if you looked about a little you might find one where you would have more conveniences and a better room and board. Leave Mrs. Morris to get along the best way she can. You are not responsible for her. She is a grown woman and ought to know enough to take care of herself. Anyway, she is only suffering the consequences of her foolishness. Better try to-morrow to find another boarding-house.”

Yet, even as Celia heard these words spoken in a tempting voice, she knew she would not go. She was not made of that kind of stuff. Besides she was interested. Whatever her cross for the coming week was to be, it would not be one to her to remain here now and help work out God’s plans, if she might be permitted so to do.

“And if it might only please my King to lift my head up out of prison and set me up where I might help others in this boarding-house, I would try to make as good a use of my liberty and my allowance as Jehoiachin did. I wonder what he did do with his allowance anyway. And it must have been such a pleasant thing to him to know, to fully understand that his allowance would not fail all the days of his life. I wonder if he got downhearted sometimes, and feared lest Evil-merodach might die and leave him in the lurch, or whether he might turn against him some day. Now with me it is so different. My King is all-powerful. What he has promised, _I know_ he will perform. I need never dread his dying, for he is everlasting. I can trust him perfectly to give me an allowance all the days of my life of whatever I need. And yet, daily and hourly I distrust, and fear and tremble, and dread lest I may be left hungry some day. What a strange contradiction, what an ungrateful, untrustful, unworthy child of the King I am.”

Then she turned out her light and knelt to pray.

Chapter VI.

It is said that Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees. It is probably true that he also hies him away to take counsel with his evil angels to see if they cannot by some means overtake that saint in his resolves and endeavors, and make him tremble, and perhaps fall. It certainly seemed to Celia the next morning as if everything had conspired to make her life hard.

In the first place it was raining. A cold, steady drizzle, that bade fair to continue all day and for several days, if it did not turn into snow. The furnace, none too good at any time, was illy managed. Mrs. Morris usually regulated it herself, but Maggie made a poor hand at it. She chose this morning to forget to see to it at all until the fire had gone out. There was no time to build it up then, for she had breakfast to get for the boarders who must be off to their work at their appointed hours. Celia dressed quickly, for her room was so cold she was in a shiver. With her blue fingers she tried to turn the pages of her Bible to read a few words while she combed her hair, but finally gave it up she was so cold. She was sleepy, too, for she had lost much sleep of late, and it was hard to get up before it was fairly light and hurry around in the cold. Life looked very hard and dreary to her. She thought of aunt Hannah getting breakfast for Nettie’s family, and buttoning the children’s clothes between times. Somehow the thought of aunt Hannah weighed heavily upon her this morning. She could not get away from it. It brought a sob in her throat and a pain at her heart. Why did they have to separate? It was cruel that life was so. The tears came to her eyes. She jerked a snarl out and broke two teeth of her comb at the same time. This did not serve to help her temper. She did hate to use a comb with the teeth out and once out there was no putting them back. Neither could she afford a new comb for some time to come. She glanced at her plain little silver watch and saw it was later than she usually rose, and she hurried through her toilet as much as possible, and ran downstairs to the dining-room. The German stood at the dining-room door, an expression of belligerence on his face and his attitude one of displeasure. He filled up the door so completely that Celia was obliged to ask him to let her pass before he moved. She was indignant at him for this. She found herself likening him to one of the animals condemned in the Bible. It was unchristian of course, but Celia did not feel in a very sweet spirit this morning. She recalled what Mrs. Morris had said and wished the German would leave the house. He looked like a man whom it was impossible to please anyway. But she found the cause of his displeasure was that there was no breakfast forthcoming as yet. Mr. Knowles came down, greeted her pleasantly, looked at the empty table, and the clock, filled his pocket with some crackers on a plate there, and remarked that he guessed he would skip, that it was as much as his place was worth if he did not get to the store on time, and he would have to run all the way to the car to make it now, it was so late. Celia felt indignant that this young man was obliged to go to a hard day’s work unfed. But there was nothing to be done now, he must go. It was the hard fate of the wage-earner. He must be on time, if the house fell. She went to the kitchen door and peered in. Maggie was slamming about in a grand rage. The biscuits she was baking were not even beginning to brown yet, as Celia saw by a glimpse into the oven door when Maggie opened it and slammed it shut. There was some greasy-looking hash cooking slowly. It did not look as if it ever would be done at the present rate it was cooking. The stove looked sulky and the ashes were not yet taken up.

“Maggie,” she said, “can I help you get something on the table? These people all have to go to work and so do I. If we can’t eat in five minutes we’ll have to go without.”

“Well, then, go without!” said Maggie, rising in a towering passion. “I’m sure it won’t hurt you fine folks once in a while. I never hired out to do everything and I ain’t responsible. I’ll get the breakfast as soon as I can and not a bit sooner, and you can get out of my kitchen. I don’t want you bothering ’round. I get all flustered with so many folks coming after me. Go on out now, and wait till yer breakfast’s ready. And tell the rest I won’t cook any dinner fer ’em, if a soul comes in this kitchen again.”

Celia retreated, indignant and outraged. To be spoken to in such a manner when she was but offering help was an insult. It was a peculiarity of hers that when she felt angry the tears would come to her eyes. They came now. It was exasperating. She went quickly to the window to hide them, and looked out in the dim little brick alley that ran between the houses and watched the rain drop all over the bricks. There was a blank brick wall of the next house opposite her, and a little further toward the front she could see a window and some one standing at it. She turned quickly away again. There was no refuge there. Taking in at a glance the table with its unbrushed crumbs, and the dishes of uncooked hash and underdone biscuits that Maggie was just bringing in, she resolved to follow the example of Mr. Knowles and take some crackers. Then seizing her hat and coat from the hall rack where she had put them, on coming downstairs, she started for the store. It was a long, cold walk and she got very wet, but she did not feel justified in spending the five cents which would have carried her there. In her present mood she had no faith in uncle Abner’s fortune. It would probably turn out to be some poor land somewhere which would never be worth a cent. That was the kind of inheritance which usually came to any one in their family, like the lot in a new town out west that was left to aunt Hannah by her eldest brother, where the city authorities compelled property holders to pave the streets and pay large taxes and where there were no purchasers. Such inheritances one was better off without. She felt very bitter in her heart. As she walked along in the rain, she remembered that she had forgotten to kneel by her bedside in prayer before she left her room that morning, it was so cold and late. She knew that must be the reason why she felt so cross and unreasonable, and she tried to pray as she walked along in the rain, but there were many things to distract her thoughts, and she had to watch carefully that she did not run into some one with her umbrella turned down in front of her to keep off the driving rain. She thought of aunt Hannah again, now probably washing the breakfast dishes, or doing some sewing or ironing, and she sighed and felt that earth was wet and cold and dreary. Half-way to the store, she encountered a little newsboy who followed by her side, and begged her to buy a paper. He looked hungry. His feet were out at the toes from his shoes, much too large. Celia had no money to buy a paper and she answered the boy in a decided negative that made him turn hopelessly away. It made her cross to see his need, when she had no power to help him. She realized how cross her voice had been and that vexed her. Then she blindly stepped into a mud puddle and splashed the water over the tops of her shoes. She shivered as she felt the dampness through the thin leather of her boot, and wondered what she would do when the inevitable sore throat, which always with her resulted from getting her feet wet, arrived. And so she hurried on, tugging after her the heavy cross which she had carefully made that morning for herself to carry, out of bits of her own and other people’s troubles, and letting it spoil the sweet peace God had sent her, and soil the clean heart he had washed from sin for her. It was too bad. Her guardian angel pitied her that she could so soon forget her high resolves, and her heavenly Father.

Matters were no better when she reached the store. One of the girls who belonged at the ribbon counter with her was sick. Celia had to do her duty and the girl’s also. This might not have been so bad if she had been left to herself, but the head of that department, a young woman with a sour expression and disappointed eyes, was also out of temper, and did her ordering in an exceedingly disagreeable manner. She found a great deal of fault and kept demanding of Celia more than she could well accomplish in a given time. Celia had hoped it would not be a busy day on account of the rain, but on the contrary every woman in town seemed to be in need of ribbon and to have hit upon that particular rainy morning in which to shop, thinking doubtless that the others would stay at home and leave the store to her. When the noon hour came Celia was cut down to half time on account of the rush, and obliged to take a few precious minutes of that in putting up some ribbons left carelessly on the counter by another saleswoman who had gone to her luncheon leaving them there. To the young girl new to her work, and fresh from a home where every _necessary_ comfort at least had been hers, it was a long, hard day, and she looked forward with no hope of a let-up to the evening that was to follow. She grew crosser as the day began to wane, and she grew hungry, and then faint, and then lost both those feelings and settled down to a violent headache. It was then that a new cause for trouble loomed up before her imagination. What if she should get sick? Who would take care of her and how should she live? Aunt Hannah would have to come, and what an expense that would be!—No, aunt Hannah could not come. There was no money anywhere to pay her fare, or her board when she got there, and she was bound to stay with Nettie and Hiram as long as they were supporting her. She would have to get along without telling aunt Hannah. What would become of her? Oh, why of course, she would have to go to the hospital among strangers and be nursed, and perhaps die, and aunt Hannah never hear and then worry and worry and no one would tell her.

It was just in the midst of these thoughts that there came the clear voice of the floor walker:

“Miss Murray, will you step to the office a moment. There is a message there for you, a special delivery letter I believe.”

With her heart throbbing violently at thought of the possibilities contained in a special delivery letter, she walked the length of the long store. Aunt Hannah must be sick and they had sent for her. Surely they would do that if aunt Hannah should be so ill she needed care, for Nettie would never care for her, she was no nurse and hated sick rooms. Besides, to be perfectly honest, Nettie would have enough to do in caring for her home and children. There was no hospital in the little town where Hiram lived, so he would, of course, rather pay her fare and keep her while she did the nursing than to hire some one to care for aunt Hannah. All this reasoning went clearly through her brain, as she walked swiftly in the direction of the office. It seemed as if the writing of her name on the receipt book was one of the longest actions she ever performed, and her hand trembled so when she retired to the little cloak room to read her letter that she could scarcely open the envelope, nor take in at first that the letter bore Rawley and Brown’s printed heading. And then she read just a few lines from them asking her to call once more upon them and as soon as possible. She went back to her place among the ribbons feeling almost angry with Rawley and Brown that they had frightened her so, and yet relieved that there was nothing the matter with aunt Hannah.

It was nearly five o’clock, and the crowd of women who were doing rainy day shopping had gone home. The rain was pouring down harder than ever. The store was comparatively empty. Perhaps she might get away for a few moments now; she would ask. Permission was granted her, as she had had only half her noon hour, and she hurried up to the dark little office again.

She found that she was not too late, for Mr. Rawley had not yet gone home, though he had his overcoat on as if about to depart. It appeared that he wished to ask a few more questions to establish certain facts. Celia answered them as best she could, and then as he seemed to be through with her, she asked timidly:

“Would you be so kind as to tell me what this is all about, anyway? You said there was property. If it should turn out to be mine, what would it be? I suppose you do not mind giving me a general idea of that, do you?”

He looked at her almost kindly under his shaggy brows. “Why no, child!” he said. “That’s perfectly proper, of course. Why, I haven’t the exact figures in my head, but it’s several thousands, well invested, and an old farm up in New York state that’s well rented. There would be enough to give a pretty good income every year you know, and if you left the investments as they are, it would be a continuous one, for they are not likely to fail or fall through. Then, too, there is a considerable accumulation owing to the doubt about the heir. I hope you’ll turn out to be that heir and I have no doubt you will. Good-afternoon.” Celia tripped down the dark old staircase as if it were covered with the softest carpet ever made. Several thousands! What wealth! What luxury! She had wished for one single thousand, and her Father had sent her not one, but many. For she began to believe now that the money was hers. All the evidence seemed to point that way. The lawyer seemed to be convinced, and it needed only the coming of a few documents in possession of her uncle Joseph’s old lawyer to corroborate what she had told him. She felt pretty sure that it was all true. And here she had been cross and growling all day, and worse than that, she had been carrying crosses not meant for her shoulders, and probably leaving undone the things God had laid out for her to do. What wickedness had been hers. Only last night she had knelt in earnest consecration, and now to-day she had fallen so low as almost to forget that she had a Father whose dear child she was, and who was caring for her. Could she not retrieve some of the lost day? She had but one hour left in the store. She would try what she could do. She smiled on the beggar child who stood looking wistfully in at the pretty things, in the store window as she passed in to her work. When she reached the ribbon counter again, she found the head of the department looking very tired, and complaining of a headache. There were other burdens besides her own she could bear. She might offer to do her work for her and let her rest, and she could bring her a glass of water. It was not her business to put up certain ribbons not in her own case, but she could do it for the other girl who was absent and save the head girl. As she made her fingers fly among the bright silks and satins, she wondered if there were more burdens for her to bear for others when she reached the boarding-house, and whether Mrs. Morris would be better to-night and able to sit up and direct things a little, and then there came to her mind the joyous thought that perhaps she was to have the means soon to make that house permanently better in some ways and help its inmates. How light her heart and her shoulders felt now that she had laid down that heavy self-imposed cross! It was wonderful! Oh, why could she not learn to trust her Master? The verse of a loved hymn came and hummed itself over in her mind.

“Fearest sometimes that thy Father Hath forgot? When the clouds around thee gather, Doubt him not! Always hath the daylight broken— Always hath he comfort spoken— Better hath he been for years, Than thy fears.”

Chapter VII.

Miss Hannah Grant sat in her room under the eaves darning little Johnnie’s stocking. Her hair was grey and rippled smoothly over her finely shaped head. Her sweet face wore a sad, far-away expression. It had grown habitual with her ever since she had come to live with her niece Nettie. Perhaps a close observer would see that the sadness was a shade deeper this afternoon. Her eyes were deep grey and seemed to go well with her hair. She gave one the impression of being able to see further with them than most people, and there was a luminousness about them that lit up her otherwise plain face, and made it truly beautiful. Her gown was plain and old and grey. She always wore grey dresses. They had been becoming long ago in the days when it mattered whether she wore becoming things, and now that she cared no more about the becomingness, she wore them for sweet association’s sake, and for the sake of one long gone who used to admire them when she wore them. She did not seem to know that they still suited her better than any other color, or absence of color, could have done.

The hole was large and ill-shaped, for Johnnie was hard on his stockings, but she darned it patiently back and forth, and seemed to be thinking of something else. Once she laid it down and went to the closet for her little grey worsted shawl to throw around her shoulders, for the room was heated only by a drum from the stove downstairs and she felt chilly. She usually sat in the sitting-room in the afternoon to sew or mend, but there had been a reason for her coming up here to-day. She had settled herself as usual by the west window downstairs to get a good light on her work. She had a large peach basket full of stockings by her side, and her workbasket on the window. The baby, creeping about the floor, had upset the peach basket and scattered its contents around, and Nettie, coming down just then in a new red cashmere shirt waist she had finished the day before, had jerked him unceremoniously away from among the stockings and hastily bundled them all into the basket, shoving it behind aunt Hannah’s chair and out of her reach. As she did so, she remarked in a disagreeable tone that she wished aunt Hannah wouldn’t bring that old thing into the sitting-room. Couldn’t she bring a pair of stockings at a time, and not litter up the whole room? She was expecting Mrs. Morgan and her sister in with their embroidery and crocheting, and she did like to have things look a little nice. Aunt Hannah had meekly disposed of the stocking basket behind her ample apron, and there had been silence in the room for a few minutes. Then young Mrs. Bartlett remarked:

“Aunt Hannah, I think you had better go and change your dress, if you are going to sit there. That old grey thing doesn’t look very well. I wish to goodness you had a black silk, or something, like other folks. You always waste your money on grey things when you have to buy anything. It’s a dreadfully gloomy color. It makes you look sallow, too, now you’re getting older.”

Nettie had gone out in the kitchen then for a minute and returned just as aunt Hannah was starting upstairs with the darning basket.

“Aunt Hannah!” she called, “take your shawl and bonnet up with you, won’t you? I s’pose you’d just as soon keep them up there, wouldn’t you? Hiram says he hates to see the hall rack cluttered up so.”

Aunt Hannah put down the basket on the stairs, descended swiftly, gathered her shawl and bonnet and one or two other belongings of hers which were downstairs, in inconspicuous places, and carried them all upstairs. She was not in the habit of leaving her bonnet and shawl on the rack, and had only done so last night when she came in from prayer meeting, because she had buckwheat cakes to set before going to bed, and when that was done and she started to take them away, Nettie had asked her to carry a lamp and two comfortables up for her, and in doing so the shawl and bonnet had escaped her notice. It was a little thing, and she realized that the hall rack looked better without her shawl and bonnet, but somehow it was one of the many little things that gave her the feeling that she had no home. She had put them all meekly away and sat down in her little cold room near the drum to darn. She had done what she was asked to do with one exception. She did not change her dress and go down again. She saw that Nettie would like to have her out of the way for the afternoon, and she did not wish to remain where she was not wanted. She did not sigh as some women would have done. Instead, her eyes took on that far-away look. She was beginning to long so sorely for the open gates of her home above where she need never more feel that desolation of not belonging, and where she would meet loved ones, and above all her Father, face to face. Yet she knew her heavenly Father was with her, even in this home where she was treated as a burden, and she could be content to stay and do his bidding, only sometimes that great longing for the face to face view grew upon her till her heart ached with the desire to go.

In her bureau drawer, safe hid in tissue paper in a white box smelling of rose leaves there were some letters, and an old daguerreotype. The picture was in an old-fashioned leather frame that closed with a little brass hook, and was lined with stamped purple velvet. The face inside was of a young man with sweet, serious eyes, a grave, handsome face, smoothly shaven, heavy, dark hair tossed back from a high white forehead, and the dress of the olden time—a high rolling collar and stock. The letters were from this man to Hannah Grant, written when he was in the theological seminary, and they contained bright glad plans for their future, Hannah’s and his. They might not have seemed bright to some women, for they were planning, so soon as he had finished his ministerial training, to go to the Foreign Mission field and work together for the Master they both loved better than anything else. And next to him they had loved each other. How bright her life had seemed to her then as she did her daily duties; sang about them; thought of the future and wrote her happy letters; and thanked the Lord daily that she was to be permitted to do his work in this honorable way. The time had gone by rapidly then, and the years of study had been completed. Hannah’s wedding day was set, her simple lovely wedding gown was finished, and it was grey. He loved grey. It had little touches of soft white about the throat and wrists, just enough to bring out the coloring of Hannah’s delicately cut face. And then,—suddenly there happened one of those mysteries of the kingdom which we shall understand by and by, and to which now we can only say “It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him best,” and trust. The earnest young missionary was taken up higher, there to receive his reward. His bride, when she could rally from the shock of this sudden ending of her life joy, bowed to the will of him to whose keeping she had long ago given her will and her life, and was enabled to say with tears of triumph that like that man of God of old her beloved had “walked with God and was not, for God took him.”

She had thought even then to go alone, and take the message of Jesus to those who knew him not, and bear her sorrow more easily by thinking she could do some of the work which they would have done together. But God opened another door for her and showed her plainly that he had called her to a duty at home, and so she took her saddened heart, her sweet face and her tender ways to her sister’s motherless little children and had lived there ever since. Sometimes now, when she thought how she was not wanted in this home, and yet could not go anywhere else by force of circumstances, she would take out that pictured face and wonder if James could know how she was being treated what he would think and feel about it, and think how he would guard her from the world and shield her if he were only here. And then she would be glad that he could not know, or that if he could, he was where he knew it would not any of it be for long, and that she would soon come home to be with Jesus and with him forevermore, and that time to him was only a brief space. It was at such times that her eyes would take on their far-away look.

So she sat and worked and thought that afternoon. In due course of time the expected visitors arrived. The woman upstairs heard their voices, and presently they drew nearer to the stove in the sitting-room. Their talk could be quite distinctly heard now, but Hannah was absorbed in her own thoughts, and she paid no attention as they gossiped on about this one and that, with “You don’t say sos,” and “Well, I always thought as muchs,” and “Did-she-say thats,” until she heard Nettie say, “Yes, she will stay with us this winter anyway. No, it isn’t quite as pleasant as to be alone you know, but then what could we do? She had no home to go to. My husband wanted my cousin to come, too, though it was more than we really could afford to do to feed and clothe two more, but she was very ungrateful, and wanted to have her own way and see the world a little. I expect she’ll come back humbly enough when she’s been away a couple of weeks longer, and if she does I’m sure I don’t know what in the world we shall do with her. Oh yes, aunt Hannah helps me a little here and there, but you can’t ask much of people that are getting on in years. (Aunt Hannah was forty-nine.) My father always kept her in luxury as she was my mother’s only sister. Yes, people do get spoiled sometimes that way. But, dear me, all she can do wouldn’t make up for the outgo. Yes, she was a sort of acting housekeeper in our home after mother died, but you know no one can ever take a mother’s place. (Johnnie, shut that door and go away and stop your coaxing, or I’ll take you upstairs and give you a good spanking. No, you _can’t_ go down by the pond to play to-day.) No, I never had so much to do with her as the younger children. I was the elder daughter, you know.”

Aunt Hannah quickly and noiselessly moved away from her position by the drum to the other side of the room. And this from the little girl she had so carefully mothered, and tended, and tried to train! And had loved, too, for Hannah Grant loved all that God loved and placed in her way. Ah, this was hard! And must she go on living here and knowing that she was not wanted, that she was a burden, and that lies—yes, actually lies, for there was no use trying to call them by a softer name—were being told to the people in the village about her? How could she? She could see just how it would go on from year to year. Hiram would come in cross at night and either ignore her altogether, or else contradict every word she spoke, and find fault with anything he knew she had done, in a surly, impersonal way, which he knew and she knew he meant for her. The children would grow up to disrespect her, as they were beginning to do already. And her dear Celia! She was toiling bravely far away from her! There was no prospect of anything better for years to come, perhaps never so long as she lived. She knelt down by her bed, and prayed for a long time. Then she arose quietly and went back to her window, a chastened look upon her face. This was not more than he had helped her to bear before. Indeed, it was not nearly so much. It was what Jesus had himself borne, being despised and rejected of men. She darned on till the room grew dark, and then she sat in the twilight and thought. She could not bring herself to go downstairs yet, not till she must to get supper. She thanked the Lord she had a room to herself where she might take refuge alone and think of him. It was seldom that aunt Hannah had had even this privilege in the daytime since she had come to live with Nettie, there was always so much to be done, and Nettie seemed to expect it to be done quickly.

The company below had departed, but Miss Grant took no heed. She sat and watched the grey sky grow into night. There was no sunset. It had been a grey day. There was not even a point of light to make the sky lovely. It sank into darkness quietly, soberly, unnoticed and unlovely. She thought it was like herself. But then there had been some reason why God had not made a bright sunset to-night, and there surely was some reason why he had wanted her life grey instead of rose-colored. She sighed just a little, and now that the darkness had stolen softly upon her, she let a tear have its way down her cheek.

Downstairs Nettie was growing restless. Hiram came in a little earlier than usual with a sour look and asked how long it would be before supper. Nettie said it would not be long, and wondered why aunt Hannah did not come downstairs. Hiram remarked that if the old woman was getting lazy and taking on fine-lady airs they had better give her a warning, for he couldn’t support her for nothing. He threw a letter for her upon the table while Nettie was lighting the lamp. Nettie took it up, glanced at the writing, and then sent Johnnie up with it and told him to tell aunt Hannah his father had come and wanted his supper right away.

“It’s from Celia again,” she said, in a contemptuous tone. “She wastes more money on postage. I don’t think it’s right to do that in her position. If she has any extra money she better save it up and help with supporting aunt Hannah. A great fat letter, too. I don’t see what she finds to write about. This is the third one this week. It’s perfectly absurd!”

But aunt Hannah did not hear what they said, she was not sitting near the drum, and would not again, even if she was cold.

Johnnie came down and reported that aunt Hannah had a light in her room and Nettie rattled the stove with all her might, and slammed the dishes around more than was necessary, but still aunt Hannah did not come, and finally Nettie began to get supper herself. She sent Johnnie up again pretty soon to tell aunt Hannah she wished she would come downstairs, that she needed her, and Johnnie came back and said aunt Hannah told him to tell mamma she would be down pretty soon, she could not come just now.

“Well, really!” said Hiram, looking up from his paper, “seems to me she is putting on airs at a great rate. If I were you, Nettie, I would just sit down and wait till she comes. I wouldn’t get supper at all. If you haven’t the grit to tell her to come down now when you send for her, I’ll do it for you.”

But Nettie rattled the stove and the dishes and managed to get supper ready pretty soon. She did not quite understand her aunt. This was a new development. Never in all the years she had known her and been cared for by her had aunt Hannah ever refused a request for help. It must be something serious. Was she sick? Nettie had some little heart left in her, and it irritated her to have her husband speak so of her relatives, so she bristled up at him, while she made the coffee.

“You’ll not do any such thing, Hiram Bartlett. I guess she has a right to stay in her room once in a while. I’m sure I never knew her to do the like before in the whole of her life. If she was your aunt, you wouldn’t speak of her in that way. I think you ought to be a little grateful for the way she took care of you last week when you were so sick, and me with the baby sick, too. If she hadn’t been here I should have had my hands more than full. I don’t know what I should have done. Johnnie, make that baby stop crying! Lillie, pick that doll up off the floor! I keep walking over something of yours all the time. I s’pose Celia’s got into some trouble and aunt Hannah’s worried about her. I expected as much. That girl hadn’t experience enough of the world to go off to the city alone. Somebody ought to have taken her home to live. If one of the boys had been married she could have gone with them, but the boys are so selfish they never think of other people. If you had any sense of the fitness of things you’d have done it yourself.”

They talked on in a wrangling way until supper was ready, but it was not until they had nearly finished the evening meal that the hall door opened and aunt Hannah walked in.

Chapter VIII.

Aunt Hannah had lighted her lamp a few minutes after the light of the day went out, to get a little comfort from her Bible before going downstairs to face her trials, for it must be confessed that aunt Hannah had not had a cross so heavy to bear in many a year, as it was for her to go downstairs that night and face Hiram and Nettie calmly after the words she had heard her niece speak. She had tried to think of all the comfort in the Bible as she sat in the twilight. She had a great store of the precious words to draw from, for her Bible had ever been her chief delight. She knew just where to turn in her memory for the right help and it came trooping forth.

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. . . . When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned. . . . God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. . . . Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. . . . For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. . . . All things work together for good to them that love God. . . . To be conformed to the image of his Son. . . . If God be for us, who can be against us? . . . Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”

Then she lighted the lamp to search out another promise, for it seemed to her as if just to look upon the words would somehow help her. It was at that moment Johnnie brought up Celia’s letter. She opened it quickly, the anticipation of another trouble arising in her mind, for what might not have happened to Celia so far away in that great city alone, since the last letter she wrote?

It was a thick letter and she read it slowly through, taking no thought of time because the matter it contained absorbed her mind completely, and when Johnnie came up the second time, she had something new to think about which demanded immediate attention and had claims prior to any downstairs. The letter read thus:

“Dear Aunt Hannah:

“Do you remember the words on the little bookmark you sent me for my birthday? I know you do, for you have a way of hiding all such words away in that wonderful memory of yours. You know the heading was about an allowance, from the king, a continual allowance. When I read it I knew just what you meant by sending it to me. You wanted to remind me that my King had plenty of extra strength to give me, and that he had promised to furnish me with enough for every day of my life to bear that day’s trials. It did help me, for I knew I was trying to bear some of them all by myself, and that I often and often forget that I do not have to take up next year’s crosses and worry about them. But I remember, when I first read the words, I couldn’t help longing deep down in my heart, that I could have a real earthly allowance of money, just solid hard dirty money, coming in every week, and every month, and every year, and enough to supply all the actual needs so that I might live with you and work for you and have you all to myself. Then I felt indeed that my head would be lifted up out of prison forever—for I read the chapter about Jehoiachin as you meant I should, you dear good auntie—and it helped me too. You see I had been taking up a big heavy cross for the year to come for you. I didn’t feel happy about you there at Hiram’s, for in spite of me I cannot like Hiram’s ways and I don’t believe you do. I know for one thing, and a very small thing, that you hate tobacco smoke and have never been used to it, and yet Hiram smokes all over the house whenever he pleases, without even so much as caring whether it is repulsive to you or not. In fact, I am wicked enough to suspect that he might do it the more, just because you don’t like it, to show you he is master of his own house. I am so sorry I have to feel that way about my cousin-in-law, but I can’t help it. There is this comfort about it, I don’t believe Nettie minds, and as she is the one that has to be his wife and go through life with him, it is a relief to think she doesn’t. But there! That is all out of the way, and unchristian, and I have been too much blessed to allow myself to say anything unchristian about any one. Only I did want you to understand that I appreciated how hard it was for you to cheerfully accept Nettie’s proposal and go to live with her for a few years. I did not say so then because I thought any words would only make it harder to bear, and I know my own dear auntie’s old way of always finding a thing easier to bear if she succeeds in making other people think she is perfectly happy. That is just one way, and the only way in which you ever are the least little bit dishonest.

“But I must hurry on with my main theme which has not even been hinted at yet. And I have a great deal to write, and must get it in to-night, for I cannot bear to have you wait a minute longer than is necessary to hear the good news.

“In the first place, you are not to stay at Nettie’s another day—that is not unless you prefer to, of course—but you are to pack up every scrap that belongs to you and take the first train to Philadelphia, sending me a telegram (at my expense) to say what train you start on. You must come to the Broad Street station—have your trunks checked there too, and don’t leave any of your things behind, for there is plenty of room to put all your things here, and you are not to go back to Nettie’s unless you go on a visit of pleasure.”

Aunt Hannah glanced up to see if the little room with its old ingrain carpet and cheap furniture was still about her. She was almost breathless with the proposal of the letter. Things seemed to whirl around her. She wanted to get something to steady her before she read on. She saw the black side of the sheet-iron drum and remembered the afternoon, and a glance toward her open Bible showed her the lines “God is faithful . . . will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” She drew a long breath and closed her eyes for a minute’s lifting of her heart to God. He was going to make the way to escape. She did not yet understand how it was to be done, but her faith caught at the fact that it was to be done. Then she went back to the letter.

“You are to give your checks to the porter on the car—and you are to take a sleeper if you come at night, or a parlor car if you choose to come in the daytime. I enclose your ticket.”

Aunt Hannah noticed then that a small pink and white paper had fallen from the letter when she opened it, and slipped to the floor. She stooped and picked it up in a dazed way. Good for one trip to Philadelphia it certainly was. This was something tangible and brought her back to everyday life. She really was to go, for here was the ticket. She went on with the letter eagerly now.

“You are to have the porter carry your satchel into the station for you, and I will meet you at the gate and take you home. Yes, HOME, aunt Hannah, yours and mine, do you hear that? It isn’t very pretty, nor inviting yet, but it is ours for a while, for as long as we want it, and we shall fix it into a charming home. And now you want to know how it all happened and what it means.

“Well, this morning I was sent for again to come to Rawley and Brown’s office on very important business, and as they told me it might keep me some time I asked for the day off at the store. I couldn’t have had that, if I had not done double duty for the last week in place of a girl who was sick. Mr. Dobson was very nice and said certainly in such a case he would give me permission. Of course, I suppose I’ll lose my pay for that day, but it had to be done, and it doesn’t matter now anyway. Well, Mr. Rawley hemmed and hawed a good deal, and finally told me that everything was satisfactorily settled at last and that I had been duly declared by the court to be uncle Abner’s heir, without any question or doubt anywhere, and that he wished to go over the papers with me and place the property in my hands. There was some red tape to be gone through with which I needn’t stop now to tell you about. It was all very interesting to me, the number of times I had to sign my name, and all the witnesses, and I felt just like a girl in a book, but I haven’t time for that. There is better to come. It seems uncle Abner had a farm where he lived after he got old, and his wife died and his son went to India, and there was a young farmer and his family who lived there and took care of him, and they have rented the house ever since. They still live there. The farm is pretty good, way up in New York somewhere I think, I didn’t pay much attention to it. Then he owned an interest in a coal mine near Scranton and a few government bonds, not many of those, but the whole is well invested and brings in a nice little income every year, sure, and I couldn’t help thinking of Jehoiachin when Mr. Rawley was telling me about it. He said it was so well invested that it was, as near as anything earthly could be, sure, a continual ‘income as long as I lived’ if I kept things in their present shape, for uncle Abner had been a very careful man and always invested in pretty safe things with what little he had. I didn’t tell him I considered it much instead of little, though. It seems a fortune to me. I suppose I shall learn better hereafter, but I am going to try to be very wise with it anyway, with God’s help.

“Now you want to know how much it is, I know. Well, it amounts to about nine hundred dollars a year at the lowest calculation, besides several years of accumulated interest not invested yet. Isn’t that riches? Why, you’ve often told me that not many ministers and few missionaries get more than that. Now then, why shouldn’t you and I be missionaries? I know it has been your dear desire all your life, and I don’t know of anything that would be grander work. And as we can’t go as foreign missionaries just now, what if we should be home missionaries? Of course, two lone women couldn’t take mortar and bricks and build a church and preach, at least I shouldn’t like to try it, though I’m not at all sure but I could do it. You know we always thought, if we had the time and the material and the pattern, you and I could do almost anything anybody else could if we tried. Well, I began to think about a mission for us, and before I had gotten half-way home to write to you it came to me just what I would like to do. Why shouldn’t you and I make a real home mission for ourselves right here in the city of Philadelphia, by making a good home for a few people who have none of their own? It seems to me there is as much gospel sometimes in a good sweet loaf of bread such as you can make, as there is in—well—_some_ sermons. Don’t you think so? Then we could get a hold on the people who ate it, and get them to go to the churches, and try to help them in their everyday lives. Why, some of the young men here would stay at home evenings occasionally, perhaps regularly, if they had a pleasant, warm, light place to stay in. Instead of that they go out to the saloons, perhaps. Anyway, auntie dear, they don’t look rested in the morning when they come down to breakfast. And oh, what a breakfast we did have this morning! It seems as though I never can like hash again, though I always used to enjoy ours so much at home when you made it. But hash in Mrs. Morris’ boarding-house is a very different dish indeed. When I got home I went straight up to Mrs. Morris’ room. She has not gotten entirely well from her severe sickness of a few weeks ago yet, though she goes around and directs things, but she seems to be so worried all the time. You know I told you how many bills she has unpaid and how hard times have been for her. You wouldn’t wonder a bit if you could be here and watch the way things go a little while. She was lying on her bed when I went in and looking as if she would like to cry, if she only were young enough and had the energy. She told me right away that she was in trouble again. She was a month behind in her rent, and the agent had been around and said it must be paid in advance after this and he couldn’t wait longer than till five o’clock. She only pays twenty-five dollars a month, and with all her boarders you might think she could pay it, but she doesn’t, that’s all. While she was talking I began to revolve my plans very rapidly. I didn’t want to act too rashly, for you know you always tell me that is one of my great faults, but I knew if I did anything it ought to be done very soon. Probably it would have been wiser to have asked Mr. Rawley’s advice, and perhaps some of my relatives, but I had an innate suspicion that I would not be allowed to do it at all, if I asked. And why shouldn’t I? The money is mine, and I am of age if I am not very experienced. I knew you would like it, at least I felt very sure you would, and if you and God like a thing I don’t care what all the rest of the world think. So I asked Mrs. Morris a lot of questions, some I had not asked her before. You see I had a whole two hundred dollars in my pocketbook, Mr. Rawley had given me. He said it was mine, and I might as well take it to begin on. So I took it. I knew I would want to do a lot of things right away, and that the first one would be to get you here at once, and to buy your ticket. I was just aching to spend some money, for it was the first time in my life I ever had much to spend. I asked Mrs. Morris about her butcher’s bill, and her grocery bill, and things and I found they were not so very big as she had made me think at first. Then I asked her point blank how she would like to let a woman come in here in her place for three months or so, and take the boarding-house off her hands, paying the bills for the present, and letting her pay them by and by, if she chose, or if not, holding the furniture as collateral. She didn’t know what I meant by collateral, but she soon understood, and said she would be only too glad, only she never could find any woman who would be so foolish. She said, too, that she was afraid if she once got away she would never be willing to come back, but just stay and leave the old furniture to make it right with her debts, and she sighed and returned to her trouble and began to cry. Then I couldn’t stand it any longer. I told her I thought I knew the right one for her, and I would write to her at once and attend to it all if she was sure she agreed to it. It did not take her long to decide what she would do after she was fully convinced that I meant what I said. She began to pack up her clothes right away and to talk about what she would take with her. She hasn’t much worth while, I guess. She will want those horrid crayon portraits of her family and herself, I hope, and a few other ornaments. But when we had gotten to this point, we found it was five o’clock, and the door bell made Mrs. Morris remember the rent agent. Sure enough, he had come, and Maggie came up to call Mrs. Morris. She looked at me blankly as much as to say: ‘What shall I do?’ She had forgotten all about him. I thought just a minute and then I told her I had some money, enough I thought to pay the agent and satisfy him, and I would go down and see if I could make him behave till we got things settled. Then I went downstairs and put on my most dignified air. He bristled at me and demanded Mrs. Morris.

“‘Mrs. Morris is not well and is lying down,’ said I, ‘and I have come down in her place. Is there anything I can do for you?’

“‘Well, I’ve got to see her if she _is_ lying down,’ he said in a loud voice, and he took a couple of steps toward the stairs as if he would go up to her at once. ‘She’s got to pay her rent. She’ll be put out if she don’t do it at once. This thing has gone——’

“‘Oh,’ I said, ‘it isn’t in the least necessary for you to get excited, if that is all. I can attend to the rent as well as any thing else. Are you the agent?’

“‘Yes, I _am_,’ he said, ‘and I won’t have any more talk either. I want my money.’

“I had my pocketbook in my hand, and I tried to freeze him with a look as I opened it. When he saw me bring out a big roll of bills he almost looked faint, he was so astonished.

“‘How much is it that is back?’ I asked.

“‘Two months and a half,’ he snarled.

“I began to count out the money, and then I remembered my own experience with Rawley and Brown and thought I would give him a little taste of it. I drew back and said ‘You are sure you are the agent and fully entitled to receive this money? Can you give me any credentials?’

“He was very much taken aback, and got red and embarrassed and at last remembered that Mrs. Morris knew him. Then he grew angry again and demanded to see her. I sent a message up to Mrs. Morris that if she was able we would like to have her come down, and she came. When it was finally all settled and the receipt signed, I told the young man that he might tell the owner that the rent hereafter would be paid in advance and on time, and that there were a few repairs which needed immediate attention and we would like to have him call at his earliest convenience. He went away quite crestfallen, and I began to feel quite like a householder. The only thing that troubles me is Mrs. Morris’ extreme gratitude, because, dear auntie, I’m afraid I haven’t loved her as much as I ought to for Christ’s sake, and I therefore can’t take to myself the credit she would give me. It is all very selfish in me.

“Now the matter stands this way. If you possibly can come this week, do so. Mrs. Morris will be ready to leave on your arrival. She will go to her sister out West, and I doubt if she ever returns. I have given her some money to go with. It isn’t always you can buy a full fledged boarding-house, boarders and all so cheap. I suppose some one would call it dear, but I am very happy in my purchase. I shall keep my place in the store till you come anyway, for I don’t care to have the boarders find out my connection with the business, till they see some of the changes I want to have made for the better. The only servant here is worse than none. She is so dirty and saucy you never could stand her. If you possibly can induce Molly to come with you, bring her. I enclose a New York draft which I think will be all the money you will want to bring her, and pay any little bills till you get here. And now, dear auntie, I do hope and pray you will say yes, and come at once, and not find any ‘oughts and ought nots’ in the way, as you sometimes do. You see I have gone ahead and burned my bridges behind me, because I felt that you ‘ought’ whether you think so or not, for I mean to take care of you now myself and you are working too hard there. Here we will keep you in pink cotton and only let you direct. I shall keep good servants, and if I don’t always make the two ends meet why I shall have ‘a continual allowance’ given me of my King to draw upon.

“Your loving, eager “CELIA.”

Chapter IX.

There was a calmness and “upliftedness” about Miss Grant’s face as she entered the dining-room that the people about that table did not understand, and it rather angered them than otherwise. She walked quietly to her accustomed chair and sat down. Nobody spoke, but she had so far forgotten her afternoon’s troubles as to be oblivious of this. Hiram was trying to think of the most sarcastic thing he could say, and so failed to say anything, while Nettie in her various revulsions of feeling did not know how to begin. Aunt Hannah herself opened the conversation in the calmest, most self-contained tone possible, as if the question she asked was one she often asked of her nephew.

“Hiram, can you tell me what time the through Philadelphia trains go?”

Hiram raised his cold, black eyes to her face in astonishment, a moment, and stared at her as much as to say, “What possible concern of yours is that?” and then dropped them to his plate again and went on eating. After a suitable pause he said freezingly, “No.” Aunt Hannah tried again.

“Isn’t there a time-table in the paper? Could you find out for me?”

“I don’t know,” said Hiram, this time without looking up. “I suppose if it’s there you can find it as well as I can.”

“What in the world do you want with the time-table, aunt Hannah?” asked Nettie, peevishly, with an undertone of anxiety in her voice. “There isn’t anything the matter with Celia, is there? I presume she has lost her place and is coming back on us. I always supposed that was the way her venture would turn out. She ought to have tried to get a place in the country for housework. It was all she was ever trained to do. Anybody might know she couldn’t get on in the city.”

“Nothing is the matter with Celia, Nettie,” answered her aunt, “except that she has written me to come to Philadelphia. She has found something there for me to do, and I have decided that it will be best for me to go at once. I shall have to start to-morrow, if possible, because I am being waited for.”

“You go to Philadelphia!” exclaimed Nettie dropping her fork. “The perfect idea! Has Celia gone crazy? Why aunt Hannah you couldn’t get along in the city. Why, you—you—wouldn’t know how to get anywhere. You don’t understand. Philadelphia is a large city and you couldn’t get across the street alone. And what could you do? You are not going to start in as a clerk in a store at your time of life, I hope. You would break down at once, and then we should have you both to care for, for I fully expect to have something happen to Celia soon, and then we should have you both to care for, and you know aunt Hannah, willing as we are, we are not able to do that.” Nettie paused for breath.

Then Hiram turned his little black eyes on her and asked contemptuously, “And who is going to pay your fare on this pleasure excursion you are going to take? You certainly can’t expect me to do it. I think I’ve done all I’m called upon to do. I understood the bargain was that you were to work for your board here.”

Hiram had never been so openly insolent before. If he had, Miss Grant would have left long ago, even though she had been obliged to walk the streets in search of work for her living. She turned her clear eyes upon him full, and said quietly with the strength of the grace the Father gave her from her communings with him:

“Yes, Hiram, that was the bargain, and I certainly have worked. I consider that I have fully earned all that I have eaten, and the amount of shelter that has been given me. As for any further assistance, I think I have never yet asked it, and I hope I may never be obliged to do so. Celia has sent me money and a ticket,—and I shall not be obliged to ask any favors of any one.”

“Celia sent you money!” Nettie fairly screamed it. “Where in the world did she get money?”

“Yes, where did Celia get money?” asked Hiram, sharply. “It seems to me there’s something pretty shady about this business. Miss Celia’ll get into serious trouble which will bring no credit to her family, if she keeps on.”

Aunt Hannah rose from her untasted supper, drew herself up to her full height and looked down upon Hiram Bartlett till he seemed to shrink beneath her glance. There comes a time when a strong sweet nature like Hannah Grant’s can be roused to such a pitch of righteous indignation that it will tower above other smaller natures and make them cower and cringe in their smallness and meanness. She had reached one of those places in her life. Nettie, as she watched her, thought to herself that aunt Hannah must have been almost handsome once when she was young.

“Hiram,” said aunt Hannah, and her voice was quite controlled and steady, “don’t you ever dare to breathe such a thought as that again about that pure-souled girl. You know in your inmost soul that what you have said would be impossible. Some time, when you stand before God, you will be ashamed of those words, as you will be ashamed of a good many of your other words and actions.” That was all she said to him. She did not lose her temper, nor say anything which she did not feel she ought to say, or which she would have taken back afterward. Then she turned to Nettie and quietly said:

“Celia has had a little estate left her from her father’s great uncle Abner. She is now quite independent as regards money, and she wishes to have me with her as soon as possible, and I intend to go to-morrow evening, if I can get ready.”

She turned from the room then and went upstairs, but when she got there, instead of going to work at packing, she turned the key in the lock and knelt down by her bed, to pray first for Hiram, and second that God might overrule anything that she had said amiss.

Meantime below stairs there was astonishment and confusion. Celia as a poor shop girl, and Celia with money were two very different people. Even Hiram felt that. He retired behind his paper till a suitable time had elapsed for his wife to talk out her anger, astonishment, and humiliation, and then he began to reflect that it would be a very convenient thing to have the management of Celia’s money, even though it was not much, for he was just beginning business for himself and every little helped in the matter of capital.

“It would just serve you right, Hiram Bartlett, if Celia should turn out to be rich,” said his wife, angrily. “The way you have treated her and aunt Hannah ought to make you ashamed, but I don’t suppose it will. Now what am I to do I should like to know? Three children, and one a fretful baby, and all my housework to do all alone. If you had treated aunt Hannah nicely, she would have stayed anyway. Maybe Celia would have come here to live and taught the children. She is real good at teaching little children anything. I remember she used to be so patient with the boys at home. It would be awfully convenient to have somebody around with money.”

In the course of the evening, while aunt Hannah swiftly gathered her possessions in array preparatory to packing, Nettie knocked at her door. She wanted to ask a great many questions, and she wanted to argue with aunt Hannah and show her the inadvisability and impossibility of her thinking of such a thing as going to Philadelphia to live with Celia, when her plain duty was here with Nettie and her family. When she saw she was making no headway, she tried to work on her aunt’s strong sense of duty, and finally cried, and told her she never thought she would be left by aunt Hannah in that way, with all those children and no help, that she always knew aunt Hannah cared more for Celia than for any of them, and that it was not fair when they had offered her a home and done everything for her, and she had come there with the understanding that she would stay several years anyway. It wasn’t fair to Hiram.

When she had talked this way for some time, her aunt turned to her almost desperately. She did not want to say anything rash. But Nettie must be shown how inconsistent she was.

“Nettie,” said she, just as calmly as she had talked to Hiram, “you know that you and Hiram never wanted either me or Celia with you. You know that you consider me in the way, and that I am only good to work. I don’t say anything against that, for that may be true, but you know that you grudge me my home here, and that you are giving out to your friends that you are doing a great deal to care for me in my helpless old age, and that I am a burden. You know yourself whether that is quite fair, and whether I have not worked as hard as any woman could for my board and lodging. But that is not to the point. You have a perfect right to think so about me. It may be all true, and I cannot stop you in saying such things to outsiders, but I have a right to say whether I will be taken and disposed of as if I was a piece of goods, and cared for as if I was a baby. I am not quite so infirm yet but that I can earn my living where I shall be more welcome. I thank the Lord that a way has been opened for me to go where I am wanted, but I must honestly tell you, Nettie, that I should have gone just the same if I had not known that you felt so, for I feel that my place is with Celia, if I can be with her. She is alone in the world. You have your husband and your children. She has nobody but me. I bear you no grudge, Nettie, and I think you will be happier with me away.” Then she went on packing and Nettie retreated to talk with her husband.

The result was a proposition that they should coax Celia to come home and live with them, and Nettie said a few nice things which she hoped would patch up aunt Hannah’s feelings, but aunt Hannah was firm, and would not even delay to write to Celia. She went diligently on with her preparations.

Gradually they settled down to the inevitable, and by the next noon had so far calmed down as to be able to ask some questions about the more definite details. Aunt Hannah had started out on an expedition very early in the morning without telling them where she was going, or without seeming to remember that there was breakfast to be gotten and cleared away. She seemed to be living by faith. She certainly ate nothing that morning. She visited a certain little house in a by-street where lived an old servant, Molly by name, who had declined the most earnest solicitations of Nettie to live with her at exceedingly small pay, and preferred to earn her living by doing fine ironing. She also visited the station, the telegraph office, the bank, and the expressman’s office, and then went back to her packing again. Later in the afternoon, she went out again and made a few calls, on the minister’s wife and the doctor’s wife and a few very dear friends, bidding them a quiet good-bye, for she wished to slip away without making any more talk than was necessary. But it was at the dinner-table that Celia’s whole plan was ferreted out by Nettie.

“Celia has bought a boarding-house!” exclaimed Nettie. “What an absurd idea! What does she or you either know about keeping boarders? You’ll both let them run right over you. You’ll get in debt the very first week. Why, aunt Hannah, you have no right to encourage Celia in such a scheme. She’s too young, anyway, to be away off there in a city without a guardian. She ought to be here. Hiram could manage her money and make it double itself in time, and if she really has as much as you say, she has plenty to live quite comfortably without doing anything. You ought to tell her so.”

But aunt Hannah did not seem to be intimidated by this. Nettie tried again.

“And then think how plebeian it will be! It was bad enough to work in a store, but a boarding-house keeper, and for one who has money of her own. It is simply unheard-of. I shall be ashamed to death to have Mrs. Morgan know about it. I think I have had trouble enough without having to be ashamed of my family. Celia always did do queer things, anyway. Don’t you think it is very impractical, Hiram?”

Nettie asked his opinion as if that would settle the matter for everybody concerned, and he answered in the same manner.

“I certainly do think it is the most wild and impossible scheme I ever heard of, and one which ought not to be permitted. It will be the ruin of Celia’s property, and when that is all gone, and you and Celia are in trouble, I suppose I shall be called upon to help you out. Of course I shall do the best I can, but you must remember that I have not very much money to throw away on wild childish schemes.” He spoke with the air of a martyr, and aunt Hannah answered him cheerily. She had recovered her spirits since she had sent her telegram.

“You needn’t worry, Hiram. I don’t believe either Celia or I will ever be in need of your help. But if we are, I don’t think we shall trouble you. You know they have a good many charitable institutions in the City of Brotherly Love, and we shall surely be well cared for if the improbable happens.” Then aunt Hannah placed her nicely prepared little coals of fire in the hands of her two grand nephews and her grand niece, and went smiling upstairs. The coals were tiny paper parcels each containing a bright five dollar gold piece. She had lain awake last night, worried about the sharp words she had felt obliged to speak, and the sentence Nettie had flung out about her leaving her without help, and she wanted to show that she bore no grudge for what they had said. Celia had sent her the money to spend as she thought best, and aunt Hannah knew her girl well enough to feel she would say this was a good way to spend it. Besides, she felt sure she could run a boarding-house successfully in a financial way, as well as some others, if she had the chance, so she might by and by have more five dollar gold pieces to do with as she chose. She was beginning to be very happy, as she packed and strapped the last trunk, and smoothed her hair and tied on her grey bonnet and grey veil. At the last Hiram and Nettie behaved quite well. Those five dollar gold pieces had gone a long way toward making the bereavement of aunt Hannah’s departure felt. Hiram took her satchel down, and Nettie walked beside her carrying her umbrella and wheeling the baby, while Johnnie and Lily trotted on ahead. There was an éclat and importance attached to a sudden and first-class departure such as aunt Hannah’s was turning out to be, which could not well be carelessly neglected. They made an interesting procession down the street. More than one neighbor looked out of her window, and a few knew that Miss Hannah was going away. But they had said good-bye, and only turned their heads the other way to wipe away a tear of regret, or sigh perhaps that their good friend was not to be near any more with her cheery face and her words of comfort. When it was observed by one or two that Molly Poppleton had also passed down the street accompanied by an old colored man wheeling her ancient trunk on a wheelbarrow, and carrying a good-sized bundle, several of the good women came to their gates to look down the street, and wait till Nettie returned to ask what it all meant. And Nettie enjoyed a triumphal march back to her home. “Yes, she’s gone, we shall miss her very much.” Her nose was red with being rubbed and her eyes had a suspicious redness about them. “No, Celia isn’t ill, but she couldn’t stand it any longer without aunt Hannah. You know Celia has had a fortune left her? Oh yes, she’ll have plenty now. Yes, aunt Hannah has to go and be her chaperon. I suppose she’ll quite come out in society now she has money enough to do about as she pleases. Oh yes, she’s very generous, she always was. She sent the children each handsome presents in gold. Yes, aunt Hannah has taken old Molly for a maid. She’ll be obliged to have a maid there, you know. Funny, isn’t it, that a woman who knows how to work should need a maid? I shouldn’t like it myself, but then one has to do as other people do.” Then Nettie went home and got supper and washed up her dishes and put her three babies to bed, and sat down wearily and wished for aunt Hannah.

But aunt Hannah sat serenely in the sleeper, waiting for her berth to be made up, and thinking to herself that she also, like Jehoiachin, had had her head lifted up out of prison.

Chapter X.

It was perhaps one of the happiest nights that aunt Hannah ever spent. She lay down in her bed in the sleeper and slept like a little child for a time, for she was as tired as a baby after her day and night of excitement, but in the early dawn she awoke and lay there listening to the regular cadence of the moving train. It was music to her. Her life had for years been a monotonous one, and every detail of the journey was a delight to her. The turning wheels seemed to sing a tune to her, “Now hath mine head been lifted up above mine enemies round about me.” She tried to turn that thought out of her mind as soon as she discovered its significance, for she did not like to think that even in her heart had hid a feeling that Hiram and Nettie were her enemies, but somehow the rejoicing stayed anyway.

She began to look forward to the morning and the day that was to follow, the opening of her new life. What would it hold of good or of ill for her? Would there be trials? Yes, but there had been trials before. She would have “his strength to bear them, with his might her feet could be shod. She could find her resting-places in the promises of her God,” as she had done before. And it was such delightful work before her, a prospect of making over a home and making it pleasant. Aunt Hannah took rest, too, in the thought of experienced Molly Poppleton now reposing in the berth above her. She was going on a mission at last. How good God had been to her! He had tried her for a little while, but he was bringing her out into a large place. She could see that, even though she could not know the trials that were before her. Of course there were trials, she expected that, earth was full of them; but she did not need to carry them; Christ had borne them all for her long ago. She would trust and he would bring her safely through as he had done before and was doing now. Then her thoughts dwelt in sweet reflection upon her Saviour whom she loved so much, and she communed with him and promised to try to help every person who came within that house that she was to make pleasant for him and his children, and to try to live for him before them every day. And that crowded, rushing car became a holy place, because God met her there and blessed her.

The train reached the Broad Street station at a very early hour. Celia was glad of that, for it gave her plenty of time to meet her aunt and go with her back to the house, without being late at the store. She had not had time to reflect yet as to whether she would give up her position. She was hardly ready to do so. It seemed to her that perhaps she might do more good if she retained it for the present, at least until she found some one else who needed it, and to whom she could give it with profit, both to that person and to her employers who had been very kind to her. Besides, she wished not to appear before the boarders yet as an active agent in the reforms of the house.

At exactly half-past five she arrived at the Broad Street station. It was an early hour for her to be out alone, and it was still dark save for the electric lights which glared everywhere as if trying to keep off the day. But the train would come in at five minutes to six, and Celia had been too eager and too happy to sleep longer, so she paced up and down in the ladies’ room until the train was almost due, watching the people come and go and wondering about them all as she was wont to do. As the time drew near for the train she went out and stood behind the gates watching the trains moving back and forth. She began to say to herself, “Oh, what if she should not come? What if something has happened to the train? Or what if Nettie and Hiram have persuaded her at the last minute not to come? Or what if she missed her train? But no, she would have telegraphed. ‘Charge not thyself,’—dear me! How much I do that. I must stop worrying ahead about everything. Aunt Hannah must have seen that fault in me very glaringly. I never realized how much I do it.” And then the train whistled and rolled into the station, and the passengers began to alight, and stream into the gates, looking sleepy and cold. Celia