NOBODY’S ROSE

OR

The Girlhood of Rose Shannon


BY
ADELE E. THOMPSON


ILLUSTRATED BY A. G. LEARNED

BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

CHAPTER I
HOW POSEY CAME ADRIFT

Out in the open country the day was dull and grey, with low-hanging clouds and occasional drops of slow-falling rain, but in the city the clouds of smoke hung still lower than those of the sky, and the dropping soot-flakes made black the moisture gathered on the roofs of the houses, the leaves of the trees, and the sidewalks trodden by many feet.

It was on a city street, one where the smoke-clouds from the tall chimneys trailed low and the soot fell in its largest flakes, that ever and again a sound asserted itself above the beat of hurrying feet. The sound was not loud, only a little girl sobbing softly to herself as she shrank with her head on her arm at one side of an open stairway; and the words that she repeated over and over to herself, “What shall I do? Where shall I [Pg 12] go?” were less in the nature of questions than a lamentation. But children tearful, loudly, even vociferously tearful, were in that vicinity so frequent that people passed and repassed the child without giving to her thought or heed.

For the street was one more populous than select, and while the tall red brick houses that bordered it had once aspired to something of the aristocratic, they were now hopelessly sunken to the tenement stage; while the neighboring region leading through the sandy open square of the Haymarket, where loads of hay always stood awaiting purchasers, down the long steep hill to the river, with its crowded shipping and its border of great lumber yards, shops, and factories, had never made pretense to anything except poverty of the most open and unattractive kind. In summer the whole region fairly swarmed with the overflowing inmates of the overcrowded houses. Children were everywhere, in large part barefooted, ragged, and so dirty that they might easily have been taken for an outgrowth of the sandheaps in which they burrowed and buried themselves when tired of [Pg 13] the delights of the street. To see them there, in utter indifference to the constant passing of heavily loaded teams sometimes prompted the inquiry as to how many were daily killed? But though, on occasion, they were dragged from under the very horses’ hoofs by the untidy women whose shrill voices were so often heard sounding from open doors and windows, few were the accidents to either life or limb.

The not distant city market house increased the crowds, especially at certain hours of the day, as also the street venders and itinerants who contributed their full share to the noise and confusion. Hook-nosed old men, with bags over their shoulders, and shrill cries of “P-a-p-e-r r-a-g-s” abounded; the organ-grinder with his monkey was a frequent figure, with the invariable crowd of youngsters at his heels; the maimed and the blind, wearing placards appealing to the public sympathy and extending tin cups for contributions, were to be found on the corners; the scissors-grinder’s bell was a common sound, as were the sonorous offers of “Glassputin.” Here was a man loudly and monotonously [Pg 14] appealing to the credulity of the public, and soliciting patronage for his wonderful fortune-telling birds, a little company of dingy and forlorn-looking canaries, who by the selection of sundry envelopes were supposed to reveal the past, present, and future. There, another man exhibited a row of plates with heavy weights attached, and extolled the wonderful merits of his cement for mending crockery, while the sellers of small wares, combs, pocketbooks, letter-paper, cheap jewelry, and the like, added their calls to the rest.

A few of the houses still retained a dingy scrap of yard, where thin and trampled grass blades made an effort to grow, but the most part had been built out to the street and converted into cheap restaurants, cheap clothing shops, cheap furniture shops, and the class of establishments that are cheap indeed, especially as regards the character of their wares.

In such a confusion of people and sounds it is not strange that a small girl crying to herself would attract so little attention that even the big, fat policeman on that beat passed her a number of times before he noticed [Pg 15] her, and then did not stop, as he saw that she was well dressed. At last, as she still remained crouched down in a dejected little heap, he stopped, moved as much by the thought of a little girl in his own home as from a sense of duty, with the inquiry, “Here, Sis, what’s the matter with you?”

She started up at the brusque but not unkindly tone, and lifting from her sheltering arm a round and dimpled face, with wide grey eyes, now swollen and disfigured with tears, answered brokenly and in a half-frightened voice, for the policeman stood to her as the terror rather than the guardian of the law, “Oh, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know where to go!”

“You don’t, eh? Well, it seems to me you are a pretty big girl to get lost; where do you live?”

“I don’t live anywhere,” with a fresh sob.

“That’s rather queer, not to live anywhere,” and he looked at her a trifle more sternly. “What’s your name, if you have any?”

“Posey Sharpe.”

“Oh, indeed,” and he glanced at the stairway [Pg 16] before him, where a small black sign with gilt lettering on the step just above her head read,

“Madam Atheldena Sharpe,
“CLAIRVOYANT.”

“So that was your mother, was it, who raised all that row here last night?”

“No, she wasn’t my mother, but I lived with her.”

“If she wasn’t, how comes it your name is the same?”

“It isn’t, really, only I’ve lived with her so long that people called me that. She said I was her niece, but I wasn’t any relation at all.”

He looked at the sign again, “Madam Sharpe. Well,” with a chuckle at his own witticism, “she wasn’t sharp enough to keep from being exposed. And you were the spirit child, I suppose?”

Posey nodded, a very dejected-looking spirit she seemed at that moment.

“Well, when she took herself off so suddenly why didn’t you go with her?”

“I ran up under the roof and hid, and I [Pg 17] didn’t know till this morning that she had gone.”

“I see; and was she so good to you, and did you think so much of her that you are taking on this way?”

Posey hesitated a moment. “She might have been better, and she might have been worse,” she answered with a candor of simplicity. “But I haven’t anybody else to live with, and I didn’t think she’d use me so.”

“I see; it was rather rough.” There was sympathy in his tone, and even in the way he tapped his knee with his polished club.

“And,” continued Posey, “this morning the man who owns the place came and he was awfully mad and cross. He said Madam Sharpe owed him for rent, and that she had hurt the reputation of the building, and he told me to put my things in my trunk, and he shoved it out into the hall and told me to clear out, and he locked the door so I couldn’t go in again. And I haven’t had any dinner, nor I haven’t a cent of money, nor anywhere to go, and I don’t know what’ll become of me,” and she wrung her hands with another burst of tears.

[Pg 18]

Here was the cause of her misery—the semblance of home, care, and protection, poor though it was, had been suddenly stricken away, leaving her a helpless, solitary estray, a bit of flotsam at the mercy of the world’s buffeting currents. Nor was her misery softened by even the dubious bliss of ignorance that most children enjoy as to the sterner realities of life, for already in her eleven years she had learned only too well what poverty implies, and how sad a thing it is to be friendless and homeless.

Poor little Posey, with her soft eyes, dimpled mouth, and rosy face, she seemed made for sunshine and caresses. Scant indeed, however, had been her measure of either. Her earliest remembrance had been of a home of two rooms in a tenement, a poor place, from which her father was often absent, and sometimes returned with an unsteady step; but a home which held the greatest earthly gift, a loving, tender mother. She was a pale, sweet, sad-faced young mother, who shed many tears, and lavished on her little daughter all the wealth of love the heart can bestow on its one treasure. But as time went by she [Pg 19] grew thinner and paler, the flush on her cheek deeper, and her cough sharper, more frequent, till even Posey, with a child’s apprehension, would throw her little arms around her neck, with a vague fear of what she could not have told herself. Then came a time when her mother could not rise from her bed; and at last, when Posey was six years old, the thread of life that had been so long failing suddenly snapped.

When the mother realized that the end was at hand she called her child to her and kissed her again and again. “Darling,” she said, holding her to her as though mother-love would prove itself stronger than even death, “Mamma is going away, going to leave you.”

“Where are you going to, Mamma?”

“God wants me to come to Him, to heaven.”

“Oh, don’t go!” and Posey clung to her, frightened both by her look and tone. “Don’t leave me, take me with you if you go.”

“Mamma cannot, dear, though she would, oh, so gladly. But I want you to listen now, and though you are only a little girl, never, never forget what I am saying. Be good, [Pg 20] wherever you are try to be good, always tell the truth, always be honest, and every night say the prayer I have taught you; remember that mamma has gone to heaven and will wait for you; and above all remember, remember always, that God loves you and will take care of you.”

“Do you know where my husband is?” she asked a little later of the neighboring woman who was caring for her.

“No, but I can try and find him.” In her own mind she thought it would be no difficult task.

“It’s no matter,” was the weary answer of the wife, who had sadly learned long before that her husband’s presence was slight cause for happiness. “Tell him good-by for me, and to send a letter he will find in my workbox to my mother; so she will know that I asked her forgiveness before I died. And I want her, as I know she will for my sake, to take my child.”

Her voice that had been growing weaker and weaker failed as she whispered the last word. A slight coughing-fit followed, there were a few fluttering breaths, and the nurse [Pg 21] who had been holding her hand laid it softly down.

“Oh, what is the matter with my mamma?” cried Posey in a frightened tone. “What makes her look so white; and lie so still? Mamma, Mamma, speak to me, do!”

But the ear that had always listened to her slightest call, would hear her no more. And the woman lifting kindly in her arms the now motherless child, terror-stricken and sobbing, though too young to understand the great loss and sorrow that had come to her, carried her gently from the room.

When the absent husband at last came home and was told his wife’s last message he listened to it moodily. “I don’t know any great reason she had to ask her mother’s forgiveness, just because she married me,” he said. “I’m not the worst man in the world, by a long way, if her mother did make such a fuss about it. And as for letting her have Posey to bring up and set against me, I’ll do nothing of the kind. I can take care of my own child, and I shall do it.”

A natural and praiseworthy sentiment, this last, had he been a sober, industrious man, [Pg 22] but unfortunately for himself and all connected with him he was neither. As a consequence, in the days that followed his little girl suffered much from neglect, and often from privation. Sometimes he feasted her on candy and sweetmeats till she was almost sick, and again, and more often, he left her to fare as best she might, and go hungry unless some neighbor fed her, while many were the nights she lay awake trembling in the darkness in her little bed, afraid of the dark, and almost more afraid of hearing the unsteady steps that would announce a drunken father.

But when her mother had been dead less than a year, there was a disturbance one evening in a near-by saloon. Revolvers were used, and one man, present but not involved in the quarrel, was fatally wounded. Posey never saw her father again. Taken to a hospital, public charity cared for him in his last hours and laid him in his grave. When they came to tell his child of his death they found her playing merrily with a doll she had made for herself of a rolled-up apron and a little shoulder-shawl.

[Pg 23]

It was hardly to be expected that she would comprehend her loss. For that matter, she hardly knew that she had met with one, and Mrs. Malone, across the hall, was decidedly of the opinion that she had not. For her mother she had grieved long and passionately; that her father was gone made but slight impression. She had received from him so little of affection that she did not miss its absence, and as to kindness and care, she had as much from the neighbors.

For a time she was passed from one to another of these, sharing the proverbial charity of the poor, minding babies, running errands, and doing such little tasks as her years and strength permitted. There was a kind-hearted reluctance among these humble friends to handing her over to public charity. A remembrance of her mother’s wish for her still lingered, and Mrs. Malone even tried to find the letter she had spoken of, but no doubt her husband had destroyed it. There was occasional talk of an effort to find this grandmother, but Posey knew nothing of her whereabouts, every one else was equally ignorant, and it never went beyond the talk.

[Pg 24]

It was at this time that Posey came under the notice of Madam Atheldena Sharpe, a lady who was making her wits provide her support, and who was quick to see how a pretty and easily taught child might be a help towards that end. To her taking possession of Posey there was no one to object. None of the few people she knew felt able to assume the burden of her support. To most of them the clairvoyant with her showy manners and fine-sounding phrases seemed a very imposing person, and Posey was counted a fortunate child to have found such a protector.

So Posey entered on the second phase of her life, bearing with her pitifully few mementos of her vanished home—a china dog her father had bought her in an unwontedly generous mood, a book of children’s poems, out of which her mother had read to her and taught her to read, a locket that had belonged to her mother, and her pocket Bible.

It was but a short time till new attractions were added to “Madam’s” séances —mysterious bells rang, an equally mysterious tambourine was tinkled; and presently out of a cabinet, that now made part of the furnishing [Pg 25] of the room, appeared what was understood to be a spirit materialized, an ethereal-looking little figure in the dim light, with long golden hair and floating white draperies.

As to the question of right or wrong in all this the child gave little thought. At first she had been too young and the various details had been but so many tasks; then as she grew older and began to realize the humbug behind that needed such constant and careful guarding from discovery, she was inclined to laugh at people for being so easily duped. But in the main it was to her simply a means of living, the way in which their bread and butter came.

For the ignorance of most children as to the value of money, or its need in daily life had with Posey been early and sadly dispelled. Better than many an older person she understood not only its necessity but how to make the most of it. From behind some door or curtain she would watch the people as they came to consult the clairvoyant, or gathered for a séance , as eagerly as the “Madam” herself; she knew exactly what each would add to the family purse, and so [Pg 26] could tell pretty well in advance if the next day’s dinner would be scanty or plenty, and whether the medium would be pleasant or the contrary. For though not destitute of kindly impulses her mood was apt to vary in large measure with her success.

In their changing life Posey was soon far from the city where she had lived, and finding her of even more value than she had expected Madam Sharpe gave to the child her own name, and took all possible pains to efface all remembrance of her earlier life, at the same time impressing on her the fact of her homeless and friendless condition, and that but for her kindness she would be a little beggar on the street; so that, as was her intention, Posey grew into the belief that Madam Atheldena Sharpe was all that stood between her and absolute distress, and with that picture constantly before her she yielded the more readily to that lady’s frequent exactions and petulance.

That she might become still more valuable, she was sent to school whenever their stay in a place permitted, though seldom was that long enough for the forming of friendships. [Pg 27] Indeed Madam Sharpe did not encourage such, for though singularly trusty, still she was always afraid that to other children Posey might be tempted to betray some jealously guarded secrets. For this reason, fortunately for her, Posey was never allowed the freedom of the streets, or the acquaintance of the children among whom she was thrown.

As soon as she grew old enough the “Madam” made her useful in domestic matters. She was taught to sweep and dust the rooms, to go to market, to prepare their simple meals, and to attend to most of the “light housekeeping” which best suited Madam Sharpe’s finances and business. In the evenings if people enough came to form a “circle” she had her part to take in the “manifestations,” which was to her only another of her daily tasks, and when ended she was quickly and gladly in bed and asleep.

So Posey’s life was by no means an idle one. She had enough to do to fill the most of her time, and for the rest, though often she was lonely and longed for companionship, still she had been accustomed from a little [Pg 28] child to amusing herself and so had acquired numberless resources to that end. Perhaps the most important result of this way of life was the distinctness in which it kept her mother’s memory, which might have faded had existence for her been happier or less monotonous. Facts and events grew blurred and indistinct, but her mother remained as vivid as a living presence.

No doubt with time imagination added its share till the remembrance grew into her ideal of all that was true and pure and lovely, as it was her greatest solace and comfort. Her words, except those last ones fixed by the solemnity of death, she did not so much remember, but the tenor of her mother’s teachings, her influence, her personality, were indelibly stamped on her mind. In every grief her first impulsive thought was, “Oh, my mamma!” as though even that mute appeal was a consolation; while the reflection, “Would Mamma like to have me?” influenced her actions more than the actual presence of many a living mother. Never a night did she omit to kneel and repeat the prayer she had learned at her knee. Though she had long [Pg 29] known them all by heart, she never grew tired of the book of child’s poems out of which her mother had read to her. Often of an evening sitting alone and lonely, out of her vague and fragmentary memories she would try to recall the songs she had sung and the stories she had told her; and many a night when the day had been hard in her small world did she cry herself to sleep with the yearning plaint on her lips, “I do so want to see my mamma!” All this had the effect of keeping her strangely pure, and through the atmosphere of sordid deceit, if not worse, that surrounded her she walked as if guided and led by the mother-hand so long still and folded.

This phase of her life continued till Posey was nearly twelve. At first in the spirit-manifestations she had simply followed the clairvoyant’s directions, but as she became older she not only learned to make herself up for the occasions, but to introduce little variations of her own, which added not a little to the interest and popularity of the séances . Gradually, too, she came to take a certain personal pride in her rôle, of amusement at her own cleverness, and of elation at the sensation she created. As for the moral question, that held no place; she was simply a little actress playing well her part, with an under thought of the profits.

In the earlier days when the “Madam” had both to dress her, and teach her every detail, she had only been able to appear in one “manifestation,” but now she could manage several, and frequently appeared in succession [Pg 31] as an Indian princess, a French girl, and “little Nellie of the Golden Hair.” For the French girl, “Madam” had her take French lessons so that her replies could be in that language, and on occasions when all the “influences” were favorable she would sing very softly and sadly a little French song, accompanying herself on a “materialized” guitar.

For a long time she never ventured outside the cabinet, but gaining boldness with practice she at last came into the room, hovering near the circle gathered round the table, and answering any question put her by the clairvoyant, who at such times was always in a trance.

Madam Sharpe was greatly elated by all this, and to her fancy new, brilliant, and profitable successes seemed opening before her. Alas, in this very increase of popularity, and with it of public attention, lay her undoing, as it drew to her séances not only the easily credulous, and the sincere believers, but the doubting skeptics whose purpose was investigation.

So it came one evening that several young men of the latter class, including a newspaper [Pg 32] reporter, were present, and after the lights had been turned low and dim, and the thrill of hushed expectancy had settled over the waiting circle, and out of the slowly opening door of the cabinet a white, shadowy little figure had lightly floated, and as the “spirit” passed near the newspaper reporter he adroitly threw a pinch of snuff in its face.

A sneeze followed, a most decidedly human sneeze. Quick as thought he seized it in a strong grasp, while another of the “investigators” as quickly turned the gas high and bright, and then and there was revealed to that astounded circle a plump, round-faced, very flesh-and-blood little girl, with the white powder partly rubbed off her rosy face, her wig of long, floating, yellow hair awry, and her white gauze dress crumpled and torn; frightened, angry, and stoutly struggling to escape. As soon as she saw that exposure had come Madam Sharpe hastily made her escape, and a moment later Posey managed to free herself from the hand of her captor and darted from the room.

But evidence enough remained: the cabinet, that through a sliding panel opened into [Pg 33] an adjoining room, the guitar, the wigs, the costumes of the different “materializations.”

A storm of indignation naturally followed these discoveries, a storm so loud as to arouse the attention of all in the vicinity, and to bring a policeman to the scene. An angry but fruitless search was made for the clairvoyant, who was near enough to hear the threats expressed as she cowered in her place of retreat.

A much duller comprehension than hers would have realized that her career in that city was ended. Reporters, as she well knew, would catch it up, and the morning papers spread the news of her exposure far and wide, even should she escape the arrest she had heard threatened on the ugly charge of obtaining money under false pretenses. While the crowd was still surging through her rooms, she had decided that the sooner she was away the better; and as soon as the neighborhood regaining quiet had sunk into slumber, she secured, as hastily and secretly as possible, the removal of her few personal effects, and, thanks to the express speed of [Pg 34] the railroad, was many miles distant when morning dawned.

Angry though she was at Posey, the innocent cause of the trouble, yet had the latter been at hand she would have taken her in her flight. But Posey up in the attic, to which she had fled and from which she had not dared to venture, had fallen asleep on a soft heap of rubbish, and Madam Atheldena Sharpe, now as ever thoroughly selfish, abandoned with hardly a thought the child who had so long shared her fortunes. And when with the morning Posey, waking, crept cautiously down, her tumbled finery looking tawdry enough in the daylight, it was to find only empty, disordered rooms, from which the clairvoyant and all belonging to her had vanished.

So for the second time, and with an increased keenness of apprehension of all it implied, Posey was again thrown on the world. And now, for the first time, in the person of the fat, good-natured policeman, Society, that great factor of civilization, became aware of her existence, took her under its charge, and in due time placed her in the “Children’s [Pg 35] Refuge,” an institution where the city was already providing for some two or three hundred similar waifs and strays.

This was a new, strange home indeed, and at the same time a statelier one than she had ever known—the tall brick building, with its great wings, one the boys’ and the other the girls’ department, stretching on either side. While accustomed as she had been all her life to a haphazard, makeshift existence, the exquisite neatness, the perfect order, and the regular system at first equally amazed and depressed. Posey had brought with her a somewhat varied store of accomplishments, but as she looked at the long rows of girls, with their neat uniforms of blue dresses and checked aprons, and noticed the clock-work regularity of their daily life she felt that she had much, very much, to learn.

The Refuge was not an institution where appalling cruelties are hidden under the surface of smoothness. The children were as well clothed, well fed, well taught, and well cared for as is possible where such gathered numbers make separate mothering almost impossible. As a necessity, system, regularity, [Pg 36] was the rule; from the rising in the morning till the retiring at night the ringing of the great bell ordered all; eating, play, work, study, was at its monition. And if any tried rebellion, as Posey at the first sometimes felt inclined to do, it was speedily to find that they but bruised themselves against the strong force which controlled the whole.

Into this routine Posey soon settled; she had her little white bed in one of the rows of the long dormitory, her desk in the schoolroom, her place in the work-room, where at certain hours in the day the girls worked at making paper boxes; and her group of friends in the playground. After the lonely isolation of most of her previous life it was a great change, this becoming one in such a multitude. But hardest of all for her was it to become used to the pressure of discipline, not severe but constant, the feeling that she was never free from the watchful, overlooking eye.

In almost every respect she was much better off here than when in the hands of Madam Sharpe, but though never alone, as in the old days, she was often as lonely as when she sat secluded in the kitchen-bedroom of the clairvoyant, [Pg 37] lonely for the love, the tenderness, that her child heart had longed for so long and so vainly.

After all that Posey had had to do when with the “Madam” it was not hard for her to learn to make paper boxes quickly and well. In the schoolroom, too, she was soon able to take a place near the head of her class, something that gave her not a little pride. Rewards were not offered to the scholars, but one day a reward came to her that she never forgot, and that had not a little influence in shaping her future. It was at the close of a session when she had acquitted herself with even more than her usual credit, and Miss Grey, the teacher, in passing her desk as she was putting her books in order, stopped with a pleasant smile and said, “Posey, I am very glad to see you so ambitious in your studies; if you will study and try I think you can one day make a teacher.”

It was to Posey a new idea, and the stirring of her first real ambition. Was it possible that she could become a teacher like Miss Grey, and have pupils who should in like manner admire her, and, best of all, make a [Pg 38] place and earn a living for herself? Her heart thrilled, first with the idea, and again with the determination that it should be possible. And Miss Grey, busy with her many pupils and manifold duties, went her way unconscious of the ray of promise she had given, a ray that should shine as a day-star of hope through many a long day. For that matter, she had no idea of the feeling she had inspired in Posey’s heart, how she watched, admired, and imitated her, absorbed her ideas, was influenced by her opinions, and when she finally left, for a home of her own, missed her.

With all the teachers and matrons Posey was in the main a favorite. But for the study of individual character there was scant time; when she was good, little attention was paid to her, when she was naughty she received the punishment she had incurred. For while Posey possessed a certain intrepid strength of purpose that carried her over many a hard place, as well as in her work and lessons, these were coupled with an impulsiveness of action and warmth of temper that often brought her into temporary disgrace.

[Pg 39]

Still, on the whole, the year and a half she passed at the Refuge was as happy as any she had spent since her mother’s death. But one day a summons came for her to the Superintendent’s office, where sat a stout lady, with a face of hard, mottled red flesh, one whom she had noticed a little while before making the rounds of the rooms.

“Yes,” she said, regarding Posey with a fixed gaze of her beady black eyes, “I think I will try this one. I’ll take her home with me and keep her for a while, anyway. No, I don’t care to ask her any questions. I wouldn’t know much more if I did, and I can find out enough in short order. So hurry and get yourself ready,” to Posey, “for I’ve no time to lose.” And when Posey heard this she hardly knew whether she ought to be glad or sorry.

The Refuge did not let its charges go out without providing as far as possible for their welfare and future. As Mrs. Hagood had furnished ample references as to her capability for such a charge; and as she further promised to give Posey good care, moral instruction, and the advantage of the school in [Pg 40] her village, the Refuge authorities felt that in this case they had amply done their duty. So in a very short time Posey’s few belongings were packed, the parting words said, and in company with Mrs. Hagood she had passed and left behind the tall wrought-iron gates of the Refuge.

To live in the country had always been to Posey a dream of delight, though her knowledge of the country was limited to fleeting views from car windows. She had, too, a faint memory of stories her mother had once told her of the happiness of a childhood spent among orchards and meadows; and with all these in mind she had often looked at the dusty trees bordering the stone-paved streets, and the swift-flowing streams that filled the gutters after a rain, trying to cheat imagination into the belief that they were real brooks and genuine woods.

So now when Mrs. Hagood told her that her new home was to be in a little country village her heart beat high with anticipation, and she decided that she was glad she was going. On their way to the train in the street cars they skirted the Haymarket, and Posey [Pg 41] looked out with mingled feelings at the tall brick building, the scene of her memorable misadventure. Not that she had any desire to return to Madam Sharpe. With a child’s quick intuition for shams, the clairvoyant’s manifold deceptions had inspired her with anything but a profound respect, nor had she by any means forgotten the cruelty of her desertion. Besides, was she not now going into the beautiful country, to be as free as a bird among the birds and flowers?

Before Posey hardly had time to realize the change, the city with its crowded houses and busy streets, its smoke and confusion, its glitter of wealth, its grime of poverty, was left behind, and she was seated by the side of Mrs. Hagood in the cars on her way to her new home, something over an hour’s ride distant.

Though yet early in March it was a sunny, spring-like day. Under the bland air the snow had almost disappeared from the brown fields, and only lingered in occasional patches of white in hollows and along sheltering fences. The willows by brookside ways were showing their early catkins, while the woods, distinct against the tender blue of the spring sky, by their reddening tinge told that life was already stirring in the leaf-buds, so soon to unfold.

In some of the woods that the train sped [Pg 43] through, Posey caught glimpses of smoke curling up from small, weather-worn buildings, while from the trees around them hung buckets, some painted a bright red, others of shining tin; she could even now and then hear from the open car window a musical drip, drip, which the more increased her wonder.

“What are all those pails hanging to the trees for?” she finally asked. “And what is the sound just as though water was dropping?”

“Goodness alive, didn’t you ever see a sugar bush opened before?” inquired Mrs. Hagood. “That’s where they are making maple sugar and syrup; those are maple trees, and what you hear is the sap running; it’s been a good sap day, too.”

This explanation did not make the matter very clear to Posey, but what Mrs. Hagood meant was that the warmth of the spring day had caused a rapid upward flow of the sap, or juice of the tree, which had been stored in the roots through the winter; and by making incisions in the tree this sap, which is sweetest in the maple, is caught and boiled into syrup or sugar.

[Pg 44]

For all the outward attractions, Posey had already given some very earnest and anxious looks at Mrs. Hagood, with whom her home was now to be for an indefinite time. Child as she was, she quickly felt that there was nothing of the flimsy, the pretentious, about that lady. The substantial was stamped on every feature, and though her shawl was handsomer and her black silk dress of finer quality than she had ever seen Miss Grey wear, she was conscious that Mrs. Hagood lacked something the little teacher possessed—the essential quality that made the latter the true lady.

But the time had been short, or so it seemed, for the much there was to think and see, when Mrs. Hagood gathered up her numerous packages, and Posey found herself hurried out on the platform of a wayside station. Truly she was in the country. A few scattered farmhouses were in sight in the distance, but the little station stood between the far-reaching railroad tracks and the muddy country road wholly apart and alone. No one but themselves had alighted, and they were the sole occupants of the building, not [Pg 45] even a station-master appearing in sight. “Is this a village?” Posey asked as she looked around in wide-eyed surprise.

“Mercy, no, child, the village is two miles from here.”

“And what a queer depot,” added Posey. “I never was in one before where there weren’t lots of people.”

“People in the country have to stay at home and work,” was the short reply. Posey had already noticed that Mrs. Hagood had a way of clipping her words off short as though she had no time to waste on them.

“When they do go,” she added, “they mostly take the morning train, as I did, and come back later. This train never stops here unless it has passengers to let off, or some one flags it to get on.”

As she talked they had walked around the narrow platform to the opposite side of the station, and Mrs. Hagood, shading her eyes with her hand, for the afternoon sun was now low and level, looked down the road with the remark, “I should like to know where Elnathan Hagood is. I told him to be here in time to meet this train.”

[Pg 46]

Naturally Posey felt a degree of curiosity as to the family she was about to enter, and with Mrs. Hagood’s words came the reflection, “So, then, she has a boy. I hope I shall like him.”

A few moments later an open buggy drawn by a stout, sleek bay horse came in sight over the nearest hill, whose occupant Posey saw as it drew near was a small, middle-aged man, with a pleasant face, mild blue eyes, and a fringe of thin brown beard, touched with grey, under his chin.

“I thought, Elnathan,” was Mrs. Hagood’s greeting as he drew up to the platform, “that I told you to be here by train-time.”

As Elnathan Hagood climbed slowly out over the muddy wheel, there was apparent a slight stoop to his shoulders, and droop to his hat-brim, and a certain subtle but none the less palpable air of one who had long been subjected to a slightly repressive, not to say depressing influence. “Wal, now, Almiry,” he remarked with the manner of a man to whom the apologetic had become habitual, “I did lay out to be here on time, but the roads [Pg 47] hev thawed so since morning that it took me longer than I’d calc’lated on.”

His wife gave a sniff of contempt. “I only hope I sha’n’t catch my death o’ cold waitin’ here in this raw wind, clear tired out as I be, too. But now you are here at last, see if you can put these things in, and not be all the afternoon about it, either.”

“I see you did get a little girl,” with a nod and kindly smile at Posey, who stood a little apart.

“Yes,” rejoined Mrs. Hagood tartly, “I said I was goin’ to, and when I plan to do a thing I carry it out as I planned it, and when I planned it.

“I know,” she continued, regarding Posey as though she had been a wooden image, or something equally destitute of hearing, to say nothing of feeling, “that it’s a big risk to take one of those street children; you never know what tricks they have, or what they may turn out to be. This one isn’t very big, but she looks healthy, an’ I see she was spry, an’ I guess I’ll be able to make her earn as much as her salt, anyway.”

Posey’s cheeks flamed hotly, and she was [Pg 48] on the point of an indignant protest that she had never been a street child in her life, when she caught a slight shake of the head from Mr. Hagood. Then Mrs. Hagood turned away to direct her husband as he folded a horse-blanket to form a seat for Posey, at the same time enveloping herself in a large, black, shiny waterproof cloak, to protect her from the mud, and tying a thick brown veil over her bonnet to serve the same purpose.

When all was ready, Mr. Hagood lifted Posey into the buggy, with another friendly smile that went warm to her heart, and as soon as the various packages with which she had returned laden, were settled to Mrs. Hagood’s satisfaction they were on their way. But they had not driven far when leaning across Posey, who was seated between them, Mrs. Hagood snatched the reins from her husband’s hands, exclaiming, “Elnathan Hagood, give me those lines, an’ see if I can’t drive without gettin’ into every mudhole we come to.”

Mr. Hagood yielded without a word. The first thought of their wide-eyed young companion was of wonder that he should do so. [Pg 49] In her heart she felt that if she were a man she would not, but as she furtively glanced from him to his wife, it was with the instinctive feeling that protest or opposition on his part would be useless.

On account of the muddy clay road their progress was but slow, but accustomed only to city sights, and for so long to the seclusion of the Refuge, Posey enjoyed every step of the way. The pleasant farmhouses they passed, set in their wide, deep yards; the barns with cattle standing around, chewing placid cuds and looking at them with large soft eyes; the full and rushing brooks that came darting out of the fields with a swirl to rush across the road into the fields again; the bits of woods, shadowy and quiet; the soft brown of the rolling fields; the fresh spring air, the wide outlook, the very novelty and strangeness of it all. And to her it seemed quite too soon that climbing the long hill they entered the village of Horsham, whose white church spire had for some time been looking down on them.

Horsham, like most country villages, consisted of a central cluster of stores and shops, [Pg 50] from which radiated a scattering company of comfortable homes, and all surrounded and over-arched with imbosoming trees. Presently the sleek bay horse turned into the yard of one of the most cosy of these, trim with white paint and green blinds. At the first glance Posey saw that everything about the place was faultlessly neat and tidy; and also that on the opposite side of the drive, near the street but in the same yard, was another and smaller building bearing above its door a sign,

ELNATHAN HAGOOD. WAGONS REPAIRED.

She had little time to look around, however, for Mrs. Hagood, unlocking a side door, led the way into a large, comfortable kitchen. Hastily divesting herself of her outer wraps, she opened the door to a bedroom off from it, which was only long enough for the bed, and wide enough to admit at the side of the bed a washstand and a chair.

“Here, Posey,” she said, “is your room. You will find it clean and tidy, and I shall expect you to keep it so. Now take off your things and hang them on those nails behind [Pg 51] the door, and put on one of your gingham aprons, that you wore at the Refuge, to keep your dress clean. Then take that pail on the corner table to the spring at the end of the yard and fill it with water. Mind that you don’t slop it over you, or spill any on the floor as you bring it in, either. Then fill the teakettle and put it on to boil, and go out in the woodhouse and get seven potatoes out of the basketful on a bench by the door. Wash them in the tin basin that hangs up over the sink and put them in the oven to bake.” Here Mrs. Hagood added some more wood to that which had burned low in the stove, opened the draughts and set it to burning briskly. “By the time you have done that I will have my dress changed and be back to show you where to get the things to set the table.”

Posey had proceeded as far as the filling of the teakettle when Mr. Hagood entered and after a glance around the room as if to assure himself that they were alone drew from his pocket a handful of apples. “They’re russets,” he said in a cautious voice, holding them out to her. “They’ve [Pg 52] just got meller an’ I thought mebby you’d like to keep ’em in your room an’ eat one when you felt like it.” And Posey gratefully accepted the good-will offering, and the suggestive hint implied with it.

After supper she washed up the dishes under Mrs. Hagood’s supervision, and when that was done and the lamp lighted gladly sat down, for she was decidedly tired after the unwonted events and excitement of the day. Unless company came, the kitchen was also the living-room, for Mrs. Hagood said it was good enough for them, and saved the dirt and wear of carpets in the front rooms. So Mr. Hagood drew up to the table with his spectacles and weekly paper and was soon absorbed in the latter, while Mrs. Hagood brought out a blue and white sock, partly finished, which she attacked vigorously.

Noticing with a glance of disapproval Posey’s folded hands she asked, “What did you do evenings at the Refuge?”

“We studied part of the evening, and then we read, or one of the teachers read to us, and sometimes we sang, or played quiet games.”

[Pg 53]

“Well,” with emphasis, “I think they had better been teaching poor children who will always have to work for their living, something of some use. Do you know how to knit?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then I will set up a stocking of cotton yarn for you to-morrow and show you how. When I was your age I knit all my own stockings, and always had knitting to catch up when I’d nothing else to do. Girls then didn’t sit with their hands idle much, I can tell you,” and her knitting needles clicked loud and fast.

Thus was Posey introduced to her new home. And that night as she sat in her tiny room, in a frame of mind it must be confessed somewhat depressed by the formidable personality of Mrs. Hagood, she ate one of the russet apples, which she had hidden in a drawer in the stand, and felt cheered and comforted by the spirit of kindly sympathy it represented, together with its mute assurance that in the household she would find at least one friend.

The next morning Posey was awakened by the voice of Mrs. Hagood at her door, “Come, Posey; time to get up, and be spry about it, too.”

The clock was just striking six as she came out of her room, but the kitchen was already warm and Mrs. Hagood in a loose calico wrapper was busy about the breakfast.

“I don’t want you to dawdle in bed,” was her salutation. “I’m stirring myself mornings and I want folks about me to stir, too. Hurry and wash you, then take this dish and go down cellar for some cucumber pickles. They are in that row on the left hand side, the third jar. Now mind and remember, for I don’t want to keep telling things over to you.”

As she returned with the pickles Mr. Hagood came in with a pail of foaming milk, and Posey, who in her household experience had [Pg 55] been accustomed to see milk measured by the pint, or more often the half-pint, gave a little cry of wonder and delight.

“I want ter know?” and Mr. Hagood’s thin, kindly face wrinkled from mouth to eyes in a smile. “Never saw so much milk as this at once before. Why I get this pail full every night and morning, and I calc’late Brindle’ll do still better when she gets out to grass.” As he spoke he had strained out a cupful of the fresh, warm milk and handed it to Posey, saying, “Drink that now, an’ see if it don’t taste good.”

“What are you doing, Elnathan?” demanded Mrs. Hagood, who was skillfully turning some eggs she was frying.

“Wal, now, Almiry, I’m just givin’ the child what she never had before in her life, a drink o’ fresh, warm milk. I thought, Almiry,” with an accent of mild reproof, “you’d like her to have what milk she wanted to drink.”

“You know as well as anybody,” was her tart retort, “that I never scrimped anybody or anything around me yet of victuals; Posey can have all the milk she wants to drink with [Pg 56] her breakfast, but there’s no use for her to be stoppin’ her work and spendin’ time to drink it now, or you to be lettin’ the cream rise on the milk before it’s strained, to watch her.”

Breakfast out of the way Mrs. Hagood said, “Now, Posey, you may go out and feed the chickens. You will find a bag of shelled corn on the granary floor; give them the basin that stands on a barrel beside it twice full.”

It was a command that Posey gladly obeyed, but she wondered that the flock of eager fluttering chickens, who crowded around her, and flew up into the granary door, seemed so indifferent to the breakfast she scattered for them. “Go and eat,” she vainly urged, “go!”

Posey had on occasion seen city hens, poor, dirty, bedraggled fowls, but these were so different, plump and snowy, bright of eye, and sleek of plumage, that it was a pleasure to linger among them. But Mrs. Hagood’s voice soon sounded from the door, “Posey, is it going to take you all the forenoon to feed those hens?”

A little later as Posey was washing the [Pg 57] breakfast dishes, taking great pains to follow all of Mrs. Hagood’s many directions, for she truly wished to please, she heard that lady calling her, and dropping the wiping-towel ran out into the yard to see what was wanted.

“How came all those beans here on the ground?” Mrs. Hagood demanded sharply, pointing as she spoke to the white kernels scattered around.

“Why,” replied Posey in surprise, “that is what I fed the chickens as you told me.”

“‘As I told you!’ A likely story that I would tell you to feed the hens beans. Don’t you know enough to know beans from corn?”

“No, I don’t,” retorted Posey hotly. “And why should I? I never was in the country before in my life, and I don’t know anything about corn, except green corn, or beans, either.”

“Shut right up,” exclaimed Mrs. Hagood sternly. “I won’t put up with any impudence, and I want you to make up your mind to that. Now look here,” holding up a handful of yellow kernels, “ this is corn; remember it, and if you make such a blunder [Pg 58] again I’ll help you to remember with a whip.”

Posey turned slowly and with a swelling heart re-entered the house. She had meant no harm, the two bags had sat side by side, the mistake had been wholly accidental, and under other circumstances she would have been sorry enough, but now with the sense of injustice burning at her heart she said to herself, “Cross old thing, I don’t care if I did spill her old beans, not one bit.”

So Posey’s life with Mrs. Hagood began, and had the latter been an agreeable person to live with it might have been a pleasant life; she was comfortably clothed, she had an abundance of wholesome food, and the work expected of her was in no way beyond her strength. But Mrs. Hagood always so managed that when one task was ended another was ready to take its place. With her it was one continuous grind from morning till night; that the child required a share of pleasure and recreation was an idea she would have scouted. She worked all the time, she would have said, why was it any worse for Posey? Besides, this was a poor child who would always [Pg 59] have to earn her living and the sooner she realized it the better.

So the stocking was set up, and Posey inducted into the mysteries of knitting. For other spare moments there were towels to hem and sheets to turn, and when everything else failed to fill all the available time there was always on hand a huge basket of carpet rags to be cut, sewed, and wound.

With it all she was one of those women who never dream of bestowing praise: if the work were ever so well done, and Posey was at times fired with the ambition to see how well she could do, never a word of commendation followed; if on the contrary, there was any failure, and Mrs. Hagood’s eyes were always alert for faults, there was always the word of sharp reproof. Then Posey would solace herself with the reflection that she couldn’t suit her if she tried, and she wasn’t going to try any more, and she hoped she wouldn’t be suited, “so there!”

Often and often as Posey sat in the open doorway in the long summer afternoons, the distant woods beyond the village beckoning with their green shade and the basket of endless [Pg 60] carpet rags at her side, did she wish herself back within the pent-up walls of the Refuge; for there when her appointed task was done she could enjoy some free time, while here was no escape from the atmosphere of repression, fault-finding, and petty irritation, to say nothing of the absence of all love and sympathy, or even interest.

Mrs. Hagood would have said that all she was doing was for Posey’s interest, but it is exceedingly doubtful if Almira Hagood ever viewed anything or any one in a light separate from her own interest. With a sublime self-confidence in her own ideas and opinions, she would unhesitatingly have crushed a stronger opposition to her will; how much the more anything so insignificant as the wishes and feelings of a little charity girl! One, too, whom she had taken solely that she might have her work, and whose highest good therefore was to be useful, as her highest aim and desire ought to be to do the work she assigned her quickly and well; while, unfortunately for both, Posey’s mind was often filled with a host of other and widely differing wishes and desires.

[Pg 61]

Had kindly Mr. Hagood been an active factor in the domestic economy, her life would have been very different; but he was only a passive factor, so passive, in fact, as to be seldom considered, and least of all by his wife. From the first Posey had regarded Mr. Hagood in the light of a fellow sufferer, with the present advantage of his little shop to escape to, where with his work as a plea he managed to spend not only most of his days but many of his evenings, and where he could enjoy the pleasure of his pipe and dog, both forbidden the house, and a frequent chance visitor. For Mrs. Hagood so frowned upon his making one of the nightly group at the village store and post-office that, social as he was by nature, he seldom ventured on the enjoyment.

Still if this was his present advantage, he would always, so Posey reflected, have to live with Mrs. Hagood, while some glad day she would be old enough to leave, and then never need see her again unless she chose, which she didn’t much think would ever happen.

An amiable, easy-going man, Elnathan Hagood, it was said, at the time of his marriage [Pg 62] had inclined to ways slightly convivial. But his wife speedily changed all that, and by the sheer force of her superior will had set and kept his feet in a straight path. By nature “handy” with tools the shop had been her idea, where she started him as surgeon to the various disabled vehicles of Horsham; while she, in the meantime, having taken charge of his modest patrimony, proceeded to put it out to usury, in a literal as well as figurative sense.

In all the country round no one knew how to drive a sharp bargain, and for that matter a hard one, better than Almira Hagood; and woe to the luckless debtor who expected mercy at her hands. With these qualities but few really liked Mrs. Hagood; she was too dominant, positive, selfish, and avaricious to win many friends, or to care much for friendship. At the same time, and for all that her methods were now and then a shade questionable, there were many who admired her thrift, energy, business shrewdness, and practical ability, and took a certain pride in her success as in some sort reflecting credit on her home village.

[Pg 63]

It is almost needless to say that in the twenty years or more she had managed the property it had greatly increased in value, and at this time included outlying farms, village property, bank stock, mortgages, and sundry other investments. In regard to this she never thought of consulting her husband, and if he ever ventured on a suggestion as a rule passed it over without the slightest regard. The word “we” was one seldom heard from her lips. It was always “my horse,” “my cow”; she referred to the time when “I built my barn,” or “when I bought my farm,” with a complete ignoring of any partner in the firm matrimonial. Indeed, whatever the light in which she regarded Elnathan Hagood personally, for his ability and opinions she did not disguise her contempt, and any attempt to assert himself was quickly and vigorously suppressed; and the common opinion as to his condition was voiced by an old companion, “I tell you, she keeps his nose clus to the grindstun.”

It was then not strange that for the most part he went about with the subdued and apologetic air of one aware of his own insignificance. [Pg 64] Sometimes, for his kindly nature held an especially tender place for children, he attempted to expostulate in Posey’s behalf; but his mild, “Now, Almiry, I wouldn’t,” or “Almiry, you know children will be children,” made matters no better for Posey, and only brought a storm about his own head.

Weakness held no part in Mrs. Hagood; “capable” was the term that truly fitted her; at the same time there was no more tenderness in her nature than in her well-polished cook-stove. A timid, sensitive child would have wilted, pined, and perhaps have died in her atmosphere; but Posey was not more sensitive than the average healthy, hungry child, and was even more than usually high-spirited and fearless. Her affections—meagerly as they had been fed—were warm, her impulses generous, and her nature one to whom love and kindness might have proved controlling forces where threats and violence failed. Such being the case, her life with Mrs. Hagood could hardly fail to intensify all her faults of temperament; the more so as the almost daily outraging of her sense of justice [Pg 65] led to a feeling of resentment that from its frequency became well-nigh constant.

There were also occasions when this rose to an especial high-water mark. One such was the event of a Sunday School picnic to a little lake distant some half-hour’s ride on the cars. An event that all the younger members of the school had looked forward to with eager anticipations, and Posey perhaps most of all, for a picnic was something she had never known. But when the time came Mrs. Hagood flatly refused her permission to attend.

“ I’m not going to throw away forty cents to go, and if I wouldn’t for myself I don’t know why I should for you,” she had said. “Crystal Lake! I want to know! Nobody ever thought of calling it anything but Wilson’s Pond when I was a girl, or of its being any great sight. But now it’s Crystal Lake folks must all run to see it, and I don’t suppose it’s anything more than it was before.”

“Almiry,” ventured Mr. Hagood in his most persuasive tone, with a glance at Posey’s drooping head, “ef you’ll let her go I’ll pay the fare.”

[Pg 66]

“Really, Elnathan Hagood,” turning on him with withering sarcasm, “seems to me you have grown suddenly rich. If you have more money than you know what to do with you may go over to the store and get me ten pounds of sugar, and a couple of pounds of raisins. I want them right away. As for Posey, I’ve said once she couldn’t go and that settles it. I don’t believe in picnics, anyway; they’re just an excuse for people to spend time and money; Posey hasn’t been good for anything since they began to talk of this one, and if she was to go she’d wear out her shoes, and tear her dress, and come home so used up she wouldn’t be good for anything for a week to come. It’s all nonsense, and she’s enough sight better off right here.”

So with a swelling heart Posey saw the others gathering for the start. “Why, Posey, aren’t you ready?” called one of her classmates over the fence as she was sweeping off the walk.

“No, I can’t go,” she answered with the curtness of despair.

“Won’t Mrs. Hagood let you?”

[Pg 67]

Posey shook her head; it was an occasion where words were insignificant.

“Well, I just think she’s a horrid, mean old thing,” cried the indignant and friendly sympathizer.

“Who’s that is a ‘mean old thing’?” demanded Mrs. Hagood, who at that moment suddenly appeared around the corner of the house.

“No-nobody,” stammered the little girl, all the more frightened because of her guilty consciousness.

“Oh,” blandly remarked that lady, “it was my mistake then; I thought I heard you saying that somebody was,” and with a grim smile she turned away, adding as she did so, “Posey, you have swept that walk long enough, come in now and wash the dishes.”

It is to be feared that Mrs. Hagood found Posey anything but efficient help that day, for the bitter rebellion in her heart found outward expression in careless, sullen indifference. She slopped water on the floor, jammed the wood into the stove, and slammed the dishes with a violence that threatened their destruction. And when Mrs. Hagood sharply [Pg 68] demanded what she was thinking of, she muttered a reply in a tone that brought her a shake, with the admonition to be careful, if she knew what was good for herself.

After the morning’s work was finished Posey was sent out to pick currants for jelly; and a little later Mr. Hagood might have been seen slipping, with all the caution of a criminal, along behind the screening grapevine trellis towards the end of the garden where were the currant bushes, and half hidden among them Posey shedding hot and bitter tears over her task.

“I’m real sorry you couldn’t go, Posey,” he said in a voice lowered as if fearful it might reach the keen ears of his wife, “for I know how you’d been a-lottin’ on it; but Mrs. Hagood knows what’s best fer you.”

Loyalty was a strong element in Elnathan Hagood’s nature. Whatever his private thought might be, not a complaining word of her had he ever been heard to utter. And child though she was, Posey instinctively recognized and respected this feeling, but now carried away by her disappointment and grief she exclaimed passionately, “I don’t know [Pg 69] whether she does or not! At any rate I don’t believe she ever was a little girl in her life.”

“Well, you know the real trouble is,” explained Mr. Hagood, “that she never had any little girl of her own.” For it was one of his favorite theories that a child, especially a little daughter, would have softened all the asperity of that somewhat flinty nature, rendering it at once sweet and tender.

“Besides,” he continued, “a picnic isn’t anything really so wonderful. I wouldn’t give a single cent to go to one myself; though to be sure I’m gettin’ oldish and a bit stiff for swingin’, and rowin’ on the lake, and racin’ through the woods, an’ all that sort of thing I used to enjoy so when I was your age.”

He checked himself with the sudden realization that this was hardly the way to impress upon her what undesirable affairs picnics were, and busied himself in extracting a paper parcel from his coat pocket. “Now don’t cry any more,” he urged; “see here, I’ve brought you some nuts and candy.”

“Oh, Mr. Hagood,” cried Posey impulsively jumping up and throwing her arms around [Pg 70] his neck, to his great astonishment, and hardly less confusion, “you are the very best man in all the world!”

“Well, now, Honey,” his wrinkled face flushing with pleasure at the caress, to him something so unwonted and unexpected, and giving her hand an awkward stroke by way of return, “you be a good girl and mebby you and I will go somewhere and have a picnic by ourselves some day. I’ll see if I can’t fix it.”

Then Mr. Hagood, in the same stealthy manner with which he had come, returned to his shop. And Posey behind the currant bushes forgot to breathe out threatenings and slaughter against Mrs. Hagood, as she munched her candy, so much the sweeter for the sympathy that had accompanied it, and found herself more cheered than an hour before she would have believed it possible she ever could be again.

“Elnathan, I’m out of flour; you must go to mill to-day,” said Mrs. Hagood one morning a little later.

Mr. Hagood had been anticipating this direction, but he answered with a guileless air, “Must you have it to-day? Joe Hatch is a hurryin’ about his wagon.”

“Yes, I can’t bake again till I have some more flour; and I guess Joe Hatch can wait.”

“You couldn’t go?”

“Me? The idea; no, my time’s worth too much to spend a good share of the day going to mill. There was a payment due yesterday on that money I lent Dawson, and if he doesn’t come this morning I shall go around and see him.”

Mr. Hagood paused in the door with a reflective manner, “I don’t know, Almira, but ’twould be a good idea to take Posey along and show her the way; old Jim’s that gentle [Pg 72] she could drive him well enough, an’ ’twould be dreadful handy sometimes if I could send her to mill when I’m pushed with work. She’s quick to learn anything.”

“Quick enough when she wants to be. But why don’t you send her to-day? You can tell her the way; she could hardly miss it.”

“Y-e-s, but it’s kind of ticklish gettin’ down the hill there at the mill, I’d want to show her about that myself. But it’s just as you say.”

Mrs. Hagood hesitated, but the thought that if Posey could take his place in going to mill Mr. Hagood could be at work decided the matter. “Well, take her then,” she said; “she’s in the garden picking peas; call her in and tell her to get ready.”

Just before he was ready to start, Mr. Hagood came in, “There’s never no knowin’ how many will be ahead of me, or how long I’ll have to wait my turn; the last time I got pretty nigh famished, so I wish you’d put up a bite o’ lunch in case I have to wait again, as I’m likely to.”

Then with the bag of wheat in the back of the stout buggy, the basket of lunch under the seat, and Rover, the old dog, capering [Pg 73] around them, they set off, between meadows where the sun of the July morning had not yet dried the dewy freshness from the grass, and cornfields, the ribbon leaves of whose green rows waved and rustled in the light breeze. When they were well outside the village Rover came to the side of the buggy and looked up with expectant eyes. “Almiry says there ain’t no sense in lettin’ a dog ride,” Mr. Hagood remarked apologetically, “an’ I s’pose she’s right. But Rover does enjoy it so much that when I’m alone I generally let him. Come up, old fellow! There,” as the dog bounded into the buggy, “sit up now like a gentleman.” And Rover lifting his head, lolled out his tongue, and looked first at one and then the other with an air of deep content.

It was a five-mile drive, but it seemed short to Posey, though easy-going Jim took his own gait, and once when Mr. Hagood saw on a converging road another wagon piled with bags he held his own horse back until he saw they had the right of way, which in this case assured him a wait of two or three hours at least.

[Pg 74]

At last the mill was reached, with the wide, smooth pond spreading above it, whose water tumbling over the dam hurried foam-flecked away through a deep, rocky gorge, made still more shadowy by the hemlocks that lined it, on whose very verge stood the tall old mill. “You think it’s a pretty place?” as Posey gave a little cry of delight as the shining water came in view. “Well, I do myself, for a fact. But look now ef I ever send you alone,” and Posey watched as he wound down the short but steep descent to the mill door, through which she looked with wide, curious eyes.

“And you never saw a grist mill afore? Well, come right in an’ see one now,” and Posey followed Mr. Hagood and the miller who had shouldered their bag of wheat inside, where belts and bands were whirring, and great hoppers slowly turning as they fed the grain to the crushing stones. The noise and clatter drowned the miller’s voice but she understood his good-natured smile and beckoning finger as he opened little doors here and there and she caught glimpses of the wheat on its way to be cleansed from impurities, [Pg 75] of the flour passing through its silken bolting sieve, of a flowing brown stream of bran, and a white cataract of swiftly falling flour: the flour that whitened the miller’s coat and cap, and lay as a covering over the floor, and powdered all the beams and ledges of the mill, and swayed with the wind in cobweb veils and festoons from the high rafters. And mingled with all was the steady, insistent sound of the falling water just outside, the power that gave force and motion to it all.

“We’ll have quite a spell to wait,” remarked Mr. Hagood, motioning Posey to the door so that his voice could be heard, “there’s two big grists ahead of us; how’d you like to go out on the pond? There’s a boat under the willows at the end of the dam.”

Like it? Of course she would, and in a few moments she was dipping her fingers in the clear water as Mr. Hagood rowed the little boat toward the upper end of the pond where lily pads were floating on the placid surface with here and there a blossom opening waxy-white petals. It was an hour that Posey never forgot, the soft blue sky above, the [Pg 76] gentle motion of the boat, the lake-like water that rippled away from the oars, and the lily blossoms with their golden hearts.

“Well, now, Posey,” said Mr. Hagood, as they drew in to shore at last, “must be about noon by the shadders, an’ rowin’s kinder hungry work, so I guess we may as well have our lunch.”

For this they chose a spot down close to the stream below the fall, on a great rock that jutted out, covered with a green carpet of softest moss, and shaded by the drooping hemlocks that found their foothold in the ledges above. Here Posey spread out the contents of the well-filled basket, for Mrs. Hagood’s provision was always an ample one, the slices of bread and butter, the thin pink shavings of dried beef, the pickles, the doughnuts and cookies, while Mr. Hagood added as his contribution a couple of big golden oranges.

“I’m so glad we had to wait!” observed Posey as she munched her bread and butter.

“This isn’t much of a wait,” answered Mr. Hagood. “When I was a boy an’ used to go to mill with my grist in a bag on the [Pg 77] horse behind me, like as not I’d have to wait till the next day. An’ before that when it was a hundred miles to the nearest mill father used to be gone a week at least.”

“I guess he didn’t go very often,” hazarded Posey.

“Not very, especially as there wasn’t anything but blazed trees for roads to go by. In them early pioneer days when folks first began to come here to Ohio it was a pretty serious question how to get meal and flour; sometimes they’d shave it off, an’ sometimes grind it in a coffee mill. I’ve heard Aunt Sally Bliss tell that once she nailed the door of an old tin lantern to a board and grated corn enough for Johnny-cake for her family; while quite a few did like my father; he hollowed out a place in the top of a stump, worked off a stone till it had a handle for a pestle, then put the wheat or corn, a little at a time, in the hollow and pounded it till it was fine enough to use.”

“That must have been ever so much work.”

“Yes, there was plenty of hard work those days, but the people had real good times after all. Sometimes I think better’n we have [Pg 78] now,” he added as he slowly peeled his orange.

“Not any better than to-day,” protested Posey.

“An’ have you enjoyed it?” a smile brightening his face, as the miller came to the mill door and waved his whitened hand in token that the flour was ready and they rose to leave, “Has it been like a picnic?”

“A picnic, yes,” a sudden comprehension coming to her what he had meant it for. “Dear Mr. Hagood, it’s been so good of you, and it is the loveliest day I ever had in all my life.”

So it will be seen that even under Mrs. Hagood’s rule Posey’s life was not all shadow, the less so that Mr. Hagood touched by her pleasure managed with gentle guile and under one pretext and another to secure her for a companion now and then. Outings which it would be hard to tell which enjoyed the more, Posey for herself or Mr. Hagood for her. Occasionally, too, some matter of business would call Mrs. Hagood away for the afternoon, when she would take her towels to hem or carpet rags to sew, as the case [Pg 79] might be, out to the little shop with its mingled odors of fresh lumber, paint, and varnish, where Mr. Hagood hummed old tunes and whistled softly to himself as he worked. And where seated on a rheumatic buggy seat in one corner, with the shaggy head of Rover resting on her knee, in watching Mr. Hagood at his work, and listening to his favorite old-time stories she would find real if unexciting enjoyment.

Then again during the season of raspberries and blackberries many were the delightful hours Posey spent berrying in the “back pasture.” A field this, only a little remote from the village, but hidden from it by a bit of intervening woods, and so shut away from all outward, disturbing sight or sound that with its peaceful stillness and sunny, wind-swept solitude, it seemed as genuine a bit of nature as though the subduing hand of man had never been laid upon it, and one which the city-bred child fairly revelled in.

A big, stony, thin-soiled field was the “back pasture,” affording hardly grass enough for the two or three cows which fed there, hence held in slight esteem by its owner and suffered [Pg 80] to lapse into an almost unchecked growth of briars and undergrowth, with here and there a thicket of young and fast-growing trees, a spot where wild growths ran riot, where bittersweet hung its clusters, and the wild grape tangled its strong and leafy meshes; a spot, too, that the birds knew, where they nested and sang, for the most part unmolested and unafraid.

But the crowning charm of the place to Posey was the chattering brook that with many a curve and bend, as if seeking excuse to linger, ran in a little hollow through the centre of the pasture. A clear, sparkling little stream, gurgling and hurrying through the sunlit spaces, loitering in the shadows of the willows whose green fingers bent down to meet its current, with shallow places where one could wade or cross on stepping-stones, and deep pools where minnows loved to gather and hide them under the trailing grasses of the banks.

This was Posey’s first acquaintance with a brook and for her it had not only charm but almost personality; she talked to it as she would to a companion, beside it she felt a [Pg 81] certain sense of companionship, and no matter how often she might come, always she greeted the sight of the stream with the same delight.

For her these were truly halcyon days, and most fervently did she wish that berries ripened the year round. As it was, being both quick of eyes and nimble of fingers, Mrs. Hagood permitted her to come nearly as often as she chose while they were in season. So many a summer morning was thus spent, for the best picking was to the earliest comer, and where it often happened, an addition to her own content if not to the contents of her basket, she met other children of the village bent on a similar errand.

And always whatever of the hard or unpleasant the days might hold, every week brought its Sunday, when the interminable hemming and patch-work and carpet rags, with the other more distasteful of the week-day duties were laid aside for one day. Mrs. Hagood was not herself greatly given to church-going, but she considered it an eminently respectable habit and saw to it that the family credit was duly upheld by Mr. [Pg 82] Hagood and Posey. In her own mind Posey held the Sundays when Mrs. Hagood stayed at home as by far the most enjoyable. For then Mr. Hagood could pass her surreptitious stems of caraway seed, with an occasional peppermint drop; moreover, he could drop into a gentle doze, and she could venture to move now and then without fear of a sharp nudge from Mrs. Hagood’s vigorous elbow.

There, too, was the Sunday School, where she could sit with a row of other girls, exchange furtive remarks between the teacher’s questions, compare library books, or loiter for little chats on the homeward way.

Then in the long summer Sunday afternoons she could lie on the grass under the shading maples and read the same library books; or perhaps, what was still better, while Mrs. Hagood dozed in her favorite rocker, she, Mr. Hagood and Rover, who made the third in this trio of friends, would stroll away together, beyond the village, across the open, sunny, breeze-swept fields, past ripening grain and meadow, along fence-rows where alders spread their umbels of lace-like blossoms, and later the golden rod tossed the [Pg 83] plumes of its yellow-crested army. These fence-rows that were in very truth the “squirrels’ highway,” on which the sight every now and then of one skurrying along with bright eyes and bushy tail saucily waving defiance, would set Rover nearly wild with excitement, to the great amusement of his companions.

“Poor old Rover!” was the way Posey commonly spoke of her dumb friend. But there was certainly no occasion for the first adjective, for Mrs. Hagood could truly boast that nothing around her suffered for the lack of enough to eat; and as a reward for his canine faithfulness she even went so far as to give him a discarded mat on which he might lie in the woodhouse. But whine he ever so pitifully, he was not allowed to cross beyond that threshold and join the family circle, a privilege his social dog nature did so crave. And all his tail-wagging and mute appeals were equally without avail to draw from his mistress the caressing touch or word his dog soul so evidently and ardently longed for.

Rover was a trusty watch-dog, and for this Mrs. Hagood valued him; at the same time [Pg 84] she frowned on his idle existence, and had even considered the matter of having Mr. Hagood make a dog-power that she might use him to churn with. Against this her husband had urged that he wasn’t heavy enough, though privately he confided to Posey that it “wasn’t in nature for dogs to work like humans, an’ he wa’n’t goin’ to make no dog-churn for old Rover to tread, not if he knew himself, he wa’n’t.”

The thing, however, which rankled deepest in Posey’s mind, and caused her more bitter feelings than everything else, was that for all Mrs. Hagood’s promise, which she herself standing by had heard, that Posey should go regularly to the near-by school, she had not been allowed to attend even for a single day. At first she had waited expecting something would be said about it every day, and at last had ventured to ask when she was to begin.

Mrs. Hagood heard the question with an air of surprise. “School!” she repeated, “and all the house-cleaning, and spring and summer work coming on, I wonder how you think I can spare you to go to school. One would think that with all I’m doing for you, and the work you make, that you’d want to help what little you could.”

Posey choked back a lump in her throat; in [Pg 86] her own mind she was sure that she was doing more work than she made, and earning all she received or she wouldn’t be kept; at the same time it was plainly evident that school, at least for the present, was not for her. “If I can’t go this spring term, can I in the fall?” she asked somewhat anxiously.

Mrs. Hagood was busy making pies, and fall was far in the future. “Yes, I guess so,” she answered, glad to get rid of the matter so easily. “If you are a smart girl to work this summer you can go to school next fall.”

So summer went by, and all through its days Posey bore this promise in mind; many a time it was an incentive to her when she would otherwise have flagged; and a spur to endeavor without which she might have been negligent. Autumn came, apples grew ruddy in the orchards, grapes ripened on the vines, and the woods changed their summer’s dress of green for one of yellow and scarlet. Yet Posey, who all through the spring and early summer had watched with longing eyes the children passing to and fro, saw the opening of the fall term draw near—delayed by repairs on the schoolhouse far [Pg 87] beyond its usual time—without a single word or sign as to her going. And the day before it was to begin Mrs. Hagood said to her, “Posey, I want you to pick the green tomatoes to-morrow morning, then after dinner you can chop them for the mixed pickle.”

Posey’s heart sank with dismay. The ambition the teacher at the Refuge had awakened, had grown with her own growth; more still, an education seemed her one hope of escape from the life of a charity dependent, and she determined to risk a great deal rather than give it up. “Hadn’t I better pick the tomatoes to-day?” she asked not without an inward trembling of the heart. “You know school begins to-morrow.”

Mrs. Hagood paused in the pantry door. “Well, what if it does?”

“Why, you promised me, don’t you remember? that I should go to school this fall.”

“I don’t remember, no, and I can’t spare you to go, anyway. There’s all the pickles to put up, and apples to dry, and apple butter to stir, and the pig to be killed, with lard to try out, and sausage to make, and potatoes to be sorted over, and Brother Solon’s wife [Pg 88] coming for a visit. You don’t much more than earn your salt now, and to go to school you wouldn’t be worth anything. All you care about it anyway is just for an excuse to race and run and get rid of work.”

“It isn’t, either,” Posey protested hotly, “I like to study. Ask my teachers at the Refuge if I didn’t have my lessons. Besides I want to go to school so I can be a teacher myself some day.”

“A teacher,” with a scornful laugh that sent the blood to Posey’s face, “a pretty teacher you’d make.”

“And when I came here with you,” Posey went on, sticking to the point in issue, “you promised that I should go to school.”

“I can teach you all you need. And for a poor girl who has to depend on charity for her bringing up, to know how to work is a great deal more account than a little smattering of books, and a lot of high-flown, silly ideas that will never amount to anything.”

“Then you don’t mean that I shall go to school at all?” Posey’s voice trembled a little as she put the question. She had grown [Pg 89] pale around the mouth, and her eyes had become wide and dark.

“I don’t know as it’s any of your business what I intend,” was the answer in Mrs. Hagood’s most decided tone. “I’ve told you that you couldn’t go now, and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

Posey laid down the ball of carpet rags she had been winding and faced Mrs. Hagood, her slim figure very erect and a spot of red burning on each cheek. “You are a wicked woman, and a liar,” she cried shrilly, all the gathered disappointment and bitterness of months breaking out in a sudden burst of fiery passion. “You promised Mr. Mott, at the Refuge, that I should go to school; I heard you, and I shall write and tell him just what you have done.”

“You will, will you?” scoffed Mrs. Hagood. “And who do you suppose will believe what you say, a deceiving medium’s child?”

“I wasn’t her child, as you know well enough,” retorted Posey. “And whatever she was, she was better than you. She sent me to school, and didn’t make me work every enduring minute of the time. And my own [Pg 90] mother was the most beautiful lady that ever lived; you are no more like her than you are like an angel. You are a bad, cruel woman, that’s what you are.”

Posey had been so repressed with Mrs. Hagood that when her long smoldering resentment leaped into wrathful words the latter stood for a moment in bewildered astonishment. It was only for a moment, however, a color so deep it was fairly purple mottled her face; glancing around her eye rested on a small wooden rod she had taken from a curtain, and seizing this she turned on Posey, “You vile little beggar. I’ll teach you to talk that way to me!”

With the first blow that fell Posey sprang forward and fastened her sharp white teeth in Mrs. Hagood’s hand. But the latter’s greater strength shook her off before anything more than a deep mark had been made, the pain of which, as well as the insult of it only adding to the storm of blows the hand rained. “There,” she exclaimed, as breathless with anger, excitement, and exertion, she gave Posey a final violent shake, and whirled her into her little bedroom with such [Pg 91] force that she fell in a heap on the floor, “you’ll stay in here till to-morrow morning, and we’ll see then if you will talk in any such way, and fly at me like a wildcat. If you do you’ll get something that you’ll remember as long as you live, I can tell you.” And with this parting threat she shut the door with a bang.

Left alone, throbbing with a rage of resentful passion, into which the physical pain entered as a part, Posey threw herself on the bed and buried her head in the clothes with the old cry, “Mamma, my mamma,” and then as a gust of stormy sobs shook her frame. “Why can’t I die, too, oh, why can’t I?”

But her tears were not of penitence, far from it, and it was well that Mrs. Hagood had not demanded of her any expression of sorrow for her offense, or of submission for the future; for in Posey’s present mood she would have been beaten to death before she would either have confessed or yielded. As it was she sobbed as softly as she could, and kept her face well in the pillow that Mrs. Hagood might not have the pleasure of knowing that [Pg 92] she was crying, and under her breath she repeated over and over, as though it gave her some relief, “I hate you, oh, I do hate you, you bad, cruel woman!”

Very soon Posey heard dishes clattering sharply on the table, for in Mrs. Hagood’s state of mind she handled even the plates and cups as though they had been guilty of offense, and presently the little brass bell rang out with an energy that warned Mr. Hagood it would not be wise to linger in obeying its summons. A moment later and his steps sounded on the porch, he was wiping his hands on the towel that hung by the door, they were sitting down at the table, and then came his question, “Where’s Posey to-night?”

There was but a thin door between her room and the kitchen, and Posey had no need to strain her ears to hear Mrs. Hagood as with loud and forceful emphasis she poured forth the story of Posey’s misdoings, to which the kindly old man who had taken the friendless child to a tender place in his heart, [Pg 94] listened sorrowfully. As Mrs. Hagood ended she also heard his mild tone, “Why, now, Almiry, I wouldn’t be too hard on Posey; if she is quick-tempered she’s soon over it, an’ she’s always ready an’ willin’. As for her bein’ disappointed about not goin’ to school, she oughtn’t to have did what she did, but I s’posed you did mean to send her part of the time; it don’t seem quite right not to, now really, Almiry, an’ there’s the law, you know.”

It was a good deal of a protest for Mr. Hagood to make on any subject—more than he would have uttered for himself, as Posey well knew; but the grim silence in which his wife had listened was only the hush before the storm which he had drawn on his own head. “Oh, yes, Elnathan Hagood,” with a biting sarcasm of tone, “that’s right and just what I might have expected of you; take up against your own wife and for a vile, impudent, little street-beggar. You needn’t think you two have been so hand in glove all summer without my seeing it, and this is the upshot, and you uphold her in it.”

“Oh, Almiry!”

[Pg 95]

“But then I’ve done nothing for you, nothing at all. I didn’t make you all you are, and earn for you all you have. I haven’t worked my fingers off day in and day out for you. Oh, no; but you don’t owe me anything for that, certainly not. Only I’d like to know where you’d be now if it hadn’t been for me, and where you’d go now if it wasn’t for me, wanting to give to every missionary and shiftless creature you can hear of, and to dress a pauper up in silk and make a lady of her! One thing I guess, you’d find the poor-house at the end, and that pretty soon. But then that’s all the thanks I get.”

“Now, Almiry, you know better,” expostulated Mr. Hagood.

“But I’ll tell you one thing,” she continued cutting him short, “it won’t be healthy for you to be a-settin’ her up against me, and I’ll see that you don’t have much chance to do it. And I’ll tell you another thing you may both depend on, she shall never go to school now, not a single day. I taught once, I can teach her, and I’ll begin to-morrow. And one thing more, as long as I have my health and strength I don’t propose to be [Pg 96] run over in my own house by any miserable little upstart, as she’ll find out to her sorrow if she ever tries it again.”

Mrs. Hagood had raised her voice with the intention that the words should reach Posey’s ears, who in return shook her small clenched fist towards the closed door, and was only restrained from calling out the words which rose to her lips by the lesson she had recently and painfully gained, that in a contest of strength she was no match for Mrs. Hagood, and was sure to be the sufferer.

Mr. Hagood sighed as he rose from his almost untasted meal and went out about his evening chores. And as Posey’s gust of passion ebbed away she sighed also, not only for the supper she had been deprived of, whose savory whiffs had intensified her always healthy appetite, but from the realization, of which this going supperless was an evidence, how mortally she had angered Mrs. Hagood. For, as she well knew, the battle between them was not over; instead it was just begun; that dominant will would not rest till it had crushed and broken the will which had dared to oppose it, and Posey aching [Pg 97] and smarting, but rebellious and unyielding, lay and looked at the ceiling and felt that it was indeed a painful way on which she must enter with the morrow, and in which her one friend, however innocent, must also suffer.

These gloomy forebodings of the future grew as the darkness thickened in her little room; then a slight sound at her window attracted her attention, and softly raising the sash she found on the sill outside, a long row of juicy harvest apples. Tears filled her eyes, but they were such as she had not shed before that day, and she kissed the red-cheeked apples and with a rush of love and gratitude for the unspoken kindness they expressed.

Poor, hasty, undisciplined Posey! That she had not been blameless she well knew. “But Mrs. Hagood was so mean,” so she justified herself, “or I’d never have done so, and I don’t believe anybody else would have stood it either. O dear!” and she sighed very deeply as she munched an apple, “how I wish Mr. Hagood and I could go away somewhere and live all by ourselves; I’m sure with him [Pg 98] I’d never get angry and ugly, and feel like fighting.”

For most of all it was love and tenderness that her lonely little heart longed for, and having these she thought to be good would be easy. “Oh, mamma,” was the whispered plaint that rose to her lips, “if you had only lived I might have been good, but how can I now? You told me that God would love me, but I don’t think He can for nobody else does.” The wind was rising, and as Posey leaned against the frame of the still open window and listened to it rushing and murmuring through the tall trees around the house, and watched the dim, shadowy motion of the waving branches, to her excited fancy the one seemed to urge, “Come away, come away,” and the other like inviting hands to beckon, “Come, come.” And as she looked and listened an impulse, a sudden resolve sprang in her heart, and setting her teeth firmly she murmured as if in answer, “I will come, I will!”

Posey did not undress when she lay down again, though first she knelt down by the bed and repeated her,

[Pg 99]

as usual. But to-night she felt that this was not enough, that she needed something to give fuller expression to the tumult of feeling within her. At the Refuge she had been taught the Lord’s prayer, but instinctively she shrank from that clause of forgiveness of others, for she well knew that the spirit throbbing so hotly in her heart was anything but a forgiving one, so for want of something better she added a petition of her own, “O Lord, I haven’t anybody in the world, unless it is you. Take care of me; show me what to do; help me, please do! Amen.”

It was the first time in her life that Posey had ever really prayed—all which had gone before had been a form, a habit. But now in the hour of her heart-sinking and loneliness, in the stress of her anger and resentment, shaken by the mingled impulses of fear and the courage which comes of desperation, with no earthly support to lean on, her tumultuous young soul reached out, feebly it is true, but still with real longing, for a guidance and strength higher than her own.

[Pg 100]

Posey was too excited by all that had happened, too thrilled with her new, wild determination, to sleep much or soundly. Nearly every hour she heard the old clock in the kitchen strike, and when she counted three she slipped noiselessly out of bed. Her room was no longer dark; a great yellow moon had risen and made it, as well as the outer world, almost as light as day. Indeed it is safe to say that but for that flood of softly illuminating brightness Posey would never have dared to put her rash impulse to the test. As it was, her fingers shook as she gathered together a few articles from her scanty wardrobe and tied them up in a gingham apron, not forgetting the few mementos of her mother which through everything she had clung to, and were the first to be thought of now. Then putting on her coarse straw hat, and wrapping about her an old cape that chanced to be hanging in the room, she took her shoes in her hand, cautiously raised the window, and carefully crept out, something easily done as it was but a few feet from the ground.

As Posey stole around the corner of the [Pg 101] house old Rover saw her, and after a brief sniff came toward her wagging his tail in friendly recognition. Many a time had she been comforted by the voiceless sympathy in the soft eyes of this dumb friend, and now as she stroked his head, and felt the touch of his warm tongue on her hand, her sense of utter desolation was for the moment relieved.

When she reached the pantry window Posey put down her bundle and stretching on tiptoe slipped her slender hand between the slats of the blind, and easily lifted the latch, and then with the help of a stool on the back porch quickly crept in. Mr. and Mrs. Hagood slept quite on the other side of the house, and moving quietly she had no fear of being heard by them, while the bright moonlight gave her light enough.

She had come to the pantry for two reasons: to make up for the supper she had lost the night before, and to get supplies for the enterprise on which she was entering. Nor did she hesitate to take the best she could find. “I’ve done enough here to earn it,” was her reasoning, as she helped herself plentifully [Pg 102] and without a scruple to the company cake kept sacredly in a tin box. She appropriated the cold chicken set aside for the morning’s breakfast, with a naughty chuckle at the thought of Mrs. Hagood’s wrath when she should discover its absence, and she spread her thick bread and butter with the best peach preserves that were only brought out on especial occasions. And having satisfied her appetite she next packed full a small-handle basket she found on a shelf, adding as its crowning delicacy a saucer pumpkin pie, she by chance discovered.

This done, as she was turning to leave, her eye fell on a memorandum book with pencil attached in which Mrs. Hagood kept her egg account. The sight suggested an idea, and tearing out a blank leaf she wrote on it as best she might by the uncertain light, in a sprawling, childish hand:

With that she climbed out of the window, closed the blind so that all should be secure again and tiptoeing around into the woodhouse laid the folded note on his basket of kindlings, where Mr. Hagood would find it the first thing in the morning. This done, she put on her shoes and hat, took up her bundle and basket, to go she knew not where; her one thought that it would be away from Mrs. Hagood and the renewed contest which the morning would be sure to bring. As she moved toward the gate the old dog followed her with a wistful whine, as if he was puzzled by and questioned this strange action. “Dear old Rover,” Posey whispered, throwing her arms around his neck, while her tears fell thick on the white star on his forehead, “dear old doggie, you must go back; I can’t take you with me. I wish I could and Mr. Hagood, too, so go back, old fellow, and stay with him,” and with one last hug she shut [Pg 104] the gate between them, with a real pain in her heart; and also shut the gate to the only place in the wide world that she could call home.

Already she had thought, “When Mrs. Hagood misses me she will think I’ve started back to the Refuge (as I’d like to), and so I must go just the other way,” and so it was in this opposite direction that she hurried. And what a strange world this was into which she had come, the world of night, of mystery, of strange quiet, of brooding peace. All the well-known objects took on a new and unfamiliar look, as though they had different faces for the day and the night. In the solemn stillness sounds unheard by day became strangely distinct—for the first time she heard the spring at the foot of the hill falling into its rocky basin; the cry of a hidden cricket, the rustle in the wind of the already fallen leaves, the crow of a rooster in a neighboring barn—sounds all that in the day she would hardly have noticed, how loud and eerie they were now!

In all the village but one light was burning, in the room of an old man who had been long [Pg 105] sick and was near death. As Posey saw it she wondered if when people died they went out into the night alone, and felt strange and perhaps afraid. A few hours before she had almost wished she could die, but now she shivered a little at the thought as well as the chill of the night air, and the strange sensation of being out alone. Yes, she was glad to be alive, even if there did not seem to be any place anywhere for her.

Few girls of her age would have dared to do what she was doing. But Posey was not timid by nature, and much of her courage came from the tension of her feverish excitement. Still, when she had passed through the village, where all was familiar and there was a certain sense of companionship in the clustered houses and the thought of the sleeping people inside, and leaving the last house behind, from the hill-top on which she stood, she saw the open fields and dark woods stretch away till they melted in dimness, her heart beat fast and almost failed. For with the sight a sudden sense of desolation rushed over her, a realization of how alone and young, and weak and helpless she was.

[Pg 106]

For the first time, too, she began to be troubled by thoughts of the future. She had heard of runaways who had to sleep nights in old barns and under haystacks. Boys from the Refuge had sometimes run away, and when brought back had told such stories. Very likely she would have to also, and it seemed to her that it would be dreadful to sleep in an old barn, especially if there should be rats. Besides when her little store of provision was gone, how would she live unless she begged? She had often seen ragged children in the city going from door to door with baskets, but that was a degradation she had never known—one her whole nature shrank from. She would rather starve, she felt, than to beg at doors, and perhaps be turned away, as she knew beggars so often were.

As all these things rose before her Posey almost wished herself back safe in the little room she had left. Almost but not quite, for a memory of Mrs. Hagood’s face as she had last seen it, and Mrs. Hagood’s voice as it had last reached her ear stayed her wavering. [Pg 107] “I won’t go back now, if I die,” she pledged herself, setting her teeth firmly, and bracing herself with dogged resolution. “But oh, how I do wish I could have brought Rover!”

That night’s experience was one Posey never forgot. The road she had chosen she was now on for the first time; where it led to she had no idea; all she knew about it was that it would take her away from Mrs. Hagood, and in the direction where she thought there would be least danger of her being looked for. But once fairly started she hurried on, her one thought and anxiety to put all the distance possible between herself and Horsham before her absence was discovered.

But what it cost her to do this! To her excited fancy the commonest objects—innocent stumps, wayside bushes, fence-corner shadows—took on in the weird light grotesque shapes that filled her with fear and trembling. If she had a stretch of lonely woods to pass through she ran till the beating of her own heart fairly startled her. Was she out of sight of houses, she would [Pg 109] quicken her steps and almost fly. When a house came in sight she walked more slowly; to be near people, even if they knew nothing of her, was something, and the barking of a dog was always a welcome sound. When she heard it she knew there was something living and awake, which lessened a little her feeling that she was a sort of wandering spirit, driven on and on in a dim world where, save for the uncanny night birds, nothing was astir but herself. Yes, Posey was afraid, at times desperately afraid, but she felt that every step was taking her farther from Mrs. Hagood, and for the sake of that she was willing both to dare much and to endure much.

By and by, however, signs of the coming morning began to appear. First a faint line of light along the eastern sky, then lights were seen gleaming here and there in farmhouse windows, and curls of smoke rising from chimneys, in token that the world was rousing to the new day; once across the fields she heard a loud hearty voice calling, “Coo-boss, coo-boss,” to the cows in some out-of-sight pasture, and again she caught a distant [Pg 110] glimpse of some boys with bags on their shoulders, evidently off for an early nutting expedition. Gradually these signs of life multiplied, the clouds grew more rosy, the trees, no longer vague, dark masses, showed their brilliant hues of red and gold; wayside objects lost their dim and spectral look; all the world was waking into the crisp brightness of a clear, fresh, autumn morning, sweet with the fruity smell of ripened orchards, and rich with the soft mellowness of the long summer time.

With everything around her new and strange Posey had no idea how far she had come. This she did know, that the bundle and basket she carried were all the time growing heavier, that her aching feet dragged more and more slowly, and that she was so tired she could go only a little way without stopping to rest.

The sun was now well up, and as Posey paused she looked around the unfamiliar landscape. What she saw was a stretch of level, low-lying fields which merged into a wooded swamp—a thick tangle of trees and bushes whose dark line spread out as far as [Pg 111] her eye could follow. Beyond the swamp, and at no great distance, rose a steep range of wooded hills; solid masses of gayly tinted colors they appeared that morning, following with gentle curves the windings of the swamp; and crowning the highest of these hills, rising above the trees, lifted the white spire of a church, its gilted weather-vane glittering in the sun. Before her the white road lifted in a long upward swell that made her sigh with the thought of climbing it, and shut in her view to the flat around. But one house was near—a tall gaunt house of weather-beaten red, standing on a slight knoll a little back from the road, with a single tree, a tall and sombre pine, beside it, and all the green paper curtains that shaded its front windows drawn closely down. A dreary house it was in Posey’s eyes, and the people who lived in it she thought must grow so tired of looking out on those flat pastures, tufted with hillocks of coarse, marshy grass, and the swamp with its bordering fringe of dead, grey bushes.

But it may be that to her eyes the fairest view would have taken on something of her [Pg 112] desolate mood. In the sand that now made the road, her steps dragged heavier and more slowly, but save for brief pauses to rest she dared not stop. She was not far enough away. Oh, no, not yet. Mrs. Hagood might be hunting her even then, was the thought hurrying her on. She was hungry, too, with the crisp air, and her exertion, for all the hearty lunch she had taken at starting; but she was afraid to make any inroad on the contents of her basket, for when once that was gone she had no idea how or where she would get anything more. It would be dreadful to keep feeling so faint and hungry, and was there anybody anywhere, she wondered, who would pity her enough to give her something to eat, or take her in when it came night again? Or would she have to go on and on, till she fell down somewhere and died? And a slow trickle of tears ran down her cheeks at the foreboding. This was a hard world, she bitterly felt, for girls who had no homes. If God was good why didn’t He make homes, real homes, for all of them? She was sure she would if she were God, and especially one for poor Posey Sharpe.

[Pg 113]

A little stream, its course marked by fringing reeds and rushes, wound its way through the fields and crossed the road a little way before her, spanned there by a wooden bridge with high, close sides, overhung at each end by clumps of willows which formed a thick green screen. Slowly and wearily Posey stumbled up the slight ascent leading to the bridge; she had taken but a few steps when a loose board rattled under her tread, and a moment later she started with a little cry as the face of a boy suddenly appeared around a side at the farther end.

His eyes also grew wide with surprise, and it was no wonder, for a strange little figure it was which met his gaze. Her shoes were white with dust, her hat was jammed to one side, her cape was all askew, her gingham bundle hung limply from one arm, and in the other hand was the basket, from which she had lost her handkerchief that at first had covered it. This basket with the saucer pumpkin pie on top, was what first caught the boy’s notice, and he called out in a half bargaining, half jesting tone, “Any extra pies you want to trade for tinware this morning?” [Pg 114] Then as he saw the tear-stains on her cheeks, into which the dust had settled in grimy streaks, and her swollen, overflowing eyes, he quickly swung himself around onto the bridge, asking, “What is it; what’s the matter?”

Now notice was of all things what Posey most dreaded, and as the morning was still early few people were yet stirring, so till now she had not attracted attention. For one thing she had been careful not to do so; since daylight she had crept carefully by the few houses she had passed, as much in the shadow of the fences as possible; and once when she saw a wagon coming, with people and trunks, as if for some railroad station, she had hidden behind a clump of bushes till they were gone by. For her great fear was that some one would send word to Mrs. Hagood, or even return her by force, and every hour but added to her fierce determination never to go back—never!

Of course she knew that she would be seen and questioned. “And I must have something ready to say,” had been her thought. “Yes, I know, when any one asks me where [Pg 115] I am going, I shall tell them that my Aunt Mary is sick and has sent for me. I know it’s a lie, and I hate liars, but I can’t tell the truth, and if I had an Aunt Mary and she was sick I’m sure she’d send for me,” and with this she had salved her conscience. But now as she heard the friendly tone, and looked into the frank boyish face, with honest, merry blue eyes, and a kindly expression under the sunburn and freckles, she forgot all her prudent plans in a longing for the sympathy that spoke in his tone, and lifting her eyes to his she answered simply, “I’m running away.”

He gave a slight whistle of surprise, “Running away? What are you doing that for?”

By this time Posey had come close to him, and putting her bundle and basket down on the abutting stone work of the bridge, she rolled up her sleeve and showed her arm, across which ran a number of angry red welts. “And they’re worse here,” she said, putting her hand up to her shoulders.

“My!” he exclaimed, his tone full of mingled sympathy and indignation. “Whatever did you do that your mother whipped you like that?”

[Pg 116]

“She wasn’t my mother,” was the vehement reply, all Posey’s sense of outraged suffering breaking out afresh. “She was only the woman who took me from the Refuge in Cleveland; she made me work from morning till night, and scolded me the whole time; she was the crossest woman you ever saw, and she wouldn’t let me go to school after she had promised at the Refuge that I should. And she was mad and whipped me that way because I told her that she was a mean, wicked liar, just as she was.” Her eyes flashed with the remembrance.

“Haven’t you anybody of your own?” he asked.

She shook her head. “My mother and father both died when I was a little bit of a girl.” Then with a piteous little cry, “I don’t see why my mother couldn’t have lived or I have died, too!” and overcome with a mingling of weariness, nervous excitement, and emotion, Posey dropped down beside her bundle, and hiding her face in it burst into a passion of sobs.

“There, there,” and as he spoke there was a shake in his own voice, and a moisture in [Pg 117] his own eyes. “Don’t cry so, don’t. I’m awfully sorry for you. I’ve lost my father and mother, too, and I know how tough it is on a fellow, though Uncle John and everybody have been good to me.”

By this time Posey had succeeded in checking her sobs, and in answer to his questions she poured out her whole story, ending with her flight. “You’re a regular brick,” he exclaimed with boyish enthusiasm as she finished, “to start off that way, alone in the night. I’d like to see my cousin Emma or Fannie doing anything of that sort, and they both bigger than you are; but my, they hardly dare to look out of doors alone after it comes dark! Won’t I have something to tell them, though, when I go home? And I don’t blame you for running away, either, though to be sure,” he added impartially, “it might have been better if you had kept out of a row.”

“Yes, it would,” Posey admitted meekly.

“But now that you have done it,” he asked in a practical tone, and with a business-like clearness, “what are you going to do?”

“I—I don’t know,” answered Posey, realizing suddenly and with confusion, how very [Pg 118] vague her ideas were, and what a wild undertaking hers was. “I didn’t know—I thought—I hoped—that I might find somebody—somewhere, who would let me live with them. I can wash dishes, and iron, and sweep, and churn, and bake apple pies and ginger-cake—Mrs. Hagood taught me—and do lots of things about the house,” sadly feeling that her list was after all but a short one. “I would try so hard to suit. Don’t you think I could find such a place?” and she looked in his face appealingly.

“I should think so,” he answered after a moment’s pause. For with all his boyishness there was about him a certain thoughtfulness and readiness of decision, which led Posey to regard him with an instinctive trust and reliance. “At any rate,” he added, “you might try; I don’t think of anything better just now that you could do.”

All this time there had been a frequent splashing and stamping down below them in the creek, and several times the boy had looked over the side of the bridge to call, “Whoa, there, whoa,” or “Stand steady, [Pg 119] Billy.” “Let’s see,” he went on, “you’re about eight miles from Horsham now,—you must have clipped it pretty lively, but you look awful tuckered, and I don’t believe you could make another eight miles.”

“I—I’m afraid not,” Posey sadly agreed, for having once stopped it seemed to her that she never could start on again.

“And as you’re running away I suppose you want to get as far away as you can?”

“Yes, indeed, I do.”

“Well, then, I guess I will give you a lift. Of course you don’t know me, but my name’s Ben Pancost, and I’m a tin peddler,” the last with an air of business-like pride.

“You don’t look old enough to be a tin peddler,” was Posey’s comment. “All I ever saw were old men with hook noses.”

“I was fifteen last March. I guess Mr. Bruce thinks that will do, at any rate I’ve been on one of his wagons all summer. I stayed last night at that house,” indicating by a jerk of his thumb the red house on the knoll, “and this morning one of the wagon tires seemed loose, so I drove into the creek [Pg 120] to let Billy drink, and swell up the wheel. You saw my red cart as you came along, didn’t you?”

“No; the willows must have hid it. I didn’t know that there was anybody anywhere near, that was why I was scared when you looked around the corner of the bridge. And, oh, it’s so good of you to let me ride!”

But Ben had a boy’s horror of thanks. “I guess by this time the wheel is soaked,” he hastened to say, “so I’ll drive out of the creek and then this train will be ready to pull out.”

An hour before Posey would hardly have believed that she could ever again feel like laughing. But there was something so infectious in the cheery good humor, the ready self-confidence, and above all the hearty sympathy of her new friend, that she laughed gayly at his merry tone and twinkling eyes, as, swinging around the corner of the bridge, he jumped down, and soon the stout bay horse and red cart came into view at the opposite end of the bridge—such a cart as she had more than once seen that summer, with great sacks of rags piled high on its top, and [Pg 121] a fringe of old rubber boots dangling around the bottom.

While Ben was making sure that everything was in good order and securely fastened before he started, Posey ran down to the clear water and wetting her handkerchief washed her face and hands, straightened her hat and cape, and made herself look as tidy as she could. Her spirits had even risen so high that sitting down on the grassy bank she ventured into her lunch, and fancying that she saw Ben give another glance at the pie, as a slight expression of her overflowing gratitude she held it out to him, urging, “Do take it. I know it’s good, for Mrs. Hagood always makes such nice pumpkin pies.”

Ben looked at the tempting delicacy with a true boy’s appetite. “I’ll tell you what I will do,” drawing out his pocketknife, “I’ll cut it in two and eat one half if you will the other. No, I sha’n’t take the whole of it. Besides, I’ve read of people breaking bread together as a pledge of friendship; well, we’ll break this pie together as our pledge.”

“You see,” he continued as he wiped away [Pg 122] the last flaky crumb, “the potatoes this morning were warmed over, the pork was warmed over, the coffee was warmed over, and it was a sort of a warmed-over breakfast generally. But then I oughtn’t to complain, for Billy and I had our lodging and breakfast, and I only had to give a tin dipper, a quart basin, and two pie tins for it all. That’s why I stop at houses instead of hotels when I can, the women, mostly, will take tinware for pay, and as there’s a profit on it, why, that makes my expenses that much the less for Mr. Bruce.”

As he helped Posey to the high seat, and mounting beside her gathered up the lines and chirruped to the horse, she gave a start. “Why, you are going back the way I came.”

“Only a little way. The road bends so you didn’t notice where the one you were on came into this, but I’ll show you the place; Horsham is south, and I’m going west; then after a little I shall turn north, for I’ve quite a circuit to make to-day.”

How wonderfully the face of all the outer world changes with our feelings.

It was so with Posey. As her heart grew light she began to feel the brightness and charm of the sunny October morning, a late lingering robin whose note when she first heard it a little while before she had thought sad and sorrowful, now had a cheery sound; and the call of a flock of blackbirds flying over she thought most musical.

Even the swamp, which had looked to her so dismal, as she rode through it was transformed and became full of delights. Its thick crowding bushes gleamed with coral-hued berries, its tangled depths were rich with every tone of tint or color, and through the centre a little river, set thick with lily pads, loitered along with the laziest possible current. Not a few of the trees and shrubs which bordered the narrow roadway, made, [Pg 124] as Ben explained, by filling in earth through the swamp—were draped with festoons of wild clematis vines in their autumn beauty, set with fluffy masses of filmy, smoke-hued fringe. From her high seat Posey reached out and pulled lengths of this, which she twined about the dashboard, exclaiming with delight at its delicate beauty. A few wild roses were still in blossom on the thickets, whose gleaming red hips hinted at a wealth of earlier bloom, and here and there the scarlet leaves of the poison ivy added their vivid hue to the wealth of color.

For part of the way the trees beside the roadway met overhead, forming an arch, now more of gold than green, through which the golden sunshine filtered and flickered in delicious coolness. Once or twice the narrow road widened into a grassy space; “Turning-out places,” Ben explained, for teams to pass each other. Which set Posey to wondering what people would do if they met in any other than the right spot.

“But they have to meet there,” Ben asserted. “When one person sees another [Pg 125] coming he stops and waits. There’s no trouble when everybody looks out.”

But what was to Posey the crowning charm was a wide drainage ditch or canal, near the outer edge of the swamp, the cause of the fringe of dead bushes she had already noticed. Ben stopped his horse on the bridge that crossed it, that at their leisure they might look up the long, straight stretch of water, whose clean-cut banks of velvety turf narrowed in perspective till they seemed at last to meet in the level distance, while on its still surface, trees, shrubs, clumps of nodding blue asters, and the sky, bluer than all, were reflected as in a mirror.

“Oh, how lovely!” cried Posey. “I never saw so pretty a place in all my life. I wish we could ride through it all day.”

“Yes, it is pretty,” answered practical Ben, “but it’s not good for much as it is now. I suppose, though, it will all be dry land some day; that’s what the man said where I stayed all night, and this big ditch is to help. He thought some time it would all be dry land.”

[Pg 126]

“At any rate, I’m glad to have seen it as it is now,” declared Posey.

For Posey had yielded herself to the gladness of the day, and in after years it stood apart in her memory. There was the delicious sense of freedom as of a bird escaped from its cage, with that of triumph as the distance widened between her and her late bondage; and in addition the blissful reaction from anxiety, the rest after fatigue, the happiness in her new-found friend, and of trusting confidence in his protecting care and superior knowledge. She had shaken off the past, the future was an unknown quantity, the happy present was enough.

For to Posey, whose life had held such a scanty store of pleasure, one continued delight was that long ride in the soft, warm, October sunshine. Through quiet country roads they wound, among fields green with aftermath, and hills rich with October woods. Sometimes these were so near that she could see the ripe leaves dropping softly down like a golden rain, and again distant with all their varied hues of gold and scarlet and crimson and russet blended by the misty autumn haze; [Pg 127] but whether near or far always a splendor of color. The cornfields along the way were dotted with great sheaves of the harvested corn, among which the orange spheres of the pumpkins lay thick, and where the huskers were busy stripping the husks from the yellow ears that overflowed baskets and heaped wagons.

Orchards, too, there were, fruity with scent of the red-cheeked apples which loaded the trees. Occasionally they met loads of apples on the way to be made into cider. Once they passed a cider mill by the roadside, and stopped for a drink of the sweet juice as it came fresh from the press. At another time they drove under a tree overgrown by a wild grapevine, and Ben, standing on the seat, had gathered his hands full of the little, spicy-flavored, frost grapes. While scattered along the way were clumps of woodbine, its leaves flushed russet crimson; bittersweet with its clustered orange berries beginning to show their scarlet hearts; with lingering sprays of golden rod, and lavender drifts of the wild aster. The farmhouses at which Ben stopped to trade—for he was too faithful [Pg 128] an employee to forget his business for any pleasure—had for the most part, it seemed to Posey, a cozy, homelike air, the yards of many gay with fall flowers that the frosts had not yet killed.

And how their tongues did run! Ben Pancost had to hear in its fullest detail Posey’s whole story, with especial interest in that part of her life with Madam Atheldena Sharpe.

“How many different cities you have seen!” he exclaimed once with an accent of almost envy.

“No, I never saw very much of them after all. You see, we always lived in a crowded part, so one was a good deal like another.”

“And how did you use to feel when you were pretending to be a spirit?”

“Oh, sometimes I thought it was sort of fun. One day, I remember, at school the teacher had us put our hands up and up as we sang, higher and higher, like this,” and she raised her arms in a gently undulating motion. “That evening I did it again as I came out, and the people at the séance all held their breath and whispered, ‘Oh, how [Pg 129] beautiful!’ You ought to have heard them,” and Posey laughed as she recalled the incident. “Yes, sometimes it was no end of fun, but most times I was tired and sleepy and it was so tiresome. The changing dresses, and wigs, and all that, and I used to think how stupid the folks were not to know that it was only me.”

“And were you frightened when they found you out?”

“Frightened? Well, I guess I was! I knew the Madam would be in a rage, and I didn’t know what they would do to me, either. They tore my wig off, and crowded round me, and everybody was talking at once, but I pulled away, somehow, and ran. My, how I did run; ’way up into the attic! I’d never been there before, but it was some place to hide, and it wasn’t so bad, for I stumbled onto an old mattress, only I was afraid there might be rats. But I wasn’t as afraid of the rats as I was of the people downstairs, and by and by, when it was all still, I went to sleep. Then in the morning when I waked up and went down the Madam was gone. She knew that I had no other place in the [Pg 130] world to go to; but she never did care for anybody but herself. I tell you, it was awful to be turned out so, and not know what to do. I felt almost as bad as when you saw me this morning.”

“It was a shame,” Ben agreed heartily. “But then she couldn’t have been a very good woman, anyway. And don’t you think it was just as wrong as lying to deceive people so?”

“I suppose it was,” Posey admitted simply. “My mamma always told me never to tell lies, and I don’t mean to; but I began to ‘manifest,’ as she always called it, when I was so little that I didn’t think anything about its being right or wrong. I should have had to done it whether I wanted to or not, for when Madam was cross I tell you I had to stand round. Besides, that was the way we made our living, and in the city folks have to have money to live. Here in the country you don’t know anything about it. Look at the apples in that orchard. I used to go to the market for Madam and buy a quart of apples. Just six or seven, you know. Sometimes I could get a market-woman to put on one more, and then I had [Pg 131] that to eat for myself. And milk! Why, we never bought more than a pint at a time, more often half a pint; and a half a pound or a pound of butter. You don’t know how strange it did seem to go out and pick things off as they grew, and to see so much of everything.”

“I wouldn’t want to live that way,” admitted Ben.

“I guess not. Sometimes I felt so much older than the other girls of my age at Horsham. They had fathers and mothers who bought them everything. They never thought about the cost, and they all had spending money—not a great deal, but some—to use as they pleased. And I—why I can hardly remember when I didn’t have to think about the price of everything. When Madam gave me money to go out and buy things she used to say, ‘Now see how far you can make this go.’ She was always telling me how much my shoes and clothes and what I ate cost. And as for ever having any money to spend for my very own self, why I wouldn’t know what that was.” She paused and an accent of bitterness crept into her next words: [Pg 132] “You may say what you please, but I believe God cares a lot more for some folks than He does for others. He gives them such a sight more. At any rate, I’m ‘most certain He doesn’t care anything for me,” and she gave the red dashboard a little kick by way of emphasis.

“Why, Posey!” Ben cried in astonishment, “God cares for everybody!”

“Well, then,” protested Posey fiercely, “why did He make my mother die, and why doesn’t He give me a home somewhere?”

Ben looked puzzled for a moment, then he brightened. “Did you ever ask Him to take care of you?”

“Yes, I did last night. I asked Him to help me, and take care of me. And where would I be now if it wasn’t for you?”

“Why, Posey!” cried Ben triumphantly. “Don’t you see that He sent me?”

“Do you think He did?” A sudden seriousness had come into Posey’s face.

“Of course. I know it. Why, once when I was a little boy I had a bow and arrow. One day I shot my arrow away so far I couldn’t find it, though I hunted and hunted. [Pg 133] Finally I knelt right down in the grass and asked God to help me find my arrow; and do you believe me, when I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was my arrow, only a little way from me. Perhaps if you had asked God to help you before he would have done so.”

“But,” persisted Posey, “sometimes it doesn’t help people any when they do pray. There was a woman in Horsham whose daughter was sick this summer, and she had folks come and pray for her to get well, but she died all the same.”

As she was speaking Ben drew out a handsome pocketknife. “Isn’t that knife a dandy?” he asked, holding it out in his hand. “Five blades, all the very best steel, and the handle inlaid. When I was seven years old my Uncle Ben, in Nebraska, that I was named for, sent it to me. Father said I was too little to have such a knife then, that I would be apt to break it, and to cut me with it, so he laid it away till I was older. Well, I wanted it then, and I used to tease and tease father for it, and almost think it was unkind and mean in him to keep my own knife away [Pg 134] from me. The day I was ten years old he said:

“‘Ben, here is your knife. If I had given it to you at the first, as you wanted me to, very likely it would by this time be broken or lost, and you might have been badly hurt with it. Now you are old enough to value and use it carefully. And when you look at it remember this, my boy, that God often has to do by us as I have by you—refuse us the thing we ask for because it might hurt us, or because the time has not yet come when we are ready for it. Refuses us simply because He loves us.’”

“Why, Ben!” exclaimed Posey with wide-open eyes, “I never heard anything like that before. And you talk just like a minister.”

“I’m only telling you what my father said. Perhaps because he died so soon afterwards is one reason I’ve always remembered it. And he was good as any minister. I don’t believe there ever was a better father,” and there was a tremble in Ben’s voice.

“Tell me about yourself now; I’ve told you all about myself,” urged Posey.

“I haven’t much of anything to tell,” Ben answered slowly. “You see, I always lived in the country, and in just one place till father and mother died four years ago. But, oh, it was so pleasant there! Back of the house was the orchard, and beyond that a long hill where we went coasting in the winter, Theodore and I—he’s my brother three years older. At the foot of the hill was a little creek where we used to go fishing in spring. The fish were mostly suckers. I suppose some folks wouldn’t have cooked ’em; but then mothers will do ’most anything for boys; at any rate, such a mother as ours would, and my, but they did taste good! We used to skate on the creek, too, in the winter. But you’ve never been in the country in the winter; you don’t know what fun it is: sliding down hill, sleighriding, and snowballing, [Pg 136] all such fun,” and Ben’s eyes sparkled as he named them.

“The house, too, was so cozy. A red house with a trumpet-vine growing over it, and a long porch in front. I always like to see a red house because it makes me think of home. And out in the orchard there were strawberry apples, and seek-no-furthers, and nonesuches. A big grapevine ran all along the woodhouse. There was a black-walnut tree in the back yard, some chestnut trees in the pasture, beside hickory trees in the north woods. And didn’t we go nutting in the fall, just didn’t we! Whole bags of nuts to crack in the winter evenings and eat with apples, though the getting ’em is better than the eating, after all.

“On the edge of the creek was the sugar bush, and in the spring we used to help father gather the maple sap from the trees and boil it down in the old sugar house. It was hard work, but there was fun with it—the sugaring off, and making wax on the snow, and stirring the warm sugar. I tell you I feel awful sorry for boys who have never lived in the country and had any of the good times. Of [Pg 137] course we went to school, not quite a mile over the hill, and Sundays we went three miles to church.

“And best of all were father and mother! I couldn’t begin to tell you how good they were. Mother used to tell us stories, and help us make balls and kites; and father would take us with him, and let us follow him about the farm, when I suppose we hindered a good deal more than we helped. He was always ready to answer our questions, too, and to help us with a hard lesson, and he used to give us calves and lambs for our very own. I don’t believe there ever was a father and mother did more to make two boys happy,” and Ben drew a tremulous sigh.

“Mother was always delicate,” he went on after a moment’s pause, “and father and we boys used to do all we could to help her. But one fall she took a hard cold—none of us once thought of it being anything more than a cold. All winter she coughed so hard, and nothing the doctor gave her did any good. Theodore and I used to say to each other, ‘When it comes spring then mother will be well again,’ and we were so glad of the warm [Pg 138] days, for they would make mother better. She didn’t get better, though; she kept growing weaker and weaker, and the children at school began to ask me did I know my mother was going to die? It made me so angry to have them say such things; and sometimes I would wake up in the night and find Theodore crying, for he is older, you know, and realized more what was coming. Then I would put my arms around his neck and say, ‘Don’t cry, Theodore; of course mother will get well. Why, we can’t live without her!’

“So it went on till September, and by that time she could only walk around the house a little, and had to lie on the sitting-room lounge most of the time; but so sweet and patient, there was never any one like her, I’m sure. Father used to come in from his work every little while and sit beside her, and when he went out I would see the tears in his eyes, for I suppose it was hardest of all for him. In September the men came with the thrashing-machine to thrash the wheat and oats. It was a chilly day for that time of the year, with one of those raw, sharp winds that cuts right through you. The dust of the thrashing always [Pg 139] made father about sick, and with that and the weather he took a sudden cold that settled on his lungs. That night he was so sick Theodore had to go for the doctor, and, Posey, he only lived three days.

“I couldn’t believe it. He had always been so strong and well that I had never thought of his dying. I knew the doctor thought he was very sick, and we were all frightened, but I didn’t once think he was going to die. And when he called us to him to bid us good-by, and told us to do all we could for mother, and to be good boys and good men, and live so that we should be ready for God’s call when it came for us—I didn’t believe it even then—I didn’t believe it till he was—gone.”

Ben’s voice had grown husky, and he stopped for a little before he could go on. “For about two weeks after that mother kept about as she had been, and what with the shock and excitement even seemed a little stronger. But one night we had to help her into her room and the next morning she said she felt so weak she wouldn’t try to get up. And she never left her room again. She failed so fast it seemed as though we could [Pg 140] just see her slipping away from us; and she was so happy to go, except as she was sorry to leave us boys. She told us how we had better manage, and what she wanted us to do and be; and I don’t believe either Theodore or I will ever forget what she said to us or the promises we made to her.

“When father died it was hard enough, though there was mother left. But when she went, only three weeks after him, I tell you it was awful. I never shall forget as long as I live the evening after mother’s funeral. You see, father had only one brother, Uncle Ben, out in Nebraska, so of course he couldn’t come. Uncle John, mother’s only brother, lived fifty miles away, and George, his boy, was sick with a fever, so he had to go right back; that left us all alone with Matty, the girl. And after we had looked after the chores and went in and sat down everything was so strange and empty and lonesome, I never shall forget it.

“Every night since we could remember father, or mother if he was away, had read a chapter in the Bible and had prayers. After father died Theodore had read the chapter [Pg 141] and mother had prayed, if it was only a word or two, till the very last night she lived. She had said she hoped we would try and do as near as we could as we always had when she and father were with us, so Theodore thought we’d better have prayers; that they’d want us to. He read the chapter—I don’t see how he did it—and said he thought we could say the Lord’s prayer, anyway, and we kneeled down and began. But all at once it came over us like a great wave how everything was changed and always would be, and it broke us all up so we couldn’t go through with it.” And Ben’s voice choked and failed him at the recollection, while unchecked tears of sympathy ran down Posey’s cheeks.

“When Uncle John went away he told us to do the best we could and as soon as George was better and he could leave home he would come and help us settle everything up. There wasn’t so very much to do beside the everyday work except to gather the apples and harvest the corn. We had a big field of corn that year, but we managed to get it cut up and began to husk it. But it was slow work, for I was only a little shaver—not quite eleven [Pg 142] years old, and Theodore isn’t strong like I am. It came on cold early that fall and we got pretty discouraged. One night there was a circle round the moon, and Theodore said he was afraid we were goin’ to have a snowstorm. That would make the husking harder, and we both felt real worried. But what do you think? When we went out in the field the next morning the corn was all husked and in heaps ready to draw in! It had been a moonlight night and the neighbors had all turned in and done it for us. They were all so good to us I shall never forget it of them.

“As soon as he could Uncle John came back, and then we sold the farm. We hated to, but he thought that was best, for though it was only a small one we were too young to manage it. When everything was settled there was eight hundred dollars apiece for Theodore and me. Uncle John put this out at interest for us, secured by mortgage so it should be safe, and took us home with him. But Uncle John isn’t rich by any means, and he has five children of his own, so though they are all kind as can be we didn’t want to live on him. For two years now, I’ve been driving [Pg 143] this tin-cart summers. I get twenty dollars a month and my expenses, and I’ve a hundred dollars in the bank I earned myself. Winters I live at Uncle John’s and go to school. He won’t take anything for my board, but I buy dresses and things for Aunt Eunice and my cousins; they are so good to me I want to do what I can for them. With what I earn and the interest on my own money, as soon as I’m old enough I mean to buy a farm. I would like a store, but Uncle John thinks a farm is safer, and perhaps I’ll buy the old farm back.”

“How nice that would be!” cried Posey.

“Why, see here, Posey,” with the force of a sudden idea, “when I get a farm I shall need somebody to keep the house, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll marry you. Then you can have a home, too; we’re both orphans and haven’t either of us one now.”

Posey clapped her hands. “That will be splendid! I know I should just love to live on a farm, and I will learn to make butter, and do all the things they do on farms. But,” and her face sobered, “won’t your brother want to live with you?”

[Pg 144]

“No; Theodore doesn’t take to farming. He’s teaching now, a summer school up in Michigan. His plan is to go to college and then be a minister. He’ll make a tiptop one, too.”

“I think you ought to be a minister,” said Posey. “You talk good enough for one.”

“Me? Shucks,” and Ben gave a long whistle. “I ain’t good enough for a minister. Besides, I never could talk before folks as Theodore can. I wish you could hear him lead the Endeavor meeting. I tried to once, and my, I was so scared I didn’t know whether I was afoot or horseback.”

Posey’s eyes had grown wide. “Why, I thought it was only grown-up people who were Christians and dreadfully good, like old Deacon Piper and Mr. Hagood, who spoke in meetings.”

“This was just Endeavor meeting. But then that isn’t so at all.” Ben’s tone was emphatic. “Boys and girls can be Christians; mother explained that to me years ago. It’s just loving God best of all, and trying to do as He wants us to. Folks don’t have to wait till they are grown up to do that, or [Pg 145] are awfully good, either. I’m glad they don’t, or there wouldn’t be much show for me; my temper boils over about as quick as Aunt Eunice’s teakettle. But I keep pegging away at it, and I can hold on better than I could, I know, for some of the folks I trade with are enough to provoke a saint. But that’s the only way to grow good—keep trying. You can do that as well as anybody. And you love God, don’t you?”

She shook her head as she answered mournfully, “I’m afraid not. I know I don’t feel about Him as you do.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben said simply. “I wish you did. You don’t know what a comfort it is when you get in a tight place and things seem to be mixed up all in a tangle, to feel that God will make everything come out just as is best for you. I really wish you did.”

Posey made no answer. She only reached up and caught a handful of leaves from a tree they were passing under, and asked Ben what kind of leaves they were. At the same time the fact that Ben Pancost, a boy who had a freckled face, who laughed and joked and told funny stories, who loved to skate, [Pg 146] to coast, to play baseball, and in short enjoyed all the things that boys did, should talk about loving God, and God’s taking care of him, as though this was the most natural thing in the world, made a deep impression on her mind, and one that never was forgotten.

Ben’s story, here given as a whole, had really been interrupted by one or two business calls. It was evident, even to Posey, that Ben was a decided favorite along the route; for in addition to his boyish good-humor, his obliging ways, as well as his truthfulness and honesty, had won for him many customers, and many friends among his customers. Posey could hardly have told if she more admired or was amused by the brisk, alert way in which he sorted over the bags of rags brought out to him, made his bargains, and marshalled his array of tinware.

“The fact of the matter is,” he explained to Posey as he was making a memorandum in his note-book of one quart, and one two-quart basin to be brought the next trip, “I’m pretty well sold out of stock, except milk pails, tin dippers, and nutmeg graters and [Pg 148] the graters are a fancy kind at twenty-five cents. That’s a little too high for them to go easily. I guess I’ll tell Mr. Bruce—he’s the man I work for—that he’d better not order any more; things that run from ten to twenty cents sell the best. That’s about what a common bag of rags comes to, and folks would rather not pay money besides. I’d rather not pay money, either, for, you see, besides the profit on the rags I buy, there’s the profit on the goods I sell; so when I haven’t what they want, if they will wait I bring it next time I come, and I always take pains to pick out what I think will suit, too.”

As it drew towards noon Posey suggested that they share the rest of the contents of her basket. But Ben urged, “Wait a little.” And when a few moments later coming over a hill they entered a small country village he drew up before its modest hotel with a flourish, remarking as he did so, “This train stops twenty minutes for refreshments.”

“But, Ben,” expostulated Posey, “I’m sure there’s enough for us both in the basket.”

[Pg 149]

“That will do for lunch this afternoon. I tell you, the afternoons are pretty long.”

“But you know,” and Posey hesitated over the words, “we will have to pay if we eat here, and I haven’t any money.”

“Ho!” scoffed Ben. “I guess when I ask a young lady to take a ride with me I can get her a bite to eat; that’s the proper thing to do. Besides, I never took a girl riding before, that is, except my cousins, and I want to do it up swell. Why, lots of the boys I know are always asking the girls to go somewhere, though what they can find to say to each other is more than I can imagine. And Fred Flood, only a year older’n I am, has been engaged. He was engaged to Millie Grey for two weeks, then they quarreled out, he burned all her letters in the back yard, and they haven’t spoken to each other since.

“I s’pose, though,” Ben’s tone was reflective, “I shall come to it some day; write notes to the girls, and go after ’em in my best clothes an’ with a choke collar, as Cousin George does. But I guess it will be some time first,” and Ben laughed.

“It must make one feel real grown-up-like, [Pg 150] though, to have a written invitation,” remarked Posey. “I had a letter from a boy once,” the dimples in her cheeks showing at the recollection.

“What was in it?”

“Oh, there was a shield made with red and blue crayons, and ‘U. S.’ in big letters at the top and bottom of the paper; then it said,

The boy sent it to me in school one day.”

“What did you write back?”

“Nothing. I didn’t like the boy, anyway. Besides, I shouldn’t have known what to write.”

“You might have written,

And then they both laughed.

By this time a leisurely landlord in his [Pg 151] shirtsleeves had made his appearance, and with a hand on each hip, stood calmly looking them over. “I would like my horse fed, and dinner for myself and this lady.” Ben’s tone had its business accent as he jumped down and helped Posey from the high seat to the ground.

“All right,” and stepping forward the landlord took the lines. “But seems to me you’re rather a young couple. Wedding trip, I s’pose?”

“Tin wedding!” and Ben gave a jerk of his thumb towards the cart.

What a sumptuous banquet to Posey seemed that dinner. Surely fried chicken was never before so good, and baked potatoes and squash so toothsome, or peaches and cream so delicious; even the decidedly slabby cake she ate with a relish. She had recovered from her fatigue, her eyes shone, her cheeks were flushed with pleasant excitement; she was ready to laugh at all of Ben’s nonsense, and the pleasantries of the good-natured landlord who served them. While Ben, delighted at her happy mood, as he looked at her and listened to her merry laugh, [Pg 152] could hardly realize that this was the same woeful little figure he had met so few hours before.

They had not been long on the road again when Ben began to cast doubtful glances at a dark cloud swiftly rising in the west. “I’m afraid we’re going to have a shower,” he said at last. And then after a few moments, “I know we are. I see the rain coming over those woods now. It’s a mile or more away, but it’s working this way fast.”

“What will you do?” Posey questioned anxiously.

“I must try and get in somewhere. I’m pretty well fixed for storms, with a big umbrella and oilcloth apron. I’ve a cover for the load, too, but the trouble is I’ve got so many rags on now it won’t go over, so I must find some place to drive in. Hurry up, Billy,” and he shook the lines over the stout bay’s back. “I don’t know this road, either. I always go the one next south; it has more houses, but the landlord said there was a bridge down on it an’ I would have to come this way.”

“It’s beginning to sprinkle,” and Posey [Pg 153] held out her hand. “I feel the drops. But there’s a house just ahead; perhaps you can find a place there.”

As they neared the white farmhouse they saw that a long woodhouse stretched from one side, its old-fashioned arched opening toward the road. “Can I drive under your shed?” Ben shouted to an old lady he saw just inside. And then as the first gust of the swift-coming storm began to patter thick about them, hardly waiting for a reply, he turned Billy at a swinging trot up the drive, and in another moment they were safe under shelter, while a whitely driving sheet of rain blotted out all the outer world.

“You was just in the nick o’ time, wasn’t you?” said the little round-faced old lady, who was busy catching and putting in a box a flock of little turkeys that flew about the woodhouse squawking and fluttering, while the mother turkey shook her red head and uttered a dissonant protest.

“You see,” she explained, “if turkey chicks get wet it’s almost sure to kill ’em. They’re the tenderest little creatures that ever was to raise, an’ the hen turk’s no more [Pg 154] sense than to trail out in the rain with ’em, so I’m goin’ to put ’em where they’ll be safe. It’s dreffle late to have little turks, but that hen beats all to steal her nest, an’ seein’ she’s hatched ’em I thought I’d try an’ help her raise ’em. They’ll be good eatin’ along in the winter.”

When the last scantily-feathered, long-necked turkey chick had, with Ben and Posey’s help, been captured and placed in the box, and the mother turkey had mounted the edge of it, they had time to notice the neat rows in which the wood was piled, the ground swept hard and clean as a floor, and the tin wash-basin hanging over a bench beside the pump scoured till it shone like silver. “I guess it ain’t nothin’ but a shower,” chirruped their hostess; “come into the house an’ hev some cheers while you wait. I’m glad you happened along, not that I’m afraid, but it’s sort o’ lonesome-like to be alone in a storm.”

As she talked she led the way through the kitchen into a big sitting-room, where a new rag carpet made dazzling stripes on the floor, and the lounge and rocking-chair were gay [Pg 155] with the brightest of chintz. Posey had already decided that this was almost the nicest old lady she had ever seen; there was something at once placid and cheerful in both tone and manner, and a kindly good-nature seemed to radiate even from her black silk apron. “I declare, for’t, if the rain isn’t blowin’ in at that winder,” she exclaimed as she lowered a sash.

“Aren’t you afraid the wind will blow down those great trees on the house?” asked Posey, as she glanced out a little fearfully at the branches bending and twisting in the storm.

“La, no, child,” was the placid answer; “they’ve stood worse storms than this. I don’t know what you would have done to have lived here as I did when I was your age. Right in the woods we was then, with the tall trees all around the log house; an’ in a big storm you could hear crash, crash—the trees comin’ down in the woods, an’ didn’t know what minute one would fall on the house. Once there come a real tornado—a windfall, they called it them days; a man in the next town just stepped to the door to look out, an’ [Pg 156] a tree struck an’ killed him. Father cleared away around our house, so there shouldn’t be any danger, as soon as he could.”

“And did you live here when it was new as that?” asked Ben, whose interest was at once aroused by anything that smacked of old-time stories.

“To be sure I did. This part of Ohio was all woods when I come here. We come all the way from Connecticut in a wagon, for there wasn’t any other way o’ comin’ then; my father drove a ‘spike team,’ that is, a horse ahead of a yoke of oxen; we brought what housen goods we could in the wagon, an’ was forty days on the way. There wasn’t a family in two miles at first, an’ nights we used to hear the wolves howlin’ ’round the house.”

“And how did you feel?” asked Posey breathlessly.

The old lady laughed. “I was some scared along at first, though we hadn’t no great call to be afraid o’ them, it was the sheep an’ young cattle they was after. Why, along the first o’ father’s keepin’ sheep he had to shut ’em up every night in a high pen; [Pg 157] an’ after neighbors got so thick we had a school a bear caught a pig one day, right in sight o’ the schoolhouse.”

“What did you do?” questioned Ben.

“Oh, some of the boys ran for Mr. James, who lived nearest. He came with his gun, but the bear got away.”

“I wish I could have lived in those days,” and Ben gave a long-drawn sigh over the safe, commonplace period in which his lot had been cast.

“I think myself mebby we took more comfort then,” the old lady agreed with fond retrospection. “We spun an’ wove all the cloth we had; the shoemaker came around from house to house to make the shoes—‘whippin’ the cat,’ they called it; when a deer was killed all the neighbors had a share of the venison, cooked before the big fireplace. To be sure, there were some things that wasn’t so pleasant. I remember once we went without shoes till into December ’cause the shoemaker couldn’t get around before; an’ another time father went to mill—twenty miles through the woods it was—he had to wait three days for his grist to be ground; [Pg 158] we hadn’t a mite o’ flour or meal in the house, an’ mother sifted some bran to get the finest an’ made it into bran bread. I tell you, the boys an’ girls o’ to-day hain’t much idee o’ them times.”

She paused and looking at her listeners asked Ben abruptly, “Is this your sister?”

Posey’s heart went pit-a-pat, but Ben answered promptly, “No, ma’am, but she wanted to go my way, so I’m giving her a ride.”

She nodded. “I thought you didn’t favor one another.”

At that moment the slamming of a blind in an adjoining room called the old lady away for a moment, and Posey seized the opportunity to whisper to Ben, “She looks so nice and kind, do you suppose she would let me live with her?”

“Can’t say,” he whispered back, “but it won’t do any harm to ask her.”

So when she returned, bringing a plate of seed cookies for her guests, Posey hesitatingly made the request.

“La, child, I don’t live alone,” was the smiling answer. “My daughter Manda, an’ [Pg 159] Henry Scott, her husband, have lived with me ever since my husband died. Not that I couldn’t live alone,” she added quickly, “for though I’m seventy-five I hold my age pretty well, an’ chore about a considerable. The reason I’m alone to-day is that Henry’s mother is here on a visit. She’s one o’ them wimmen that’s always on the go, an’ to-day there wa’n’t no hold up but they must go over to see Manda’s cousin Jane. They wanted me to go with ’em, but I said no, I wasn’t gwine joltin’ off ten mile as long as I had a comfortable place to stay in. When folks got to my age home was the best place for ’em, and I was gwine to stay there,” and she gave a chirruping little laugh.

“Henry’s mother is younger’n I be—three years, five months an’ fifteen days younger, but she don’t begin to be so spry. Has to have a nap every day; an’ she’s got eight different medicines with her, an’ what she don’t take she rubs on. It keeps her pretty busy a takin’ an’ a rubbin’ on,” and she chuckled again at what evidently seemed to her very amusing in one younger than herself.

“How old be you?” she asked, her mind [Pg 160] coming back from Henry’s mother to Posey, who was waiting with wondering eagerness.

“I shall be fourteen in December.”

“You ain’t very big of your age.”

“But I’m real strong,” urged Posey, who experienced a sudden sense of mortification that she was not larger.

“You look as though you might be,” and the old lady looked over her glasses at the well-knit, rounded little figure. “Where have you been livin’?”

“Some fifteen miles from here,” answered Posey, who felt that exact information would not be prudent. “But I couldn’t stay there any longer,” she hastily added, “and as I haven’t any father or mother, I’d like to find some nice people who wanted a girl to live with and help them.”

“I really wish I knew of such a place for you, but Mandy, my daughter, has all the family she can see to; and none of the neighbors needs any one. But I dare presume you won’t have no trouble in findin’ some one who wants just such a little girl.” So the old lady cheerfully dismissed the subject without dreaming how absolutely homeless [Pg 161] she really was; and as the storm had now passed over filled both their hands with cookies and with a smiling face watched the tin-wagon on its way again.

For a while Ben and Posey rode along almost in silence over the roads beaten smooth and clean by the heavy shower, while the wayside ditches were still noisy little rills, and the trees shook down showers of raindrops with every passing breeze.

Posey, in spite of herself, could not help a sorrowful feeling of discouragement at the failure of her first effort at home-finding. Not so much for the refusal itself, though she felt that to live with such a cheery old lady would be quite delightful, as the fear that other attempts might be equally useless.

Ben, flicking his big bay horse softly with the tassel of his whip, was evidently in a brown study. At last he turned to Posey, saying, “I’ve been thinking what you had better do. I can’t take you home with me—as I wish I could, for really I haven’t any [Pg 163] home except as Uncle John gives me one, and that’s forty miles from here and I don’t expect to get there for a month or more; besides the house is so full that Aunt Eunice hardly knows where to put us all as it is.”

“Oh, I didn’t expect you to make a home for me!” cried Posey.

“I’d like to. But last spring the man whose route it was on was sick, so I went over into Farmdale for one trip, and there I saw such a nice old lady, nicer if anything than the one we just stopped with. I guess she took a fancy to me, for she wanted to know if I had a sister. Said she wished she could find a real nice little girl to live with her, and asked me if I knew of any one I thought would suit her. Now, Byfield’s the next town, and Farmdale is only seven miles from there, and I believe I’ll drive over there with you to-night and see her. Maybe I can pick up some rags on the way, and I know Mr. Bruce won’t care when I tell him about it.”

Posey at once agreed, and the faint anxiety that had begun to rise in her mind as to what she would do when it came night was at once [Pg 164] swept away, for in Ben Pancost and his ability she had unlimited faith.

When they reached the straggling little railroad station of Byfield, Ben said he must go to the store and take on what paper rags had been gathered in since his last trip, and he left Posey to wait for him at Byfield’s one small hotel while he did this.

It seemed to Posey that Ben was gone a long, long time, and when at last he appeared it was with a very sober face. “I’m awful sorry, Posey,” were his first words, “but when I got over to the store I found a telegram there from Mr. Bruce to come to Cleveland as quick as I could. He’s sent for me that way before and I know what it means. He’s got an order for rags and hasn’t enough on hand to fill it. I just looked at to-day’s market report in the paper and it gave paper rags as ‘heavy with a downward tendency,’ so I suppose Mr. Bruce is afraid of a big drop and wants to get his off at once. I’ve agreed with a man here to change horses till I come back. It’s four o’clock now and with a fresh horse I can get to Cleveland by ten or eleven, then the rags can be shipped [Pg 165] in the morning, and a day’s delay may make a big difference to Mr. Bruce.”

“I see,” murmured Posey.

“So you see why I can’t go with you to Farmdale, as I was going to. But I’ll tell you how I’ve planned it. I’ve agreed with the landlady for you to stay here all night, and there’s a stage runs to Farmdale to-morrow that you can go over in. The worst of it is I don’t know the nice old lady’s name or where she lives, for she wasn’t in her own home when I saw her. But they called her ‘aunt’ at the place she was, so they will be sure to know all about her, and I can tell you just where that is. The village is built around the prettiest green you ever saw. You go up on the west side till you come to a story-and-half white house with green blinds, and big lilac bushes at the gate; there’s a sign over the front door, ‘Millinery, and Dressmaking,’ so you can’t miss the place.

“There were two ladies there, not young or really old, but sort o’ between like, you know. They were nice, too. Why, what do you think one of them did? I had torn my [Pg 166] coat on the wagon and she mended it for me. Wasn’t that good? And I know they’ll be good to you. Just tell them I sent you, and as soon as I come back I’ll come and see how you are getting along. I’m awful sorry things have happened this way, but I don’t see what else I can do.”

Ben had talked very fast, and as Posey listened she was conscious that a lump was rising higher and higher in her throat. “It’s all right, Ben,” Posey tried to speak with forced cheerfulness. “Only it seems as though I’d known you always, and I don’t quite know what to do without you,” and with all her effort her voice trailed off in a quiver.

“Why, that’s so,” Ben’s tone was emphatic. “It does seem as though we had always known each other, don’t it?”

“And you’ve been so good to me,” Posey continued. “I shall never forget it, Ben, never! This has been the happiest day I ever knew.”

“Shucks!” exclaimed Ben, his own voice a trifle husky. “I haven’t done anything but let you ride on the tin-cart; that wasn’t much, [Pg 167] I’m sure. Besides I’ve enjoyed it as much as you have.”

“Oh, but you have been good to me,” she repeated. “You came to me when I hadn’t anybody in the whole world, and I was feeling so badly that I almost wanted to die. Except my mamma nobody in all my life was ever so good to me, not even dear Mr. Hagood, and I shall remember it always.”

“I wish I could have done more for you; and here—” slipping a couple of silver dollars into her hand—“is a little money for your stage fare, and anything else you may need. I’ve settled with the landlady for your staying here to-night.”

“I sha’n’t take it, Ben,” Posey protested, as she tried to force the money back. “You’ve paid for my dinner, and now for to-night, and you have to work hard for your money. I sha’n’t take it, indeed I sha’n’t. I can walk to Farmdale to-morrow as well as not.”

“Shucks!” retorted Ben more emphatically than before. “You won’t do anything of the kind. Besides I’m going to adopt you for my sister, and brothers ought to take [Pg 168] care of their sisters. When I get a raise in my salary I’ll send you to a fashionable boarding school. But I must be off, only I feel dreadfully to leave you so.”

“Never mind,” said Posey bravely. “You said God took care of me to-day, perhaps He will to-morrow.”

“That’s so,” answered Ben. “You and I’ll both ask Him, and I know He will. And I’ll be around to Farmdale to see you by next week, sure; so good-by till then.” And squeezing Posey’s hand till it would have brought tears to her eyes had they not been there already, he hurried away, while Posey stood at the window and watched the red cart, a grotesque object, with its dangling fringe of old rubber boots, the sacks of rags piled high on top and hiding from her view the driver, as it went down the street and slowly lessened in the distance. Then she turned away with a sigh, for Ben Pancost had passed beyond her sight.

With his going the brightness seemed to fade from the day. The fallen leaves of a maple before the hotel drifted with a dreary little rustle in the rising wind. The floor [Pg 169] of the room was covered with oilcloth on which her chair, whenever she moved it, made a mournful sound that increased her sense of loneliness. The long dining-room looked empty and forlorn when she answered the summons to supper and found herself and a traveller out of temper, because he had missed his train, its only occupants.

As the dusk deepened, Posey heard the merry voices of children in the street, but she herself felt strangely old and unchildlike with a burden of anxiety resting on her, and the memory of trouble and care and perplexity rising like a cloud behind her. A kitten came capering into the room; she coaxed it to her and tried to cuddle the ball of fur in her arms, feeling even that companionship would be something; but the kitten was of a roving nature and had rather have its own frolicsome way than her tending. When the kerosene lamp was brought in it smoked, and through the dingy chimney the big figured paper and the cheap chromos on the wall looked more staring than before. Posey during her years with Madam Sharpe had known a varied experience with [Pg 170] the parlors of cheap hotels and boarding-houses with their threadbare carpets and shabby, broken-springed furniture, but she was sure that she never saw so cheerless a room as that of the Byfield hotel.

No doubt after all Posey had been through in the last twenty-four hours a reaction was sooner or later bound to come. So it was not strange that she should suddenly have become conscious of being very, very tired, as well as exceedingly sleepy, and before eight o’clock she asked to be shown to her room, where she soon fell asleep with Ben Pancost’s silver dollars clasped close in her hand against her cheek. For those dollars stood to her not only as actual value, but as kindliness and helpfulness, the sole friendship she had to rest on a friend near and human, while that of God, whose care for the morrow she had duly remembered to ask, seemed to her heavy little heart as far off and mysterious.

When Posey woke the next morning after a long, dreamless sleep, she started up as if expecting to hear Mrs. Hagood’s voice calling her, and a dog she heard barking outside [Pg 171] she thought for a moment was Rover. But her unfamiliar surroundings quickly brought to her all that had happened, and she lay back on her pillow with a feeling of surprise that it should all be true. “I wonder what will happen to me to-day, and where I shall be to-night?” she said to herself. “But Ben said he knew God would take care of me,” and Ben’s faith became her confidence.

With morning, too, the world looked decidedly brighter than it had the evening before; she had a good appetite for her breakfast, and when the landlady who served the table in person explained that the table waiter went away to a dance and hadn’t come back, and the cook was sick that morning, and she had everything to do and didn’t know which way to turn, Posey at once offered to help. “The stage doesn’t go for a long time yet, and I’d just as soon wash the dishes as not,” and following out into the kitchen she was soon plunged in a pan of foamy suds.

“You are good help,” was the landlady’s comment. “My husband’s dead and I have the whole business to see to, and the profit [Pg 172] isn’t much, but I’ll give you a dollar a week to wash dishes if you’ll stay with me.”

Posey hesitated; work was what she wanted, but the landlady’s voice had a sharp accent and there were fretty wrinkles between her eyes. “I promised to go to an old lady in Farmdale,” she answered after a moment, “but if I don’t get a place there I’ll come back to you.”

Posey had taken pains to shake and brush out the dust and all she could of the disorder from her clothes. Before stage time she repacked the contents of her bundle, and begging a newspaper and string made it into a neat looking package, and when the stage started out it was a tidy little figure that occupied a corner of the back seat. The ride to Farmdale through the pleasant country roads was all too short for Posey, who once more found herself among strangers, a solitary waif.

The stage stopped at the business end of Farmdale. Around three sides of a sandy square were grouped the village hotel, the post-office, and its few stores and shops; on the fourth side this square opened on a long stretch of velvety green turf, around which, set in deep yards, surrounded by trees, and embowered in shrubbery, were the comfortable, well-ordered village homes. In the centre of this green, and midway its length a fountain was falling into a circular stone basin and from that flowing into a stone watering-trough, where a white horse with a barefooted boy on its back was drinking. Beyond the fountain the ground rose slightly and crowning this gentle swell three white churches set side by side lifted their spires against the blue sky.

Posey walked slowly along the maple-shaded path, with bright colored leaves above [Pg 174] her and bright colored leaves rustling under her feet, charmed with the peaceful air, the quiet beauty, and looking carefully for a house to answer Ben Pancost’s description. It was not long till she saw it—a modest white house with green blinds, the walls almost covered with climbing roses and honeysuckles, while over the front door hung the sign, its gilt lettering somewhat faded by time and storms,

MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING.

A great lilac bush stood on each side of the small white gate by which she entered, while syringas, flowering quince, and thickets of roses gave promise of springtime bloom. The narrow, stone-flagged walk that led to the side door was fringed with flowers, and ran along the edge of a grassy bank or low terrace, below which were more flower beds bordered with China pinks, besides homelier beds of garden vegetables, while under sheltering rows of currant bushes a flock of white chickens rolled in the dirt at their ease. Beyond the house lay an orchard, and the side porch at which the walk ended was shaded by [Pg 175] a great grapevine heavy with purple clusters. A Maltese cat, sunning itself in sleepy content on the steps, roused as she came up and rubbed against her with a friendly purr. Over all the sunny little homestead rested an air of thrift, order, peace, that filled Posey with a sense of restfulness; why she could hardly have told.

Her knock on the green-paneled door was answered by Miss Silence Blossom, one of the two whom Ben Pancost had described as “not young, or really old,” but with the brightness of youth still lingering in her eyes and her smile. The room into which she led Posey was large and sunny with windows facing the south. In one corner was an open sewing machine from which she had evidently just risen. In another corner stood a square table covered with boxes of flowers and ribbons beside which trimming a bonnet sat Mrs. Patience Bird, a younger sister of Miss Silence, her sweet, gentle face touched by a shade of sadness, reflected in the mourning dress she still wore for the young husband whose picture was in the little pin at her throat. Behind the low chair [Pg 176] in which she sat was a tall case with long glass doors, filled with ribbons, flowers, and hats, all in orderly array, for though this was the work-room of busy workers there was no trace of litter or confusion.

Mrs. Blossom, the mother, with a strong but kindly face, was watering a stand of house plants. She, too, was a widow, but of more than half a lifetime. The years when she had gathered her fatherless children around her and, still a young woman, taken up a life alone and bravely for herself and them had left their lines of energy, decision, and firmness. And, last of the family group, in a large armchair by one of the sunny windows with some white knitting in her hands, sat an old lady, whose peaceful face not less than her drab dress, close white cap, and snowy, folded kerchief, told that she was of the Quaker faith.

Posey took the chair offered her, suddenly embarrassed and shy under the gaze of so many questioning eyes, and at last stammered abruptly, “Ben said you would know where the old lady lived.”

[Pg 177]

“Ben who; and what old lady?” demanded Miss Silence, who in spite of her name was the talker of the family.

“Why, the nice old lady who wants a girl to live with her. And you know Ben; he’s the boy who drives the red tin peddler’s cart.”

“I know who she means,” spoke Mrs. Patience. “It is the boy who came here last summer that Aunt Maria Ames took such a fancy to, and asked him if he hadn’t a sister to live with her. I think,” to her mother, “you and Grandmother were away that day. Don’t you remember, Silence, you mended his coat for him?”

By this time Posey had found her tongue. “Yes,” she hastened to add, “Ben said you did. He said he knew you were the best kind of Christians.”

Mrs. Blossom smiled. “I hope Ben was right, though that seems to have been a case of judging faith by works.”

“Well, Ben Pancost knows,” asserted Posey stoutly.

“He certainly impressed me as a very good [Pg 178] boy,” said Miss Silence, “truthful, frank, and manly. And so you wanted to come and live with Mrs. Ames?”

“Yes, ma’am, Ben was almost sure she would let me.”

“That is too bad, for she has gone to Chicago to spend the winter with her daughter.”

Posey’s face clouded with dismay. She had trusted implicitly to Ben. What should she do if his plan for her failed?

Mrs. Blossom saw the look. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Posey.”

“And whose Posey?” Mrs. Patience questioned looking up from her work with a gentle smile.

“Nobody’s,” was the mournful answer.

“And where is your home?” continued Mrs. Blossom.

“Nowhere,” answered Posey, a great sense of her forlornness rushing over her and filling her eyes with tears.

“Now, see here,” Miss Silence’s tone was brisk and incisive; “you want to tell the truth. Everybody has a surname and lives somewhere.”

[Pg 179]

“I have told the truth,” protested Posey hotly. “I haven’t anybody or any home anywhere.”

“But where have you been living?”

Now Posey had gathered from Ben Pancost’s manner that while he personally approved of her running away from Mrs. Hagood, he was doubtful of the impression it might make on others, and she had resolved to be very discreet and tell as little of that part of her story as possible. But her indignation at the implication of untruthfulness overmastered her prudence and she answered, “If you want to know where I’ve lived I can tell you. I’ve lived with a clairvoyant medium, and I’ve lived at the Refuge in Cleveland, and the last place I’ve lived was with a Mrs. Hagood in Horsham.”

“Why, Horsham is twenty miles from here.”

“I wish it was twenty million miles.”

“But why?”

“Because,” her voice rising shrill with passion, “Mrs. Hagood was horrid to me, and I ran away from her, I did; and I don’t care who knows it, I don’t; and I’ll never go [Pg 180] back to her for anybody, never,” her cheeks flushing and her eyes flashing through her tears.

“In what way was Mrs. Hagood horrid to you?” questioned Mrs. Blossom.

For answer Posey tore open her collar and rolled up her sleeves showing the marks still visible on her neck and arms. It needed now hardly an inquiry to bring out the whole story, in which she omitted neither what she had said to Mrs. Hagood nor the bite she had given her hand. “And I’ll starve and die before I’ll go back to her,” she added in conclusion.

“It’s a burning shame to treat a child like that, I don’t care what she had done!” exclaimed Miss Silence. And Mrs. Patience added in her gentle tone, “Poor child! wouldn’t you like something to eat?” for Mrs. Patience had the idea that children were in a perpetual state of hunger.

“Was this Mrs. Hagood always cruel to you?” questioned Mrs. Blossom.

Posey hesitated a moment. “No, ma’am, I guess not. She gave me plenty to eat, but she scolded me from morning till night, and [Pg 181] wanted me to work every minute. If she wasn’t always cruel she was never kind—” She paused and looked from face to face—“and now I’m away from her I’m going to stay away. The landlady at the hotel at Byfield will give me a dollar a week to wash dishes, but I wish you knew of some other place where I could live. I’d do everything I could to help, and I’d be real good. I’m not bad always, indeed I’m not.” She did not say, “If I might only stay here,” but her wistful eyes expressed the unspoken wish.

“Silence,” Mrs. Blossom spoke quickly, “will you go out in the orchard and get some sweet apples to bake; and Posey can go with you.”

“Now, mother,” Miss Silence laid down in her lap the work she held, “I don’t think it’s quite fair to send the child away while you and Grandmother talk her over, for she knows as well as I that’s what you would do. There’s only one thing I shall consent to—that she stay here till a suitable place is found for her.”

“Thee will always be the same impulsive, impetuous Silence as long as thee lives.” [Pg 182] Grandmother Sweet’s face crinkled in a smile. Though an attentive listener she had not spoken before. She turned to her daughter, “I have nothing to say for my part, Elizabeth, that the young girl might not hear, indeed that I would not prefer she should hear.

“And in the first place, my dear,” to Posey, “thee is not free from blame thyself; from thy own words thee has failed in duty to one older than thyself, and yielded to the angry passion of thine own heart, and thus, it well may be, has failed of the lesson God meant for thee. For always remember, child, God puts us in no place he will not give us strength to fill, or sends us no trial that will not be for our good if rightly endured. At the same time if thy story is true, and thee has a truthful look, I do not think thee has been justly or rightly treated, or that thy return would be wise or best.”

Then turning again to her daughter, “The leading of the Lord seems to have brought her to our door. What is thy mind, Elizabeth?”

“Thee has spoken it exactly,” answered [Pg 183] Mrs. Blossom, who often used the Friends’ language in talking with her mother. “As thee says, she seems to have been led to us, and I hope the time will never come when any of God’s children find ours a closed door.”

“Oh, if you will let me stay I’ll do my very best!” cried Posey. “Do you know I said yesterday that I didn’t believe God cared anything for me, but Ben Pancost said He did, that probably God sent him to help me then, and that He would take care of me again to-day, and I just think He has.”

“Dear child,” and Grandmother Sweet put one of her soft, tremulous hands on Posey’s head, “God’s love and care is over thee always; never doubt it, even if thee has not the outward evidence.”

“I am going out to Cleveland next week for goods,” remarked Mrs. Patience, “and I can go out to the Refuge and arrange about Posey.”

Miss Silence nodded. “Yes, and you know Cousin Allen Gloin’s wife has a sister in Horsham; she will doubtless know of this Mrs. Hagood.”

[Pg 184]

Posey lifted her head proudly, “I hope you will see everybody who knows me, and ask them all about me, for then you will find that I have told the truth.”

“We are not doubting your word,” Miss Silence assured her; “it is on your account as well as ours that we want to learn as much as possible.”

“All the same I want you to know that it is true,” she answered. “And—” hesitating a little, “if you know some one in Horsham couldn’t I send a word to Mr. Hagood? He will worry about me, I know he will, and he was always so kind that I wish he could know where I am and how good you are to let me stay. He won’t tell Mrs. Hagood anything about it. I am sure he won’t.”

Thus it was that Posey, who for so long had been drifted at the mercy of adverse currents found herself, for a time at least, in a safe and quiet harbor. Very quickly she fell into the simple household ways; she washed the dainty old china for Mrs. Blossom; she dusted the carefully kept rooms; she pulled bastings and whipped edges for Miss Silence; she ripped braid and wound ribbons for Mrs. Patience, watching her the while as with hat-block in lap her deft fingers “sewed over” a hat or bonnet into a different shape—for at that time this was part of the work of a village milliner; and last but by no means least she listened to Grandmother Sweet’s gentle counsels and gentler admonitions. While in this atmosphere of cheer and kindliness her young heart that had known such scant measure of either, expanded like a flower in the sunshine.

[Pg 186]

From the first time she heard it the name Posey had been anything but pleasing to Grandmother Sweet’s Quaker ears, and the next day after her coming, when she had given as full an account as she could of her varied life, the old lady began to question her.

“And now what is thy real name, my child? For surely thy mother never gave thee ‘Posey’ for a life name.”

“I don’t know as I have any other,” answered Posey in surprise, for it was something she had never thought of before. “My mother, I can remember, often called me ‘Rose,’ and her ‘little Rose,’ but she called me ‘Posey,’ too; so did my father and the neighbors, and Madam Sharpe, and I always supposed that was all the name I had.”

“Thee can depend upon it,” was the old lady’s decided answer, “‘Posey’ was only that foolish custom—a nickname—of which I cannot approve.

“And as to thy surname, does thee not know that either? It seems anything but right that thee should continue to bear—especially [Pg 187] as it is not thy own, the name of that wicked adventuress.”

Posey shook her head. “You know I was so little when my mother and father died, and Madam Sharpe called me by her name from the first. I think she wanted me to forget all I could for fear I might find some one who would take me away from her. I know whenever I asked her what my name was she would say she had forgotten, but I didn’t believe her then. Lately, I have tried to remember it, but I can’t. I know my mother’s first name was Kate, because I have her Bible, and that is the name written in it.”

“Will thee let me see it?”

Posey at once brought the little velvet covered Bible, and the book of child verse, now decidedly the worse for wear and age. On the fly leaf of the Bible was primly written, “Kate, from Aunt Sarah.”

In the other book was apparently no writing, but after examining it a moment grandmother asked, “Silence, will thee bring me a damp sponge? If I am not mistaken a leaf has been pasted down here.”

[Pg 188]

The sponge was brought, and the page when moistened readily lifted, proving Grandmother Sweet’s suspicion correct, and revealing to the onlookers, written in a delicate hand,

“To Rose Shannon, on her fourth birthday, December 12th.”

“There!” Grandmother Sweet’s tone was triumphant, “now we have thy rightful name, and thee shall be Rose to us, as thee was to thy mother,” and she patted the curly brown head.

“But why do you suppose she pasted the leaf down instead of tearing it out?” questioned Miss Silence.

“I think,” replied Posey, or rather Rose, “it was because the colored picture on the other side of the leaf was a favorite of mine, and if it was gone I would be sure to miss it.”

So it was without any purpose of her own, or a thought on the part of any one of concealing her identity, that with the very beginning of life under new conditions Posey Sharpe became Rose Shannon, and, or so it seemed to her, with the old name the old life [Pg 189] also dropped away. Rose was delighted to possess a name that was hers by right, that was her very own, but at first it sounded strangely unfamiliar, and sometimes she failed to recognize it as belonging to herself; but very soon she grew as accustomed to it as to the placid round of the Blossom household.

In a short time Mrs. Patience made her trip to Cleveland, and made the promised call at the Refuge. Here she found that a letter had been received from Mrs. Hagood, full of complaints that Posey was an idle, troublesome, ungrateful girl, who had left her for no cause whatever; but at the same time demanding that she be sent back at once. For Mrs. Hagood had supposed, as Rose thought, that she would return to the Refuge. Mrs. Patience’s account, however, put the matter in a very different light. The superintendent was deeply indignant, and as the Blossoms had friends who were known to him, he gladly consented that she should remain with them till a more permanent provision could be made.

It was on this one point of Rose’s history, [Pg 190] the cause and manner of her leaving Mrs. Hagood, that the Blossoms decided reticence to be best. As Mrs. Blossom said, “Mrs. Hagood is a stranger to us, and admitting that she was at fault, it seems to me neither kind nor right to repeat what might give others an unfavorable impression.”

Gentle Grandmother Sweet’s advice to Rose was, “The best way to keep from speaking of it is to put it out of thy thoughts, through that spirit of forgiveness, which we who err so often should always be ready to show.”

Not long after Mrs. Patience’s return from the city Rose received an offer of a home for the winter, with fifty cents a week wages, and the privilege of attending school afternoons. As she had seldom possessed a cent she could call her own this seemed like a small fortune; besides, as she had told Ben Pancost, she understood more than most of her age what it cost to live, and so was the quicker to see that with all the Blossoms’ generous hospitality, economy was carefully considered. For they were far from rich, this houseful of women with no outside breadwinner [Pg 191] to depend on, and with her sturdy, independent nature Rose shrank from being a burden on them, the more so because of their affectionate kindness. Miss Silence and Mrs. Patience having taken Rose under their wing were unwilling she should go, unless into a permanent home, but Mrs. Blossom held that Rose should decide the question for herself, especially as she would still be in the village where they could watch over her. While Grandmother Sweet placidly observed, “Providence seems to have opened the place for Rose, and the openings of Providence are usually for some wise purpose.”

The offer had been most unexpected. Miss Fifield had come to Silence Blossom to have a dress fitted, and in the familiar conversation which accompanied the process she had remarked that she and her sister were doing their work themselves as the hired girl had gone home sick. “Of course,” she explained, “we have Ellen Gill in to do the washing and ironing and scrubbing; not but that we could do it all, for it was my father’s boast that his daughters were thoroughly [Pg 192] capable. And they all are but Eudora; she will not, and while I’m willing to do my share I’m not willing to do mine and other people’s too. I don’t believe Eudora would soil her hands if her life depended on it. If you’ll believe me, Silence Blossom, she has gone and made a mop to wash dishes with. It makes me sick, it positively does, to see her mopping the dishes off, and lifting them out with a fork, for fear the dishwater will make her hands rough.” And Miss Fifield, tall, spare, and angular, who counted all attempt at personal adornment the sign of a weak mind, gave a little sniff of contempt.

At this moment Rose came into the sitting-room to bring Grandmother Sweet a piece of fresh sponge cake, her first triumph in real cake-making under Mrs. Blossom. Miss Fifield through the partly open door of the bedroom which also served as fitting-room, regarded her neat gingham work-apron and animated, rosy face with evident approval.

“Who is that young girl?” she asked. “I don’t remember to have ever seen her before.”

“She is Rose Shannon,” Miss Silence answered [Pg 193] as well as she could with her mouth full of pins. “She came to Farmdale with the idea that she could live with Aunt Maria Ames, and is staying with us for the present.”

Miss Fifield prided herself on her prompt decisions, and the idea at once occurred to her that such a tidy little handmaid would be pleasant and useful to have.

“If she wants to she can come to us; we will give her a home, and something besides.”

Silence Blossom was measuring Miss Fifield’s bony arm for the sleeve. “I don’t know,” her voice dubious; “Rose was planning to go to school when it opened next term.”

“I think we could manage for her to go afternoons; there isn’t much to do after dinner. I suppose,” she added, “that Eudora and Brother Nathan will object. They never agree on anything only in opposing me, but what I undertake I intend to carry through.”

But for once Miss Fifield was mistaken, Miss Eudora heartily agreed with the plan. She could put on gloves to sweep, and cake [Pg 194] and pastry making were something any lady might do with dignity; but dish-washing even with the aid of a mop, she viewed with horror. Furthermore, her sister refused to wash the dishes a day over half the time.

Squire Nathan Fifield, the middle-aged brother who with the two middle-aged sisters made up the Fifield family, caustically remarked that he should think two able-bodied women could do the work for themselves and one man, but if they couldn’t they would have to settle the matter their own way. “Only,” he warned them, “it is very likely this is the child of low-bred foreigners, and if she turns out to be a little liar, and a thief, I want you to remember that it was you that brought her here, not me.”

But the sisters, noways daunted by this foreboding, offered Rose the place and, as we have seen, she accepted the offer.

The Fifields were the oldest family in Farmdale, and lived in the most pretentious house. Rose had greatly admired the old home with its high-pillared porch set behind tall hedges of prim cedar, and a view of the interior only increased the feeling. To her eyes the claw-footed tables and tall bedsteads with canopy tops were most imposing; and the dimly lighted, seldom used parlor with its real lace curtains, its carpet laid in great wreaths of roses, its gilt-framed mirror, and its damask upholstered, mahogany furniture, was a really magnificent apartment, including as it did the family portraits, and Miss Eudora’s girlish efforts at painting on velvet.

Rose’s position in the family had been the subject of some discussion, for Eudora Fifield had all her life sighed for a maid arrayed in a white cap and apron, and it had [Pg 196] been one of her numerous grievances that of the array of independent spirited help who had filed in and out of the Fifield kitchen one and all had flatly refused to conform to such usage.

“But Rose,” she argued, “has been brought up in a city, where the manners of the lower classes are so different. Why, when I visited Aunt Morgan in Albany, her servants treated me with a deference you never see here. Her parlor-maid always brought in the callers’ cards and the letters on a salver; perhaps she would be willing to do that.”

Jane Fifield gave a snort, “As long as Nathan brings your letters in his coat pocket and hands them to you, and we haven’t a caller once a month, I think you won’t have much use for a salver. Besides the Blossoms make her one of the family, and Mrs. Blossom particularly said that she should never consent to her going to any place where she would not be taken an interest in, but simply thought of as a little drudge.”

Miss Eudora drew a little sigh at the vanishing of the cap and salver, but quickly [Pg 197] caught herself as she remembered the dish-washing. “Well,” she admitted, “I suppose it’s better to concede some points than not have her come at all.”

“I wonder,” suddenly spoke Silence Blossom as she sat basting the facing on a skirt the day after Rose left, “how Rose is getting on at the Fifields’, and if she has heard anything yet about Eudora’s visit to Albany? I don’t believe I’ve seen her any time since that she hasn’t made some reference to it. I have often wondered what she would have done if she hadn’t made that visit.”

“But you know,” urged Mrs. Patience, “she and Jane both live such monotonous lives, with hardly an interest outside themselves, how can they help but go over the same thing again and again?”

“I can tell one thing that would have happened if Eudora had not made that Albany visit,” remarked Mrs. Blossom, who from an adjoining room had overheard the conversation, “she would have been a happier woman to-day. She came back from that taste of city life completely out of tune with [Pg 198] everything and everybody in Farmdale, and she has never got in tune since.”

“I am afraid,” observed Grandmother Sweet placidly, “that thee is sitting in judgment on thy neighbors.”

“La, Grandmother,” and Miss Silence’s brisk, heartsome laugh rippled out, “a body can’t help having opinions, though I don’t always express mine outside the family. And you know what we said of Jane and Eudora was true.”

“I know,” admitted Grandmother Sweet with a sigh, “though we ought to look even at truth with the eyes of charity. But I have a hope that the coming of a fresh young life, like Rose’s, into the Fifield home, if only for a season, will bring a fresh interest and brightness with it.”

As for Rose, she had been but a little while with the Fifields till she began to realize the difference between that and the Blossoms. Especially was she quick to notice the petty friction, the note of jarring discord, that made up the atmosphere at the Fifields’. What one wanted another was sure to object [Pg 199] to, what one said was immediately disputed; the sisters nagged Mr. Nathan, and he in turn nagged his sisters. No doubt at heart they loved each other, but the delicate consideration for each other’s wishes, and the gentle courtesy of affection, that so brightened the Blossom home was wholly absent here.

Another thing she could not but see was the prevailing tone of discontent. Though the lives of Miss Fifield and Miss Eudora were much easier than those of Miss Silence and Mrs. Patience, the one was always complaining of the dullness of Farmdale, and the other making bitter reflections on life in general. Had Rose come directly from Mrs. Hagood’s all this might have escaped her notice, but her stay in the white cottage with its sweet-spirited inmates had given her a glimpse of a different life, an ideal that would always linger with her.

As the two houses were not the length of the green apart Rose was a frequent visitor at the Blossoms’. “Did your plants freeze last night?” she asked as she came in one afternoon. “Miss Eudora lost some of her very prettiest ones. She says it was because [Pg 200] Mr. Nathan didn’t fix the fire right, and he says it was because she didn’t put the window down tight. They were quarreling over it when I came away, and yesterday they disputed all day whether the meat bill came in Tuesday or Wednesday.”

“There, there, Rose,” interrupted Mrs. Blossom, “you are a member of the Fifield family now, and have no right to repeat or we to listen to anything you may see or hear there.”

Grandmother Sweet laid down her knitting, “As thee goes through life, Rose, thee will find many people whose lives seem not to be ordered by the law of love; at such times always remember that silence is not only the part of prudence but of true charity. At the same time thee can learn to avoid the mistakes thee sees others make.”

“Well,” Rose spoke with emphasis, “I will try to avoid the mistake of squabbling all the time over trifles—I’m not saying that any one does so, you know, and when I get to be an old lady I’m going to be as gentle and lovely as Grandmother Sweet,” and she gave her a hug and a kiss.

[Pg 201]

On her part Rose had gone to the Fifields’ with the firm resolve to do her very best. On her first coming to the Blossoms’, while her nerves were still keyed up in a tension of excitement, little had been said to her in regard to the manner of her leaving Mrs. Hagood. But after she had calmed down to her normal self Mrs. Blossom had talked to her very seriously of the danger of yielding to passion and impulse, and had shown her that in spite of all she had to endure what trouble she might easily have brought on herself, and how much worse off she might have been because of her hasty action. So that Rose instead of thinking it a very fine, brave act to have run away, as she was at first inclined, began to feel that it was something to regret, and be ashamed of, and because of which she must do exceedingly well indeed, to win and hold a high opinion.

As Rose was neat and deft, and above all anxious to please, she soon became quite a favorite with the two middle-aged Fifield sisters, and Miss Eudora inclined to make a confidante of her.

“So you have lived in cities most of your [Pg 202] life?” she said one morning as Rose was dusting her room.

“Yes, but I like the country better.”

“You do?” exclaimed Miss Eudora, pausing with a curl half brushed, for, unlike her sister, she affected the willowy, the languishing; she liked garments that flowed, ribbons that fluttered, and still framed her little wrinkled face in the curls that had been the pride of her girlhood.

“Now, I think it is perfectly delightful to live in a city. I spent a winter in Albany, with my Aunt Morgan some years ago. What a winter that was—” and she clasped her hands, “one round of gayety and amusement. Aunt made a large party for me, I shall have to show you a piece of the dress I wore. Aunt said she was proud of me that night, and I’m sure,” with a little simper, “I had compliments enough. I suppose,” and she gave her grey curls a toss, “it’s my own fault that I’m not living in Albany to-day.”

“If you liked it so well why didn’t you stay?” asked Rose.

“When a young girl has the admiration I [Pg 203] had, she doesn’t always know what she does want. But I can tell you I made quite an impression on Some One that evening.”

“How did you look then?” Rose was trying to imagine Miss Eudora as a young girl.

“Oh, just as I do now,” with a complacent glance in her mirror. “I haven’t changed as some people do. Not long ago I met a friend—well, an old admirer, and he said he would like to know what I did to keep myself so young; that I didn’t look any older than I did when he first knew me. I think my hair may have something to do with that; curls do have a youthful effect. That’s the reason, I believe, Jane is always wanting me to put mine back.

“Jane,” and she sank her voice to a whisper, “was always plain, and never received the admiration, or was the favorite with gentlemen I was, and it has always made her jealous of me. But I’m fond of my curls,” giving them a shake. “Why, I even had a poem written on them once, and I sha’n’t put them up, at least not till I begin to grow old.”

Rose listened in amazement. She was sure [Pg 204] Miss Silence was younger than Miss Eudora, her hair was not grey, nor her face marked with such little fine lines, and neither she nor Mrs. Patience ever talked like that. It was all very queer, and most of all that Miss Eudora could fancy that she looked young.

“You were a long time doing the chamberwork,” Miss Fifield remarked when Rose went downstairs. Miss Fifield was in the kitchen baking, her scant house dress clinging to her angular figure, and her grey hair drawn back with painful tightness.

Rose noted the contrast between the two sisters as she answered, “Miss Eudora was talking to me.”

“What about?” a trifle sharply.

Rose hesitated slightly. “Several things; her visit to the city for one.”

“I’ll warrant. Perhaps you found it interesting, but when you have heard the same story twenty-seven years, as I have, twenty-seven years this winter, it will get to be a weariness of the flesh; that and her lovers.” She shot a keen glance at Rose, who could not help a giggle.

Miss Jane Fifield shook the flour from her [Pg 205] hands with energy. “I used to hope that Eudora would grow sensible sometime, but I’ve about given it up. One thing I am thankful for, that there is something inside of my head, and not all put on the outside!” and she shut the oven door with a force that threatened danger to the lightness of the pound cake she was baking.

Rose had been a few weeks at the Fifields, long enough to learn the family ways, so that Miss Fifield felt she could leave home for a long-planned visit. It was a stormy day, and Mrs. Patience suddenly exclaimed, “I wonder who can be coming this way in such a hurry? Why, I believe—yes, it is Rose, running as fast as she can. I hope Eudora is not sick.”

Almost as she spoke the door opened and Rose rushed in, snow-powdered and breathless; her hat blown partly off, her face wet with tears as well as snow flakes, and her voice broken and thick with sobs, as without giving time for any questions she burst out:

“You said it was a leading of Providence for me to go to the Fifields’. But it wasn’t; and he says he will have me put in jail if I don’t tell where the money is. And how can I tell when I don’t know? Maybe God [Pg 207] cares for some folks, but I’m sure He doesn’t for me or I wouldn’t have so much trouble. I wish I was dead, I do!” and flinging herself down on the well-worn lounge she buried her face in the pillow and burst into a storm of sobs.

What did it all mean? They were equally perplexed by the mystery and distressed by Rose’s evident grief. Mrs. Patience drew off her things and tried to calm her with soothing words; Miss Silence brought the camphor bottle—her remedy for all ills. But Rose only cried the harder till Mrs. Blossom kindly, but with the authority that comes of a calm and self-controlled nature, said, “Rose, you must stop crying, and tell us what is the trouble.”

Then choking back her sobs Rose lifted her tear-swollen face and exclaimed, “Oh, Mrs. Blossom, Mr. Fifield says I have taken a hundred dollars! A hundred dollars in gold! And I don’t know one thing more about it than you do, but he won’t believe me, and he calls me a thief, and everybody will think I am awful, when I want to be good, and was trying so hard to do my best. What shall I [Pg 208] do?” and she wrung her hands with a gesture of utter despair.

Further questioning at last brought a connected story, from which it appeared that Nathan Fifield had a hundred dollars in gold, that from some whim he had put for safe keeping in the parlor stove. That morning, going around the house to tie up a loose vine, he had glanced through the parlor window and seen Rose at the stove with the door open. And when, his suspicion aroused, he had looked for the money it had been to find it gone, and at once had accused Rose of the theft.

“And he says I showed guilt when I saw him,” Rose wailed, “and I did start, for I was frightened to see a face looking in at the window, and with the snow on the glass I didn’t know at first who it was.”

“But what were you in the parlor, and at the stove for?” questioned Mrs. Blossom.

“I was dusting the front hall and the parlor. Miss Fifield sweeps the parlor once a month and I dust it every week, though I don’t see the need, for those are all the times anybody ever goes into it. Some feathers [Pg 209] came out of the duster, it’s old and does shed feathers, and I had opened the stove door to throw them in. I didn’t know there was ever any money in a little leather bag in there; I never dreamed of such a thing. And if I had I shouldn’t have touched it. Madam Sharpe always trusted me with her purse, and I never took a penny from her. I’m not a thief, if he does say that I am. But they won’t believe me. Miss Eudora is just as certain, and I shall have to go to jail, for I can’t tell where the money is.”

“Poor child!” and Grandmother Sweet stroked the head that had gone down in Mrs. Patience’s lap. “It is borne on my mind,” and she glanced around the little group, “that Rose is wholly innocent, and that mindful of her youth and inexperience it were well for some of us to see Neighbor Fifield if an explanation of the mystery cannot be found.

“No,” with a wave of her hand, as both of her granddaughters made a motion to rise, “Silence, thee is apt to be hasty and might say more than was seemly; and Patience, thee inclines to be timid, and might not say as much as was needful. Thy mother is the [Pg 210] one to go; she has both prudence and courage.”

“Oh, how good you are to me!” Rose exclaimed. “And never so good as now! I thought you would believe me, I just felt it would kill me if you didn’t, and now that I know you do I won’t be afraid of anything.”

Mrs. Blossom was already wrapping herself in her cloak. “Come, Rose, put on your things; the sooner this is sifted the better,” and Rose, as many another had done before her, felt a new comfort and strength in Mrs. Blossom’s strength.

They found Mr. Fifield and his sister hardly less excited than Rose. “You cannot regret, Mrs. Blossom, any more than I do, this most distressing occurrence,” and Mr. Nathan rubbed his flushed bald head with his red silk handkerchief. “I would rather have given the money twice over than have had it happen. But I must say that it is no more than I expected when my sisters persisted, against my judgment, in bringing into the house a girl of whose ancestors they knew nothing, and who most likely is the child of some of the foreign paupers who are flooding [Pg 211] our shores. I’m sorry, though not surprised, that it has ended as it has.”

Mr. Nathan was really troubled and sorry, as he said, but he could not help a spark of self-satisfaction that he had been proven in the right and his sisters in the wrong. As for Miss Eudora, keenly mortified at the turn matters had taken, her former friendliness to Rose only increased her present indignation.

“It’s not only the loss of the money,” she exclaimed, “but the ingratitude of it, after all our kindness to her, and I gave her my pink muffler; she never could have done what she has if she had not been really hardened.”

“But what proof have you that she took the money?” asked Mrs. Blossom. “As you say she is a stranger to us all, a friendless, homeless orphan, whose condition is a claim to our charity as well as our generosity.”

“Proof,” echoed Mr. Nathan. “Pretty plain proof I should call it, and I’ve served three terms as Justice of the Peace. Last Saturday the money was safe in its place of concealment. This morning I surprised her there and her confusion on discovery was [Pg 212] almost evidence enough of itself. When I look for the package it is gone, and during this time not a soul outside the immediate family has been in the house. I regret the fact, but every circumstance points to her as the guilty one.”

“For all that,” Mrs. Blossom’s voice was calmly even, “I believe there is some mistake. At the Refuge they told Patience they had always found her truthful and honest, and while she was with us we never saw anything to make us doubt that she was perfectly trusty. I did not even know of her meddling with what she ought not to.”

“Oh, she’s a sly one,” and Mr. Nathan rubbed his head harder than before. “She has taken us all in—and that includes myself, and inclines me still more to the belief that this is not her first offence; and also to the opinion that she should be promptly dealt with.”

“At the same time I hope,” urged Mrs. Blossom, “that you will do nothing hastily. Imprisonment is a terrible thing for a young girl like Rose, and might blast her whole life. Time makes many things clear, and it [Pg 213] is always better to err on the side of mercy than of justice.”

“Certainly, certainly. And I do not know,” lowering his voice so it might not reach Rose, “that I should really send her to jail; but the law—” and he waved his hand with his most magisterial air, “the law must be a terror to evil-doers. If not, what is law good for? We might as well not have any, and my social as well as my official position demands that I enforce it.”

“And she deserves to be well punished, if ever any one did.” Miss Eudora gave an indignant shake to her curls as she spoke. “And I was just thinking of giving her the blue cashmere I had when I went to Albany. Jane is always complaining of what she calls my ‘shilly-shally’ ways, and finding fault with my lack of decision, and I feel that at whatever cost to myself I must be firm in this. Though nobody knows what a shock it has been to my nerves.”

“Besides,” triumphantly added Mr. Nathan Fifield, who felt that he was on the defensive before Mrs. Blossom, and holding up as he spoke an old-fashioned, richly chased [Pg 214] gold locket, “here is further evidence. While Rose was gone Eudora made an examination of her effects and this is what she found concealed in a pincushion. Now I leave it to you if it looks reasonable that a child in her position would have a valuable trinket like that; or if she had, would keep it hidden?”

When they entered the house Mrs. Blossom had told Rose to stay in another room, but through the partly opened door she caught a glimpse of the locket as it swung from Mr. Nathan’s fingers.

“That is mine!” she cried, darting in. “My very own, and it was my mother’s. What right have you with it, I should like to know? And why isn’t it stealing for you to go and take my things?”

“Hush, Rose!” Mrs. Blossom reproved. And then her faith in Rose a little shaken in spite of herself, “If the locket is yours, as you say, why did you never tell us about it? And why did you hide it so?”

“Why, I never once thought of it,” she answered, looking frankly up at Mrs. Blossom. [Pg 215] “I don’t think the locket is pretty at all, it is so queer and old-fashioned, and I don’t even know whose picture is inside. All the reason I care for it is because it was my mother’s. And I sewed it up in that pincushion, which one of the teachers at the Refuge gave me, because I was afraid if Mrs. Hagood saw the locket she might take it away from me.”

“I wonder if this could have been her mother’s father,” for Mrs. Blossom’s mind at once turned to the subject she had thought of so often—that of Rose’s family.

“There was a chain to the locket once, but I broke and lost that. I remember that mamma used sometimes to let me wear it, and it seems to me she said it was Uncle Samuel’s picture, but I’m not sure.”

“It certainly is a good face.” And Mrs. Blossom held out the open locket to Miss Eudora, who as she took it let it drop from her fingers that the unwonted excitement had made tremulous. In striking the floor a spring was pressed to a compartment behind the picture, and as Mr. Nathan Fifield [Pg 216] stooped to pick it up a piece of closely folded paper fell out.

Mrs. Blossom hastily spread this out, and found it the marriage certificate of Kate Jarvis and James Shannon, dated at Fredonia, N. Y., some sixteen years before. “Here is a clue to Rose’s family,” she exclaimed, as they all clustered about the bit of time-yellowed paper, forgetting for the moment the cloud that rested so heavily over Rose.

“It surely should be,” responded Mr. Nathan.

“I shall write to Fredonia at once,” continued Mrs. Blossom. “And as the minister whose name is signed may in the meantime have died or moved away, my best course would be to write first to the postmaster for information, would it not?”

“That is what I should advise.” Squire Nathan was never so happy as when giving advice. “It might be well to inclose a letter to the minister, and also a copy of the marriage certificate. If Rose has any relatives living she ought to trace them by this. Though whether she is likely to prove any credit to her family or not is doubtful,” he [Pg 217] added, recalling with a frown the fact that she was a suspected criminal.

“I have faith in her that she will.” Mrs. Blossom’s tone was decided. “And if you are willing to let matters rest for the present I will, if you have no objections, take Rose home with me.”

“I shall be only too glad to have you, for my part.” Miss Eudora’s tone was fervent. “After what has happened I don’t feel that I could endure her in the house another day.”

“And of course I shall consider you responsible for her safekeeping,” added Mr. Nathan. “She admits that she ran away once; she may do so again.”

“No, I won’t, you need not be afraid.” Rose’s voice was trembling, but she held it firm.

“For you understand,” with emphasis, “that I am not dropping the matter of the missing money, but only, at your request, passing it over for the present. I will repeat, however, that if Rose will confess and return the money, no one but ourselves shall ever know of it. If she does not I shall feel myself constrained, much as I may regret the [Pg 218] necessity, to resort to more severe measures,” and he blew his nose with a great flourish of his red silk handkerchief by way of emphasis.

So absorbed was Rose in her trouble that she took little or no interest in the attempt to discover her family, or the discussions that took place in the Blossom household as to its probable result. “I don’t believe I have any relatives,” she said indifferently, “or they would have looked after me when my mother and father died. And even if I have they wouldn’t want to own any one accused of stealing.”

That was the burden of all her thoughts; she woke in the morning to a sense of overwhelming calamity, and went to sleep at night with its pressure heavy on her heart. When Grandmother Sweet had mildly questioned if in the discovery of the marriage certificate she did not see the hand of Providence, she had replied, with the irritability of suffering, that she didn’t believe in Providence at all. [Pg 220] “I might,” she had added, “if that money could be found; I sha’n’t till then.”

For to Rose the executioner’s sword had not been lifted, only stayed for the time. Visions of arrest and imprisonment were constantly before her, all the more terrifying that the vagueness of her knowledge as to their realities left ample room for her imagination. “ How can I tell where the money is when I don’t know?” was the question she repeated over and over. “And you know what he said he would do if I didn’t tell?”

She refused to go to school for fear her schoolmates had heard of her disgrace. She cried till she was nearly blind, and fretted herself into a fever, till Mrs. Blossom, fearing she would make herself really sick, talked to her seriously on the selfishness as well as the harm of self-indulgence, even in grief, and the duty as well as the need of self-control.

Rose had never thought of her conduct in that light before, and left alone she lay for a long time, now thoroughly aroused from her morbid self-absorption, and looking herself, as it were, fully in the face. The fire crackled [Pg 221] cheerily in the little stove, the sunshine came in at the window of the pleasant, low chamber, on the stand by her bed were a cup of sage tea Grandmother Sweet had made for her, a glass of aconite Mrs. Patience had prepared, and a dainty china bowl of lemon jelly Miss Silence had brought to tempt if possible her appetite. Mute evidence, each and all of kindly affection, that touched Rose and filled her with a sense of shame that she had made such poor return for all that had been done for her.

Rising with a sudden impulse, she went to the little glass, pushed back the tumbled hair from her tear-swollen face, and sternly took herself to task. “I’m ashamed of you, I am indeed, that after you have been taken into this home, and cared for, you should be so ungrateful as to make every one in it uncomfortable now, because you happen to be in trouble; and should have shown yourself as disagreeable, and selfish, and thoughtless as you have. Not one of them would have done so, you may be sure; and if you ever expect to grow into a woman that people will respect and love as they do Grandmother Sweet, or [Pg 222] Mrs. Blossom, or Miss Silence, or Mrs. Patience, you must learn to control yourself. And now, to begin, you must brush your hair, bathe your eyes, go downstairs and do as you ought to do. I know it will be pretty hard, but you must do it.”

It was hard. With a morbid self-consciousness that every one could not but know of her trouble she had hidden, shrinking from the village folk who so often came in; she was so weak that as she crossed the room she had to put her hand against the wall to steady her steps; and now that she was making the effort to rouse herself she began to see the luxury it had been to be perfectly wretched. But Rose resisted the temptation to throw herself again on the bed; she crept steadily, if somewhat weakly, downstairs, and made a brave attempt at smiling. With a guilty sense of all the opportunities for making herself useful she had neglected, she took up a stitch in her knitting Grandmother Sweet had dropped; overcast some velvet for Mrs. Patience, who was in a hurry with a bonnet; and that done helped Miss Silence set the table and make supper ready.

[Pg 223]

They all saw the struggle Rose was making and helped her by keeping her mind as much as possible off from herself. And though that missing money still hung its dark shadow over her, and she started at every step outside with the sinking fear that it might be some one coming to arrest her, when she went to her room that night Grandmother Sweet patted her cheek as she kissed her good-night and whispered, “Thee has done bravely, Rose,” an unspoken approval she read in the manner of the others. More than that, she was surprised to find her heart lighter than she would have thought possible a few hours before.

To keep steadily on in the way she had marked out for herself was anything but easy during those days of suspense and anxiety. To hold back the lump that was always threatening to rise in her throat, the tears from springing to her eyes; to keep a cheerful face when her heart would be sinking down, down; to feel an interest in the concerns of others when her own seemed to swallow up everything else. But it was her first step in a habit of conscious self-discipline that [Pg 224] she never forgot, and that helped her to meet many an after hour of trial.

So something over a week went by, for though Mrs. Blossom had seen Mr. Nathan Fifield several times the mystery was as much of a mystery as the first day, and in spite of all Mrs. Blossom could urge both he and Miss Eudora seemed to grow the more bitter toward Rose. Nor had there come any answer to the letters of inquiry sent to Fredonia. Every possible theory having been exhausted in both cases, the subjects had come to be avoided by a tacit consent. While as to the matter of the marriage certificate, that had made so little impression on Rose’s mind that she was less disappointed than the others in regard to it. Mrs. Blossom did not fail to pray daily at family devotions that the truth they were seeking might be revealed, and innocence established, and she moved around with the serene manner of one who has given over all care to a higher power. But though Rose was unconsciously sustained by a reliance on that strong faith she did not pray for herself. A hopeless apathy [Pg 225] chilled her. There might be a God, it didn’t matter much to her, for if there was she was an alien to His love, and she knew she was that for all the rest might say.

But one afternoon Rose saw a little procession—Mr. Nathan Fifield and his two sisters, in single file, crossing the now snow-covered common in the direction of Mrs. Blossom’s. All her fears revived at the sight. She sprang up, her eyes dilated, her face flushing and paling. “There they come!” she cried. “I knew they would. They are going to put me in prison, I know they are! Oh, don’t let them take me away! Don’t let them!” and she threw herself down beside Miss Silence and hid her face in her lap as if for safety.

Silence put her strong arms about the trembling form. “Sit up, Rose,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “and wait till you see what there is to be afraid of.”

By the time Rose had struggled back to outward calmness the visitors had entered; Mr. Nathan, his face almost as red as the red silk handkerchief he waved in his hand; [Pg 226] Miss Eudora dissolved in tears; and Miss Fifield with an expression of mingled vexation and crestfallen humility.

There was a moment’s awkward silence, broken by Mr. Nathan in an abrupt and aggravated tone. “I’ve come to explain a mistake I have been led into by women’s meddling and—”

“You needn’t include me,” interrupted Miss Eudora. “You know I wouldn’t have said what I did if you hadn’t made me feel that we were in danger of being murdered in our beds, and I hadn’t thought Jane would be always blaming me if I didn’t use decision. Nobody can tell how painful it has been for me to do what I have. I don’t know when my nerves will recover from the strain, and I’ve lost flesh till my dresses are so loose they will hardly hang on me. I’m sure I never dreamed that Jane—”

“Oh, yes, lay all the blame you can on Jane,” rejoined that lady grimly. “It isn’t often you get the chance, so both of you make the best of it. I’m sure when I went away I never dreamed that you were going to get in a panic [Pg 227] and act like a pair of lunatics, particularly a strong-minded man like Nathan. I never was so astonished as when I reached home on the stage to-day and found out what had happened. Eudora says she wrote me about it, but if she did she must have forgotten to put the State on; she always does, and the letter may be making the round of the Romes of the whole country; or else Nathan is carrying it in his pocket yet—he never does remember to mail a letter.”

“If I were you I wouldn’t say anything about remembering, now or for some time to come,” snapped her brother.

“Friends,” Grandmother Sweet’s voice was serenely calm, “if thee will refrain from thy bickering and explain what thee means, it will be clear to our minds what doubtless thee wishes us to know.”

While Rose, unable longer to restrain her impatience, exclaimed, “Oh, tell us, have you found who stole the money?”

“That is just what I want to do if I can have a chance,” and Mr. Fifield glared at Jane and Eudora. Then to Rose, “No, we [Pg 228] haven’t found who stole the money,” and as her face paled he hastened to add, “because, in fact, the money was not stolen at all.”

“Where—what—” cried his eager listeners, while Rose drew a long breath of infinite relief and sank back in her chair trembling, almost faint with the joyful relaxation after the long strain of anxiety.

“Jane,” Mr. Nathan continued, rubbing his head till every hair stood up, “simply saw fit to remove the money from the place where she knew I was in the habit of keeping it, without even letting me know what she had done.”

“You see,” explained Miss Fifield, feeling herself placed on the defensive and determined to maintain it boldly, “I had just read of a man who kept his money in a stove, and one day some one built a fire and burned it all up, so I felt a stove was not a very safe hiding-place.”

“Well,” snorted Mr. Nathan, “as there hasn’t to my certain knowledge been a fire in that parlor stove for the last four years, I don’t think there was much danger, to say nothing of the fact that gold will not burn.”

[Pg 229]

“But it will melt,” triumphantly. “Besides, I have been told that when burglars go into a house under carpets and in stoves are among the first places they look. For these reasons I changed it to a trunk under a pile of papers in the store-room. I intended to have told Nathan what I had done, but in the hurry of getting away I did forget. But I should have thought that before accusing any one they would have waited to see what I knew about the matter.”

“You say so much about my being forgetful that I didn’t suppose you ever did such a thing as to forget,” growled Mr. Nathan. And Eudora added, “And her mind’s always on what she is doing. She has so little patience with mistakes I never thought of her being the one to blame.”

“At any rate,” retorted Miss Fifield, “I don’t lose my glasses a dozen times a day. And I don’t put things in the oven to bake and get to mooning and let them burn up. I admit I was in fault about this, and I am as sorry as I can be for the trouble it has made, and most of all for the unjust suspicion it has brought on Rose; but, fortunately, no one [Pg 230] but ourselves is aware of this, and I don’t know as it will make matters any better to harp on it forever.”

In fact, it needed no words to tell that the Fifields were not only heartily sorry for what had happened, but decidedly ashamed. For every one had been touched in the way to be felt most keenly; Squire Fifield in that he had been proven unjust and mistaken in his opinion, Miss Eudora that she had been hard-hearted, and Miss Fifield that she had failed in memory and laid herself open to blame. This blow at the especial pride of each, made them, while really glad that Rose had been proved innocent, for the moment almost wish that she or some one could at least have been guilty enough to have saved them the present irritation of chagrin and humiliation.

Perhaps unconsciously something of this showed itself in Mr. Nathan’s manner as he said: “Yes, Rose, we deeply regret that we have wrongfully accused you—though I must still say that under the circumstances we seemed justified in doing so, and I hope you will accept this as a compensation for the [Pg 231] trouble it has made you,” and he dropped a couple of gold eagles in her lap.

Rose’s cheeks crimsoned. “I don’t want any such money,” she cried hotly, flinging the gold coins to the floor. “Because I was poor and hadn’t any home or friends you thought I must be a liar and a thief. If you had said as though you’d meant it that you were sorry for the way you had treated me it would have been all I asked. I don’t ask to be paid for being honest. It’s an insult for you to offer to, and I’d beg before I’d touch it, I would!”

“Rose, Rose!” reproved Mrs. Blossom, who had been unable to check the indignant torrent. “I trust you will overlook the way Rose has spoken,” she hastened to say. “This last week has been a great strain on her, and her nerves are in a condition that she is hardly responsible.” As she spoke she gave a warning glance at Silence, from the expression of whose face she knew that she approved of Rose’s action, and was fearful would endorse it in words; at the same time Mrs. Patience looked at Rose in amazement [Pg 232] that she should dare thus to provoke Nathan Fifield’s well-known irascible temper, and all present waited for the explosion they expected would follow.

But contrary to their expectation after a moment’s amazement he began to laugh. “She’ll do,” he said to Mrs. Blossom with a nod of approval. “Grit like that will pull through every time, and she’s got it about right, too. Upon my word,” rubbing his hands as if at a sudden idea, “if no one else puts in a claim I will be tempted to adopt her myself. I believe an education wouldn’t be wasted, and with her spunk I’d like to see what she would make.”

One good thing about Rose’s temper was that though fiery its flame was quickly spent, and penitence was almost sure to swiftly follow wrath. It was so in this case; hardly had he ceased speaking when a meek little voice was heard, “I didn’t do right at all, Mr. Fifield, to talk to you as I did, and I hope you’ll forgive me?”

“Well, my dear,” was the answer, “I didn’t do right either in being so ready to think evil of you, in being on the lookout for [Pg 233] something wrong, as I was, and I hope you’ll forgive me?”

“And me, too,” sobbed Miss Eudora. “I never was hard on anybody before in my life, and I’m sure I never will be again.”

“And now,” observed Miss Fifield drily, “I suppose I ought to ask to be forgiven for being the guilty one.”

“Oh, Miss Fifield,” and Rose caught her hand, “we all forget things; I know I tried you lots of times by forgetting. It wasn’t—I suppose—strange they should have thought as they did, but it’s all right now. And please promise me, Mr. Fifield and Miss Eudora, that you will let it all go, and never say anything unpleasant to Miss Fifield about it.”

“Why, child!” cried Mr. Nathan, as if astonished at the idea, “I wouldn’t say anything unpleasant to my sisters, I never do. Of course I have to hold them level now and then, but I don’t know as I ever spoke a really unpleasant word to them in my life.”

“Yes,” Miss Fifield’s tone was complacent, “that is one of the things I have always been thankful for, that we were a perfectly [Pg 234] harmonious family. I don’t deny that I am tried sometimes with Nathan and Eudora, but I never let them know it.”

“I have my trials, too,” added Miss Eudora with a pensive shake of her little grey curls, “but I bear them in silence. Family squabbles are so disgraceful that I don’t see how a person of refinement could ever take part in one.”

Rose stared round-eyed from one to another speaker, and Silence Blossom turned her face away for a moment; but Grandmother Sweet smiled gently, for she had long ago learned how seldom it is that people know their own faults, or see themselves as others see them.

As they were leaving Miss Fifield turned to Rose. “Of course we shall want you to come back to us. When will that be?”

“Not just at present,” Mrs. Blossom hastened to answer. “First of all she must have time to rest and get back to her usual self.” Rose lifted grateful eyes, for at that moment it didn’t seem to her that she could enter the Fifield house again.

At the door Miss Eudora paused. “And [Pg 235] you haven’t heard anything yet about her people? Finding the marriage certificate in the locket was just like a story. And if she should prove to be an heiress how romantic that would be! I heard of such a case the winter I was in Albany.”

Surprising events were not over for Rose. The next morning as she was dusting the sitting-room, with a lighter heart than she had thought could ever again be hers, a carriage drew up at the small white gate, from which an old gentleman alighted and came nimbly along the narrow, flagged walk, tapping the stones smartly with his gold-headed cane.

“Is this Mrs. Blossom?” he asked in a thin, brisk voice as she answered his knock on the green-paneled door, where Rose had stood with fluttering heart so few months before. “Then I suppose you are the person who wrote concerning a young girl supposed to be the daughter of Kate Jarvis and James Shannon.”

At that moment he caught sight of Rose. “Bless my heart!” he exclaimed, stepping in. “If there isn’t the child now! Kate’s own daughter; I’d have known her anywhere. [Pg 237] The very picture of what her mother was at her age. Bless me!” and he rubbed his thin face, flushed with the chill of the ride from Byfield and wrinkled like a withered apple, with a great white silk handkerchief.

“Turn around to the light, child,” he directed Rose, not heeding Mrs. Blossom’s invitation to lay aside his wraps. “I want to get a good look at you. Yes,” lifting her chin and moving her head from side to side, “clear Jarvis and no mistake—the color of the hair and eyes, the turn of the head and all. I’m thankful you’re no Shannon, though Jim looked well enough as far as that went.

“Dear, dear,” to Mrs. Blossom, “to think that Brother Robert’s daughter, the little Kate I have held on my knee many a time, should be grown and married and dead, and this be her child. It’s difficult, madam, to realize such changes; it makes one feel that he is growing old, upon my word it does.”

Rose, on her part, was looking at him intently. “I believe it is your picture in the locket,” and running upstairs she quickly returned with it open in her hand.

[Pg 238]

He drew out his eye-glasses. “Yes, that is my picture. Quite a good-looking fellow I was in those days. Kate was my only niece, and I gave her the locket on her eighteenth birthday. And so she always kept it, and you have it still. Well, well!”

“And had my mother an Aunt Sarah?” questioned Rose.

“Yes, her mother’s only sister, Sarah Hartly.”

“I have a Bible she gave my mother, with ‘To Kate from Aunt Sarah,’ written inside.”

“Well,” with a little chuckle, “I’m surprised to know that she ever gave anybody anything.”

“I haven’t thanked you yet,” and he turned again to Mrs. Blossom, “for the interest you have shown in the matter. Indeed I was so surprised when I received the letter from the minister who married Kate, who still lives in Fredonia, inclosing yours to him, and the first word concerning Kate for fifteen years, that I haven’t recovered from it yet. And now to find another Kate, as you may say; why, it makes me feel as though I had [Pg 239] lost my reckoning, and the world had rolled back thirty years.”

“And did you not know then that Rose’s mother was dead?”

“No. Since her foolish, runaway marriage to Jim Shannon, sixteen years ago, I had not heard a word either from or about her, till your letter, and you know how little that told. Since her mother’s death the lawyer in charge of the business has made every effort to find a trace of Kate or her heirs, but in vain. Of the events of her later life I know nothing whatever, not even when or where she died.”

“It was when I was quite a little girl,” answered Rose, “and in a city that I now think was Chicago.”

“I gather from Mrs. Blossom’s letter that your father was also dead. Is that so?”

“Yes; he died a little while after mamma.”

“A fortunate circumstance for you,” with a nod to Mrs. Blossom. “And where have you been all this time; and why if you had your mother’s marriage certificate didn’t you try to find your friends, or somebody before this try to find them for you?”

[Pg 240]

In the meantime, Mr. Samuel Jarvis, the old gentleman, as he talked, had by degrees taken off his muffler, fur-lined overcoat, fur cap and gloves, and accepted the comfortable rocker before the fire. Now in answer to his question, made though it was in a somewhat testy fashion, Rose related to him her story, recalling all the details she could remember of her mother, while Great-Uncle Samuel rubbed his eyes with his big silk handkerchief and murmured, “Poor Kate, poor Kate!”

When she came to her residence with Madam Atheldena Sharpe, his tone changed to one of horrified protest. “Kate’s baby in the hands of a travelling clairvoyant; exhibited like a Punch and Judy Show; who ever heard of such a thing!” As she told of the exposure, and her desertion by Madam Sharpe, the bitterness and misery of which she had never forgotten, he bristled with indignation. “Kate’s baby with nowhere to go and nothing to eat; alone, afraid, and hungry! Could it be possible!”

All excited as she was, and stimulated still more by his interest, Rose gave to her story [Pg 241] a certain dramatic force. Her keen sense of the ludicrous gave some humorous touches even to her description of Mrs. Hagood. When it came to her trouble with that lady she hesitated a moment, and then gave a most dramatic account of the closing scene, as well as of her flight, her encounter with Ben Pancost, and the help he had given her.

“True Jarvis spirit!” cried Great-Uncle Samuel, rubbing his hands. “Kate’s baby climbed out of the window in the night; tramped off all alone. Just think of it! And that boy, I’d like to meet him!”

But when she came to tell of her appearance at the Blossom home, and the kindness which she had there received, he insisted on shaking hands with the whole family in turn. “Bless me,” he exclaimed, “to think you have done all this for Kate’s baby. Who ever heard anything like it?”

Her stay at the Fifields’, including as it did the accusation made against her there, was a subject so fresh and painful to Rose, and seemed to her from the fact of the suspicion to involve her in such a disgrace that when she came to it she flushed, hesitated, [Pg 242] and Mrs. Blossom, seeing her embarrassment, came to the rescue and related the circumstances that had led to the bringing out of the locket, and the accidental discovery of the marriage certificate inside it.

To Rose’s great surprise Great-Uncle Samuel did not seem to regard the fact that she had been charged with theft as anything particularly shameful; indeed he treated it with decided indifference. “They need not have worried,” with a lofty tone, “as to her being a low-bred child, the Jarvises are as good blood as you will often find. And to think,” sadly, “that the locket I gave Kate should have served a purpose neither of us ever dreamed of.”

“And why was it you didn’t know anything about my mother?” asked Rose.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Blossom, “that is a question I was just going to ask.”

“As I said before, when she ran away with Jim Shannon she cut herself off from all her friends. Poor Kate, how much suffering she brought on herself by her wilfulness! And yet I don’t think the blame was all hers. If her father had lived I’m certain [Pg 243] it would never have happened; but her mother was a woman who wanted to bend every one and everything to her will. And Kate was an uncommonly high-spirited girl, impulsive and a trifle headstrong, but generous, affectionate, and everybody’s favorite; a girl that it needed some tact to manage, and her mother hadn’t a particle of tact. So when Kate fell in love with Jim Shannon she made a bad matter worse instead of better. Enough was said to Kate but she wouldn’t believe a word of it. I told her myself that he drank like a fish, and she only held up her head and said that he might have been a trifle wild, as any number of other young men had been, but that he was going to be entirely different. Well, it was the old story, marry him she would and did. And when she wrote to her mother asking if she could come home, Mary sent word back that she might, but her husband could never cross her threshold. Of course that made Jim mad, and Kate wrote at once that whoever received her must receive her husband also. Her mother sent that letter back to her, and there it all ended. In less than [Pg 244] a week they were on their way West, and Kate never wrote a word home again.

“Some of her girl friends had a few letters from her, very bright at first, and telling how happy she was in her new home, but these soon stopped. I don’t deny that I was a good deal put out with her at first, but I understood her silence only too well. If life had gone smoothly with her she would have written, but as it was, she knew that whatever she had to endure she had brought it on herself, and she would bear it alone.

“Kate’s mother was a proud woman, too. From the day Kate left she never mentioned her name, nor would she let any one mention it to her; but I believe that secretly she lived in the expectation and hope of her return. It was like her when she died, five years ago, not to leave any will, and the lawyer has advertised, and tried in every way to find some trace of Kate. And now, like the spring in the locket, all at once unexpectedly it opens and everything is clear and plain.”

He turned abruptly to Rose, who had been listening intently to all that concerned her [Pg 245] mother. “What did they say your name was, Rose? I ought to remember that, when I was a little boy in school if there was a little girl we liked very much we used to write on a slate,

and hold it up for her to see. Now, Rose, when I speak of the property your grandmother has left you may think you are going to be an heiress. And I want to tell you the first thing that you will be nothing of the kind. My brother left everything to his wife, and she had no more business sense than that cat, so when she died there was very little left. I don’t know the exact amount but somewhere about three thousand dollars. The proofs are sufficient that you are Kate’s child, so there will be no trouble there. But you understand that there isn’t enough for you to go to seaside summer resorts, or to fly very high in the fashionable world.”

Rose laughed outright. “Why, I don’t [Pg 246] know anything about either seaside summer resorts, or the fashionable world, and never expect to.”

“Just as well; it’s a pity more women, young and old, can’t say the same. But as I was going to say, if you are willing to use strict economy there will be enough to take care of you at least till you are through school.”

Rose’s eyes sparkled with joy. “Oh, if there is only enough for that it is all I ask! Once I have education to teach I can take care of myself.”

“That sounds like Kate. And if you are like her as much as you look I sha’n’t fear for you.”

“Or course, Mr. Jarvis, you will stay with us to dinner, and as much longer as you can,” said Miss Silence as he drew out a big gold watch and snapped the case open.

“Thank you, madam, thank you. I shall be glad to accept your hospitality for the dinner. In the meantime I think I will take a walk about your pleasant little village. By the way, there are two questions I always ask concerning a place: what is its latitude, and population?” and he looked from one to another.

Miss Silence laughed. “I am afraid we can answer neither question.”

“It doesn’t matter, I can judge of the latter myself.” And having enveloped himself again in his muffler, overcoat, cap, and gloves, he went briskly down the walk, his cane seeming more for ornament than need.

Rose hurried out into the kitchen and putting [Pg 248] on her gingham apron began to set the table. “I suppose now,” and Silence counted out the eggs to fry with the ham, “that I sha’n’t have you to help me much longer.”

“Oh, Miss Silence,” and dropping the bread tray, Rose caught her around the waist and gave her a squeeze, “you know, you know, I never will go away from here as long as I may stay.”

For Rose had been tossed to and fro like a shuttlecock at the mercy of adverse currents so long, that she felt not only some wonder but a little uneasiness as to what disposal would next be made of her.

“It’s very nice, of course,” as she sliced the bread, “when I didn’t know that I had a relative to have Great-Uncle Samuel walk in, and I suppose he has the right to say where I shall go, and what I shall do. Only I’m so tired of changes and uncertainties that I wish I might never have to make another change; and I wish that I might know right now, right away, what I am going to do.”

As for Mr. Samuel Jarvis, the surprising news of Rose’s existence, followed so quickly by her appearance before him in the flesh, [Pg 249] was of itself bewildering, to say nothing of the responsibility so suddenly thrust upon him of making provision for her future.

This was shown by a certain preoccupation of manner on his return. Not so much so but that his eyes, still keen and bright, noted everything around him; the well-appointed table, the delicately served food, the low tones and gentle manners of the group surrounding it, the air of order and comfort pervading the modest home. But it was not till he pushed back from the table after the meal that he mentioned the question of vital interest to Rose.

“I’ve been thinking,” he spoke to Mrs. Blossom, tapping his cane on the floor as he talked, “what I ought to do for Kate’s baby now I’ve found her, and I don’t know when I’ve come across a harder proposition. I don’t wonder that women look worn out who have half a dozen girls to provide for. I’m sure that one would be too much for me.

“Of course Sarah Hartly is the one who ought to take Violet—oh, Rose, so it is, and if she wasn’t so supremely selfish she would. I stopped off at Fredonia, on my way from [Pg 250] Buffalo here, and put it up to her. There she is, her grandmother’s sister, and Kate her only niece, a widow without chick or child, and a house she doesn’t begin to use, and she said her health wasn’t good enough, and her nerves were too weak to take a bouncing girl—those were her very words, ‘bouncing girl,’ into her family. I should think her nerves would be weak,” he sniffed, “with that miserable whiffet dog she keeps, barking and snapping at every one. Snapped at me he did, and I told Sarah plainly that if a dog ever bit me some one would pay well for it. She shut him up then, and he was howling and scratching when I came away.

“Now, I can’t take her. I never was married and I don’t know any more what a girl needs than the man in the moon. Besides, I live at a club and that would be no place for a young girl. But as I was saying about—what did you say her name was? Oh, yes, Rose, she looks strong and healthy, and I’d like to have her stay where she could have pure air, and new milk and fresh eggs. There is no place like the country to live, at least when one is young.

[Pg 251]

“I’m quite pleased with your little village; it’s situated nicely, and your town-folk tell me you have no malaria. I have made inquiry about the school and am told it is unusually good for a place of this size. And, Mrs. Blossom, I had just as soon tell you that I have made inquiries about your family, with the most flattering answers. You have all shown the kindest interest in the poor child, and from what I have heard, and still more from what I have seen, I feel that if she can remain in your care it will be the best arrangement I could make for her. Would that suit you?” turning to Rose.

“Indeed it would,” her face bright with pleasure that what she had wished seemed so near fulfilment. “Nothing could suit me better.”

“Wait a moment,” waving his hand to Mrs. Blossom not to speak; “I want to make myself fully understood. If Kate’s baby remains here you will, of course, be paid for her board, but I should want you to regard her as more than a mere boarder—in short, to receive her as one of your family, and give her the same care and interest, and as long as the [Pg 252] arrangement continues that this shall be her home, and all that implies.”

As Rose glanced from one to another she recalled the day when homeless and friendless she had sat in that same room and waited, with a hungry hope in her heart, for the decision that meant so much to her; the misery and uncertainty of further wandering, or the happiness and security of a shelter and abiding-place. There had been a great change since then. Now she had Great-Uncle Samuel to vouch for her; she was no longer an unknown and half-suspected applicant for charity, but ready and able to pay for what she had. But so dear had that home, and those within it grown to Rose, with such a dread did she shrink from the thought of being thrust out again among strangers that not even on that first time, it seemed to her, did she wait the answer more eagerly.

As often happened, impulsive Silence was the first to speak. “For my part, I should be only too glad to have Rose stay with us, and I will do all I can to make her happy here.”

“I’m sure,” it was Mrs. Patience’s gentle [Pg 253] voice, “Rose has won for herself a place in our home, that would be vacant without her.”

It was a moment longer before Mrs. Blossom spoke, and when she did there was a quiver in her usually firm, self-controlled tone, “Yes, I will keep Rose, and I will do for her just as I would have done for my own little Rachel if she had lived.”

Grandmother Sweet, sitting in her rocker with the sunshine falling across her snowy hair and serene face, laid down her knitting, whose subdued click, click, seemed like her own quiet personality to pervade the room, “I feel it borne on my mind, Elizabeth, that thee will never regret the word thee has just given.” And then to Mr. Jarvis, “Thee need feel no concern for the child, for while Silence and Patience in the tenderness of their hearts would, I fear, wholly spoil her, their mother will be heedful of her duty to guide and train. And truly it will be a pleasure to us all to have this little one of the dear Lord set in our midst.”

“Thank you, madam,” and Great-Uncle Samuel made a deferential bow to her; “I shall go away with my mind at ease.

[Pg 254]

“And now,” to Rose, “if I leave you with these kind ladies I shall expect you to be good and obedient in return for all they do for you.”

“I’ll try to be,” was Rose’s dutiful answer.

“That’s right, that’s right. I hope you always will remember to. Young people are very apt to think they know it all when they haven’t the first idea what’s for their good. I’m glad you look like your mother, and hope you will have all her good qualities, but I want you to remember the trouble she brought on herself and all who cared for her just by wilfulness. I believe that settles everything. Four dollars, I was told, is the average price for board here; if that is satisfactory a check will be sent you every three months, for that and Rose’s expenses. But mind,” turning to Rose, “you must be very prudent to make the money last.”

She hesitated a little. “I—I could go back to the Fifields’. They would pay me fifty cents a week and that would save a good deal.”

He threw up both hands. “What! Robert [Pg 255] Jarvis’s granddaughter, Kate’s child, a servant? Bless me! Never let me hear of that again!”

“Rose is very helpful about the house,” added Mrs. Blossom. “I will not ask that price.”

“Little enough, madam, little enough. Besides, I want you to teach her useful things; to cook, to take care of a house. More men are killed by bad bread than bullets, and I don’t want Kate’s baby ever to murder any one that way.” As he spoke he began to draw on his overcoat.

“Why, you are not going?” exclaimed Mrs. Blossom.

“Yes, madam, yes. There seems no need for me to stay longer. The team that brought me from the station is waiting to take me back for the evening train, and I can be in Buffalo again in the morning.”

“But when are you coming again, Uncle Samuel?” asked Rose.

“Can’t say, Rose—yes, I am right, it is Rose. What with dyspepsia and rheumatism, and the weight of years, I am not a great traveler. Besides, everything is, I believe, [Pg 256] satisfactorily settled. My brief stay has been very pleasant,” as he shook hands around, ending with Rose and the admonition, “Be a credit to these good ladies.”

The team was already waiting at the gate. “He doesn’t intend to come again,” said Rose with a wistful accent as she stood at the window and watched Great-Uncle Samuel tuck the fur robes about him and drive away.

Rose stood at the window as long as Great-Uncle Samuel was in sight. Then she turned away and sitting down on a low stool by Grandmother Sweet’s side laid her head on its chintz covered arm.

“Grandma Sweet,” she whispered softly, “I’m sorry I said what I did. I do see God’s care and leading now.”

“Dear child,” was the smiling answer as the wrinkled hand smoothed tenderly the plump, fair cheek, “never doubt His care and leading. It is not often this is made so clear and it never may be to thee again, for we are commanded to walk by faith and not by sight; but always be sure that God’s love and care are ever over thee.”

“I know it,” was the low answer. “I will never doubt it again.”

“If thee is ever tempted to, and it will be strange if thee is not—keep this in mind: [Pg 258] that the Lord’s thought toward thee is always of love, that He will lay nothing upon thee that He will not give thee strength to bear, and no discipline whose right use will not make thee stronger and better, and the better fitted for that abundant entrance into His kingdom which I trust and pray may be thine.”

Twilight shadows were creeping into the room, and these two, the young heart just opening to God’s love, and the aged heart who had tested it through a long lifetime, sat hand in hand in the peaceful stillness.

The opening of a door aroused Rose. Silence Blossom had come in from feeding her chickens, bringing with her a whiff of the crisp, outer air. “Well, Rose,” as she held out her hands to the heat of the fire, “are you a happy girl to-night?”

“Indeed I am. I thought yesterday when I knew that the money was found, that I was happy as I could be; but I am still happier now. To think that no one can call me a pauper any more, or twit me with being a charity child!” Her voice choked, for every [Pg 259] taunting reference to her poverty had stung deep, and with all the sensitiveness of a proud nature she had felt the bitterness of her dependent condition. “Just to think that I can pay for what I have, and have an education. Why, it seems too good to be true. If it were three millions I don’t believe I could feel any richer. Of course,” she hurried to add, “I know I must be very careful, but I wonder—do you think—that I could have a new dress, not made over, but one bought on purpose for me; and a pair of kid gloves—I don’t know that I could afford them, but I’ve wanted a pair so long.”

“Yes.” Silence Blossom spoke quick and decisive. “You can have a pair of kid gloves and a new dress. It can be neat and pretty without being of expensive material.”

Rose hesitated a moment. “I suppose a brown or a blue dress would do me the most service, but I’ve always wished that I could have a red dress.”

“A red dress it shall be, then,” said Miss Silence. “And you can help me make it. I haven’t forgotten how a girl feels about her [Pg 260] clothes, and as long as I have any say about it you are going to have things like other girls.”

Rose drew a blissful breath; she could hardly believe it possible. In fact, it was a difficult matter for Rose to go to sleep that night, she was so overflowing with happiness; and numberless were the plans as to what she would do and be, as blissful as they were vague, that floated through her excited mind as she lay with her eyes wide open in the moonlight.

“I wish Ben Pancost could know,” she whispered. And then for all her happiness she sighed a little quivering sigh, for since the day they parted in the little parlor of the Byfield hotel, not one glimpse had she seen or one word had she heard of Ben Pancost. He had neither come to Farmdale at the time he had appointed, nor in any of the weeks that followed, though she had watched for him with eyes that grew weary with watching, and sometimes were wet with the tears of disappointment.

Rose could not understand it. Ben had been so interested in her behalf, he had left [Pg 261] her so full of anxiety for her welfare, with such a positive promise of coming to see her. Nor could she doubt him. If ever she felt inclined to do so, the remembrance of all his kindness, of all he had been to her in the time of her sore need would come afresh to her mind. She had but to shut her eyes to see again the merry, sunburned face, with the straightforward, honest eyes, so full of sympathy, and to feel the tight clasp of his warm, brown hand as he slipped the silver dollars into it. One of these she had never spent and whenever she looked at it there came the certainty that Ben could not have failed her; something must have happened, and what that was she could not imagine. Rose seldom mentioned Ben to Mrs. Blossom or Silence, because they both inclined to the opinion that being but a boy some fresher interest had crowded the matter from his mind. But Mrs. Patience believed with her that he was not a boy to lightly break a promise, and that he would have come if he could.

“I wish more than ever that I could see Ben Pancost,” she confided to Mrs. Patience when her first check arrived, “for now I [Pg 262] could pay him back the money he let me have. And Ben works hard for his money, and he may need it. If I knew where he was I would write and send it to him.”

“Oh, no, Rose!” Mrs. Patience’s sense of propriety was delicate and old-fashioned. “It would hardly be proper for a young girl to write to a boy.”

“But this would be different,” urged Rose. “It would be business, paying a debt.”

“That would make a difference,” admitted Mrs. Patience, “for a lady would not wish to rest under an obligation of that kind if she could avoid it. But then you do not know where he is.”

“No,” admitted Rose sadly, for brief as her acquaintance with Ben Pancost had been its circumstance had made it one of the most vivid memories of her life; and the day spent with him, as she looked back on it, seemed to her almost like a page out of fairyland, with Ben himself, warm-hearted, sympathetic, loyal Ben, with his happy self-confidence and happier confidence in God, as its knight and hero.

[Pg 263]

Then Rose’s face brightened. “For all that, I have a feeling that I shall meet Ben again, sometime.”

“He may be dead,” suggested Mrs. Patience, whose own bereavement sometimes gave a tinge of melancholy to her sweet nature.

“Then he has gone to heaven,” was Rose’s quick answer, “and if when I die I go there, too, I shall be sure to meet him.”

A few days later Rose came in with her arm full of school books. “Those are my books for next term,” as she spread them proudly on the table.

“The history is not new,” remarked Silence Blossom as she glanced them over.

“No; Clara Brown used it last year. But it is not much soiled and she let me have it fifty cents cheaper than a new one, and I have a particular use for that fifty cents.”

With that Rose went up to her room and after a time came down with an open letter in her hand. “I’ve been writing to Mrs. Hagood, and I’d like to read it to you, and have you tell me if it’s all right.

[Pg 264]

She paused and looked from one to another. “Will that do?”

[Pg 265]

“I didn’t hear any regret for the way you left Mrs. Hagood,” said Mrs. Blossom.

“No, nor you won’t hear any. I know I didn’t do right, but if she had done what was right herself it wouldn’t have happened. If I’d said anything, I should have said that, so I thought perhaps I’d better not say anything. I’ve always felt she might say that I took what didn’t belong to me, and I’m only too glad to send her the money. I would have liked to have added something to Mr. Hagood, but I was afraid if I did it would make trouble for him. She will be apt to read the letter to him, and he will be glad to know I am so nicely settled, but it will make her feel pretty bad to know that I can pay for my board and she not get the money,” and Rose gave a chuckle.

“How did you sign yourself?” asked Miss Silence, who had been biting her lips to keep from laughing.

“I just signed my name. I wasn’t going to say ‘Yours truly,’ or ‘sincerely,’ for I’m not hers, and it’s one of the joys of my life that I never shall be.” And Rose folded the letter into its envelope and patted on the stamp.

It was some two weeks after Great-Uncle Samuel’s visit that the stage one day stopped at the Blossom’s. “Rose Shannon live here?” the driver asked. “Here’s a box for her I found over at Byfield.”

“A box for me?” cried Rose, circling round it. “Who in the world can it be from?”

“Perhaps when we open it we will know,” and Silence brought the hatchet and quickly had the cover loose. “There’s a letter,” as she lifted the lid. “No doubt that will tell.”

Rose unfolded the letter and read it in silence. Then she handed it to Mrs. Blossom. “It’s from my Great-Aunt Sarah; you can read it out loud.” Her cheeks were red, but she spoke quietly, so quietly that Mrs. Blossom glanced at her keenly as she took the letter and read:

[Pg 267]

No one made a remark as Mrs. Blossom finished the letter, till Miss Silence spoke, “Well, let us see what’s in the box.”

The contents were quickly taken out, for even Grandmother Sweet would have confessed to a curiosity in the matter. These were an old black velvet dress worn threadbare at the seams and trimmed with beaded fringe; a soiled black and white check wool wrapper; a black satin skirt shiny with wear; a purple silk with coffee stains down the front breadth; some brown brocaded material which had evidently served as lining to a cloak; a bundle of half-worn stockings; several yards of black feather trimming, moth-eaten in spots; a pair of fancy bedroom slippers; and at the bottom of the box a plush cape heavily braided with a bugle trimming.

[Pg 269]

Hardly a word had been uttered as one by one the garments had been unfolded. Rose had knelt among them in silence; now she drew the cape about her and rose to her feet. For a moment she looked down at herself, then tearing the cape off she gave it a throw and sank back in a little heap on the floor. “I know it would be comfortable,” she wailed, “and I need it, and it would save spending money, but I can’t wear that cape with those bugles, I can’t.”

Silence Blossom was laughing. “You needn’t wear it, Rose,” she said soothingly.

Mrs. Patience had lifted the cape and was examining it, “That was an expensive garment, when it was new.”

“It might have been, when it was new,” retorted her sister.

“What am I to do with the stuff?” questioned Rose with a tragic gesture toward the unfolded garments scattered round her. “I’ve a good mind to pack it in the box again and send it straight back to Great-Aunt Sarah!”

“No, no, Rose,” reproved Mrs. Blossom; “remember she is your aunt.”

“I do remember.” Rose’s eyes were sparkling [Pg 270] with angry tears. “I used sometimes to imagine what it would be like if I should ever find my relatives and have real aunts and uncles and cousins, who cared for me. Well, I have found them,” and she drew a sobbing breath. “I have a Great-Uncle Samuel and a Great-Aunt Sarah; and neither one cares that for me,” and she gave a snap to her fingers, “and neither one will have me—though I’m glad Great-Aunt Sarah doesn’t want me. But I shall love Great-Uncle Samuel always, even if I never see him again, because he did take enough interest to come and see me, and plan things for me. When I was Posey, I was nobody’s Posey; and now I’m Rose, I’m nobody’s Rose!”

“You are our Rose,” and Mrs. Patience put her arms about her, “and the Fifields think you are their Rose. I will tell you what you can do. You can win the love of people for yourself, and so be everybody’s Rose.”

Rose suddenly smiled. “I never thought of that before, but I will do it. And Grandmother Sweet shall tell me how, for everybody loves her.”

[Pg 271]

But Grandmother shook her head. “That is something thee will have to learn for thyself. Only I will tell thee one thing, if thee would win love thee must first give love; whatever thee would get out of life thee must first put into life.”

Miss Silence had been going over the things again with her practised eye. “See here, Rose, we can wash up this black and white check and it will make you a good school dress, with a color for piping to brighten it. And I have been looking at the black velvet and I’m quite sure I can get you a little coat out of it. We can use the brocade for lining, and there will be plenty of feather trimming, even when the bad spots are taken out. That will look nicely with your new red dress.”

“And I will make you a little black velvet turban, and trim it with red ribbon to match your dress,” added Mrs. Patience.

“And I will show you how to put new feet in the stockings.” Grandmother Sweet had drawn one on her hand. “They are a good, fine quality.”

Rose looked from one to another. “What should I have done if I hadn’t come here? [Pg 272] You know just what to do every time. And when the world looks all grey, if it isn’t quite black, if I can see it through your eyes, why it’s pink and rosy again.”

As Rose was saying this she gathered up the articles and put them back in the box once more. “I suppose you can find a use for this purple silk. Perhaps when I’m old and wear a cap it will come useful.”

For answer Miss Silence laughed and nodded, “There will be some place where it will come in yet.”

“Rose,” said Mrs. Blossom, “I think it is time the chickens were fed.”

This was something Rose had begged to do. They were a tamer flock than Mrs. Hagood’s, petted as was every living thing about the Blossoms, and it was an unfailing pleasure to have them run to meet her, to feed them out of her hand, and to smooth their white feathers as they crowded around. As she took the measure of yellow corn from the back of the stove where it had been warming, the big Maltese cat rose and purred beside her. “No, Dandy,” and she gave him a pat, “you can’t go with me this time, the chickens [Pg 273] don’t like you; you jump and make them flutter.”

As she spoke she looked for something to put around her and her eye fell on the cape which lay this time on the top of the box. “I have just thought what I can use it for,” and she laughed merrily. “I can wear it out to the chicken house; the chickens, I know, will enjoy pecking at the bugles. That would certainly be making use of it.”

She paused with her hand on the door. “Will I have to write to Great-Aunt Sarah and thank her?”

“Don’t you think that you ought to?” Mrs. Blossom questioned in turn.

“I am not sure whether I do or not. But one thing is certain—if I do write to her you will all have to help me, for I should never know what to say.”

“I know what I should like to say to her.” Silence Blossom’s tone was scornful, though she waited till Rose was out of hearing before she spoke. “I would like to tell her that such a lot of good-for-nothing old stuff I never saw sent away. I have heard stories of the boxes sent to some of the home missionaries [Pg 274] out West, and I think this must be like them. Any woman of sense might have known that those things were not suitable for a girl of Rose’s age.”

“At least the material was good,” urged her mother.

“You mean it had been, but it was past that point. It’s very evident that Great-Aunt Sarah buys good clothes for herself. Something new for Rose for a dress would have done her more good than all that cast-off finery.”

“To my mind the letter was worse than the box,” declared Mrs. Patience. “I never heard anything more heartless and cold-blooded. One would have thought the mere facts would have aroused a sympathy for Rose.”

“She is coming in,” cautioned Miss Silence, “and we would not say anything before her. But this much is certain, that I know all I want to of Mrs. Sarah Hartly.”

You may have seen a little leaf that has fallen into a stream and been whirled along by the unresting current, torn and bruised and helpless, then suddenly drift into a still and quiet pool and lie tranquil, unvexed, while the stream, unable longer to clutch it, goes hurrying by. So to Rose, after her troubled, changeful childhood, Farmdale was the quiet pool, where she was to find a quiet, uneventful period.

Not that Rose ever thought of it as uneventful. To her school life she brought an enthusiasm that never flagged; the school tests, the class competitions, the school entertainments, the school games, and even the school differences, she entered into them all heart and soul. She studied hard, she took eager advantage of every opportunity, and was none the less ready for every enjoyment with the keen zest of her intense nature. [Pg 276] Then outside the school was the village with all its people and all their happenings, a little world of itself. “Some of the girls call Farmdale dull and poky,” she repeated wonderingly to Miss Silence. “I’m sure it isn’t dull to me—I don’t see how they can think it is.”

The Blossom household quickly became home, and home folks to Rose. But when Mrs. Blossom promised for her the same care she would have given her own little Rachel, she included also, what she would have expected of little Rachel had she lived, as she had of her other daughters, the yielding of a ready, cheerful obedience. Mrs. Blossom’s law was one Rose had known little of, the law of love, but none the less was it law. Never in their girlhood, and hardly in their maturer years, had Silence or Patience Blossom dreamed of acting in opposition to their mother’s will—that reasonable, mild, but inflexible will. And though Rose had not hesitated to face Mrs. Hagood’s fury, yet when those clear, steadfast eyes looked into hers, and that kindly but firm voice said, with its accent of decision, “Rose, you cannot!” she [Pg 277] instinctively realized that here was a force, the force of moral strength, that impetuous willfulness would beat powerless against. Nor was her affection for Mrs. Blossom any the less sincere because of the obedient respect on which it was founded.

Great-Uncle Samuel had been rightly informed that the Farmdale high school was a good one, and the lessons Rose learned within its walls were to her of value; but no less so was the unconscious teaching of the pure and unselfish lives that were open before her every day. Over an ardent young life, full of dreams and plans and ambitions, all centered in self, a happier influence could not well have fallen than that of these gentle, kindly women, whose spirit of helpfulness and sympathy was always as ready and unfailing as the flow of the fountain itself.

Was any one in distress, in perplexity, in trouble; there was no counselor so wise, discreet, trustworthy, as Mrs. Blossom, who held half the village secrets, and had served as a peacemaker times without number. Was there a bride to be dressed; no one could do it so well as Miss Silence or Mrs. Patience. [Pg 278] Was any one sick; no nurses were as tender and skillful and tireless as they. Did the shadow of death rest over a home; no voices could speak words of sweeter comfort to the dying, no other’s presence was so unobtrusive, so helpful in the house of bereavement. Indeed, few were the families in that little community to whom they were not bound by the cords of a common sympathy in some hour of joy or grief. And Rose was not the only one who often wondered how with all the calls upon them they still managed to accomplish so much, and with a manner so unhurried.

“I don’t see how you ever do it,” Rose exclaimed one day.

“It’s the busy people who find not only the most time but the most happiness,” was Silence Blossom’s cheery answer.

And realizing, as she well did, how much more of real happiness there was in the modest Blossom home than in the big Fifield house, where no one ever thought of going to ask a service, and every life was wholly self-centered, Rose could not but admit that this was true.

“I don’t see what happiness you could find [Pg 279] in sitting up all night with Aunt Polly Brown,” she protested. “I’m sure I never want to go where there’s sick people. I hope I’ll never be asked to.”

Already in that home where thoughtfulness for others was part of the daily life, and interest in any who were suffering a matter of course, it had come about naturally that Rose should be sent with a handful of flowers, or some dainty for a sick neighbor, or was asked to call at the door with a message of inquiry. So the next day she took it as a matter of course when Miss Silence asked her to take a bowl of chicken broth to Aunt Polly Brown.

“Take it right in to Aunt Polly,” said the young woman who opened the door. “She’s in the bedroom right off the sitting-room.”

Rose hesitated. She would have refused if she had known exactly how to do so. As it was, the bowl trembled a little as she walked through into the bedroom, where on a high four-post bedstead, under a “blazing star” quilt, Aunt Polly lay, a ruffled night cap surrounding her shrunken face.

“Well, now,” as Rose told her errand, “it was reel kind of Silence Blossom to send the [Pg 280] broth. I was just thinkin’ that a taste o’ chicken broth would relish. Sit down, won’t ye,” with a wistful accent, “and tell me what’s goin’ on? Mary Jane never knows nothin’. Mebby I ain’t goin’ to get well, but ’tany rate I like to know what folks is doin’.”

“I was standing on one foot wondering how quick I could get out,” Rose said, relating it all to Miss Silence, on her return. “But when she spoke that way I just thought that if I were old and sick I’d be glad to have somebody come in; and I sat down and racked my brain to tell everything I could think of. She seemed real cheered up when I came away, and I promised her I’d come again.”

“I thought you never wanted to go where there were sick people,” and Silence Blossom’s eyes twinkled.

“Well, it wasn’t so bad as I thought it was going to be, though her hands are kind of skinny. And I don’t think I feel quite as I did about sick folks now. Besides, it must be dreadful to lie in bed day after day, and if I can make a little of the time pass, why I’m glad to.”

“There is where the gladness comes in,” [Pg 281] said Mrs. Patience. “It is making the hours of suffering a little brighter, a little easier. And now you have learned this I think you will never forget it.”

“And I also remember that I promised to come down to Helen Green’s to get out my Latin with her,” and gathering an armful of books Rose hurried away.

“I am glad that Rose went in to see Aunt Polly; she is such a bit of sunshine that she could not help but do her good. Besides, she has always had such a morbid dread of a sick room,” Silence remarked as she watched her away.

“I am glad, too,” agreed Mrs. Blossom, “for Rose can gain as well as give. Of course I would not want her to go where there was any danger, but her exuberant young nature will be made the deeper and richer for being stirred and lifted out of itself.”

So among the threads of interest running from the Blossom home Rose knit her threads. The people of Farmdale became her friends, and because they were her friends she loved them, and so it was not strange that she won love in return. With the Fifields her relations [Pg 282] through the years continued of the friendliest. On her part the painfulness of being falsely accused had faded away; and on their part the fact that it had been an unjust charge had not only made them one and all feel that they owed her something in return, but had awakened an interest in her that otherwise they might never have felt. Miss Eudora regarded her in the light of a romance; Miss Jane Fifield commended the fact that she was neither vain, nor, as she was pleased to put it, “silly”; while Mr. Nathan, in his pride at Rose’s persistence, and the quality he called her “grit,” went so far as to freshen up the languages of his college days, that he might the more help her.

At their time of life it was not to be expected that the Fifield nature would greatly change; still their friendship for Rose, inexperienced young girl though she was, brought a new and wholesome atmosphere into the old house. Her flitting in and out, bright, breezy, vivacious, was a welcome break in their old formality. A part of Rose’s nature was her overflowing enthusiasm on the subject then in mind; her studies, her school [Pg 283] pleasures, whatever part was hers in the life of the village, was all shared with her friends. So when she came in beaming with excitement over the prettiness of the newest Banby baby, Miss Fifield and Miss Eudora became conscious that Mrs. Banby was a neighbor. Or if it were anxiety how little Mrs. Mather, whose husband had just died and left her with five children, was ever going to get through the winter; or rejoicing that Fanny Barber, who had been so low with inflammatory rheumatism was really improving, almost before they were aware, they would find themselves becoming interested, an interest that could easily take the form of a bundle of warm clothing for the widow, or a glass of Miss Fifield’s famous quince jelly for the invalid. And so by the slight touches of Rose’s hands they found themselves drawn gradually from their cold isolation, and nearer to those about them.

Through Cousin Allen Gloin’s wife’s sister, who lived in Horsham, Rose occasionally heard of the Hagoods, and the year after she left there was surprised by the news of Mrs. Hagood’s death.

“Mr. Hagood takes it real hard,” added her informant, “and says he don’t know how he’s ever going to get along without Almiry. Some folks thinks it’s put on, but for my part I don’t.”

“No, indeed,” had been Rose’s answer, “I think he had grown so used to her ordering him around that now he does feel lost without it.”

It was not quite two years later when one day, returning from school, Rose found a horse and buggy standing at the Blossom gate. This of itself was nothing unusual, for the business of Mrs. Patience and Miss Silence brought a large share of the Farmdale [Pg 285] people, as well as those outside its limits, to their door. But as Rose gave a second look in passing at the fat old horse and stout buggy, she suddenly realized that she had known both before, and quickening her steps she rushed into the house to find Mr. Hagood, with Rover sitting upright beside him, waiting her coming. His was the same familiar figure she remembered so well—thin, grizzled, slightly stooping; but Rose saw almost in the first glance, that his motions were brisker than in the days when she had known him, that his whiskers had been trimmed, that his hat brim had taken an upward tendency, and his eyes had lost their furtive, timid glance; in short, that there had been a change in the whole man, slight but still palpable, in the direction of cheerful, self-assertive manhood.

“Well, now, Posey,” was his greeting, as he held both her hands and smiled till his face was all a-crinkle, “if it don’t beat natur’ how you’ve growed! An’ prettier than ever, I declare! I tell you I was reel tickled when I heerd how well you was fixed, an’ that you’d found out your reel name, an’ your ma’s relations. [Pg 286] You don’t look much like the little girl Almiry brought home with her from the Refuge.”

“And that you gave the russet apples to?” Rose’s eyes were twinkling, but the tears were very near them as she recalled that day of her arrival at the Hagood home.

“So I did, to be sure. Well, Posey—if you hev got another name you’ll always be Posey to me—we did hev some good times together, didn’t we?”

Then they talked over the pleasant memories of their companionship, with a mutual care avoiding those whose suggestiveness might be the opposite. The only allusion he made to her leaving was, “Rover an’ me did miss you dreadfully when you went away, we just did. An’ so to-day, as I had to come over this way, I said to Rover, ‘We’ll stop an’ see Posey, we will.’ I’m glad we did, too, an’ I just believe Rover knows you.” And Rover, with his head on Rose’s knee and her hand smoothing his silky ears, gently thumped his tail on the floor, as if in affirmative.

Then, after a moment’s hesitation, “I was [Pg 287] sorry you an’ Almiry couldn’t fit together better; she meant well, Almiry did, but you know she’d never had any little girls of her own.” And as if fearful that he had cast some reflection on her memory he hastened to add, “Almiry was a wonderful woman. I tell you I met with a big loss when I lost her, I just did, an’ for a spell I was about broke up.” He paused with the query, “I s’pose you’d heard she was dead?”

“Yes, but I never heard the particulars. Was she sick long?”

“No; it come so onexpected it just about floored me, it did. You see she was taken with a chill, an’ she kep’ a gettin’ colder’n colder, in spite o’ everythin’ we could giv’ her, an’ do for her. Why, it did seem that what with the hot things we give her to drink, an’ the hot things we kep’ around her, that if she’d been a stone image ’twould a warmed her through; but they didn’t do a mite o’ good, not one mite. She was took early one morning, an’ late the next night I was warmin’ a flannel to lay on her. I het it so ’twas all a-smokin’, but she couldn’t feel nothin’, an’ she give it a fling, an’ riz half up in bed [Pg 288] an’ spoke, just as natural as she ever did, ‘Elnathan Hagood, I don’t believe you’ve hed that nigh the stove; what ails you that you can’t half do a thing? I’ve a good mind to get up and heat some flannel as it ought to be done. I won’t hev any till I do.’ An’ with that she fell right back on her piller, an’ never breathed ag’in. I tell you I was all broke up.”

Rose did not know what she ought to say, so she said nothing.

Mr. Hagood hesitated, cleared his throat, and remarked in an inquiring tone, “Mebby you’ve heard that I was married again?”

It was Rose’s turn to be surprised. “No, indeed, I’ve heard nothing from Horsham since Mrs. Gloin’s sister left there. But I’m glad if you have.”

“Be you really?” his face brightening. “Well, now, you see,” with the confidential tone Rose remembered so well, “mebby some folks’ld think I hadn’t orter done such a thing. But I tell you after a man has had a home as many years as I had it’s kinder tough to be without one. I couldn’t live alone; Rover an’ I tried that, an’ everything got [Pg 289] messed up dreadful; keepin’ a hired girl wasn’t much better; an’ to eat my victuals at somebody else’s table didn’t seem reel natural, now it didn’t.

“I thought if Almiry knew all the circumstances she wouldn’t blame me none ef I did marry. An’ there was Mirandy Fraser, Jim Fraser’s widow—don’t know as you ever knew her, a mighty pretty little woman—she was havin’ a hard time to get along with her two little girls, for Jim never was noways forehanded. So I figured it out that she needed a home, an’ I needed some one to make a home; an’ the long an’ short of it is I married her. An’ the plan’s worked first rate, well now it has. She ain’t such a manager,” he admitted, “as Almiry was; but then,” with a touch of pride, “I don’t suppose it would be easy to find Almiry’s equal there. But I’ll say this, I never did see Mirandy’s match for bein’ pleasant. I don’t believe anybody ever heerd her speak cross, I really don’t. She’s so contented, too, with everything; hasn’t given me the first fault-findin’ word yet, not the first one.”

“How nice that is!” Rose rejoined heartily.

[Pg 290]

“An’ the little girls,” all the lines on Mr. Hagood’s face deepened into a tender smile as he spoke of them, “Susy an’ Ruth, I just wish you could see them; there never were two prettier-behaved children, if I do say it. They like to come out an’ sit in the shop when I’m at work there, just as you used to, an’, well, they an’ Rover an’ me has some pretty good times together.”

Rose smiled. “I don’t believe they enjoy it any more than I did.”

“I don’t work so much in the shop, though,” he added, “for I’ve a good deal to look after. I’m over this way now on business. The fact of the matter is,” an accent of dejection creeping into his tone, “I’ve made a bad bargain. Ever since Almiry went I’ve kept everything up straight as a string, an’ haven’t lost a dollar till now. I s’pose she’d say it was all my fault, an’ so it is,” growing more and more depressed; “for I suppose I ought to hev known better than to hev ever lent Tom Hodges a hundred dollars. When he moved away from Horsham he couldn’t pay me, but he’d got a good place as foreman in a mill, an’ promised [Pg 291] it all right. That was eight months ago, an’ I’ve never seen a single cent, so I made up my mind I’d go over there an’ look him up, an’ I found Tom to-day down with the rheumatism, not able to do a stroke o’ work, an’ they looked in pretty bad shape—well, now they did. Of course he couldn’t pay me, said he hadn’t but two dollars in money, but there was a cow, I could take that towards it ef I wanted to. But bless you, there was four little children who would hev to go without milk ef I took the cow, an’ I told Tom I’d wait on him till he could earn the money, which just the same as meant that I’d give it to him, for crippled up as he is he can’t more’n take care of his family. An’ when I come away I handed his wife five dollars; she looked as though she needed it, an’ they’ve both always done as well as they could. I don’t know what Almiry’d say ef she could know it. But hang it all!” giving his hat a slap on his knee, “Mirandy said not to be hard on ’em, an’ it won’t kill me ef I do lose it.

“No, I can’t stay all night,” in answer to Rose’s invitation. “I brought Mirandy an’ [Pg 292] the little girls to my Cousin Em’ly’s, ten mile from here, an’ they’ll be lookin’ for me back. But I wish you’d come an’ see us, Posey,” as he rose to go. “I’ve told Mirandy about you, an’ she’d do everything to make it pleasant. We haven’t changed things any to speak of since you was there, only we live more in the front part o’ the house. I couldn’t help feelin’ at first that Almiry wouldn’t like it, but I wanted to make it pleasant for Mirandy an’ the children, an’ you know it wasn’t what you could call reel cheerful in that back kitchen.”

“And can Rover come in the house now?” asked Rose.

“Yes, Rover comes in, an’ we hev the front blinds open, an’ evenin’s last winter we’d hev apples an’ nuts an’ popcorn, ’most as though it was a party. You know,” with a broad smile, “I never had any children o’ my own before, an’ I sort o’ enjoy havin’ some little girls to call me ‘Pa.’”

Rose had come out along the walk with Mr. Hagood. As they paused at the gate he glanced around to be sure that no one but her could hear him, then lowering his voice [Pg 293] as though fearing it might reach the ears of the departed Mrs. Hagood, he added confidentially, “An’ to tell the truth, Posey, just betwixt you and me, I never was so happy before in my life as I be now.”

It was the third May that Rose had been in Farmdale. The turf on the open green was emerald velvet, the orchards were drifts of pink and white, the lilacs by Mrs. Blossom’s gate were lifting spikes of lavender, and shrubs and roses were heavy with the weight of bud or bloom. In a swift rush Rose came down the walk, the white gate clashed behind her, and she dashed into the house, rosy and breathless with haste, waving a long envelope over her head.

“What do you think that is?” she cried.

Miss Silence glanced up from her sewing machine. “It looks to me like an envelope.”

“And what do you think is inside it?” pursued Rose.

“A letter is usually inside an envelope,” answered Mrs. Patience.

“You won’t guess,” pouted Rose, “so I shall have to tell you, for I couldn’t possibly [Pg 295] keep it. This is my certificate that I have passed the teachers’ examination I went to last week, and am duly qualified to teach. Wish me joy!”

“But I thought thee went to the examination simply for the practice,” said Grandmother Sweet.

“So I did. But all the same I wanted to pass, and was so afraid I wouldn’t pass. That’s why I didn’t say more about it. And now that I have a really, truly certificate to teach! I’m sure I’ve grown an inch since I took it out of the post-office.”

“We are very glad you succeeded,” and Mrs. Patience held off a hat to see if the bunch of flowers was in the right place.

“And that isn’t all,” Rose went on blithely. “You need sixteen points to graduate from the high school, I have fourteen already, because I’ve taken extra studies; to pass the teachers’ examination counts two points, so now I can graduate this year.”

“But why do you want to graduate this year? I supposed of course you were going one more,” and Silence looked her surprise.

[Pg 296]

“I want to get to teaching. I’m just crazy to begin.”

“Rose, Rose,” Mrs. Blossom in the next room had heard the conversation, and now stepped to the doorway, “you are too young to think of teaching; even if you are qualified you have not the self-control a teacher needs.”

“Oh, don’t say that!” groaned Rose, “when I have struggled with my temper, and prayed over it, and counted a hundred before I spoke, and bitten my tongue till it bled, and did all the things I ever heard of to hold on to myself.”

“And you have done very well,” commended Mrs. Blossom. “You have overcome much, and learned some hard lessons in the bridling of your quick tongue, and holding in check your temper. But you have still more to learn, especially if you are going to teach. I know, for I was a teacher myself, and while text-books and methods change, boys and girls, as far as I can see, remain about the same.”

“All I ask is the chance to try some boys and girls.”

[Pg 297]

“Besides,” Mrs. Blossom’s voice was calmly even, “I do not think you can teach, that any school board would hire a girl of seventeen.”

“But I know people who have taught when no older than that,” persisted Rose.

“That might have been once but it is not now. Indeed I am quite sure that a law has been passed in Ohio that a teacher cannot draw pay unless she is over eighteen.”

“It is a mean old law,” scorned Rose.

“Another thing,” continued Mrs. Blossom, “your Uncle Samuel is your guardian, and he did not expect, any more than we did, that you would leave school till next year; and before taking such a step you must consult him.”

“Great-Uncle Samuel won’t care,” urged Rose, “and I’ve set my heart on getting through this year. Besides if I can’t teach I can go to school another year, and take Latin and German, and review the common branches.”

“You write to Mr. Jarvis first, and see what he says,” and Rose knew further argument was useless.

[Pg 298]

Rose waited and fretted for two weeks before an answer to her letter came, and when she read it she gave a gasp of surprise. “What do you think?” she exclaimed. “Great-Uncle Samuel says I have been a very prudent girl, while from my marks—you know I have sent them to him every quarter—I seem to have made good use of my opportunities; so if I will continue to be prudent he thinks there will be money enough for me to go to college for four years. This is what he writes: ‘Of course not to a big expensive college, that would be quite beyond your means, the Fairville Woman’s College is the one I have chosen for you. I am told that it is an excellent school, that the location is healthy, and the moral tone excellent. That you will make good use of its benefits I shall expect. Of course your Aunt Sarah Hartly ought to have seen to this for you, but as long as she wouldn’t I have done what seemed to me the best.’”

“Four years in college, will not that be fine?” Silence Blossom’s own eyes were bright with pleasure.

“Yes, I suppose it will,” Rose spoke [Pg 299] slowly. “But, you know, I never had thought of such a thing as college being possible for me; I did not think that there was money enough for that. Of course I shall like it, the only thing is it will make me so old before I get to teaching.”

The older women looked at Rose’s face, that had never lost its child expression, and laughed at her words.

“It may be though,” she went on, “that I can put in extra studies and shorten the time.”

“No, no,” protested Mrs. Patience, “to do your best work you do not want to hurry it.”

Grandmother Sweet stopped her knitting. “Rose, my husband while a lad served five years as apprentice to a carpenter. His own work was of the best, and he often said that time spent learning to use one’s tools was time saved. Now, thee is planning to use books as tools, and the better thee understands them the better work thee will do.”

“Oh, of course,” Rose hastened to say, “now the chance has come to me I wouldn’t miss it for anything. And I will make the [Pg 300] best of it, too. I’m going to send right away and get a prospectus of the college to see what the entrance requirements are. I’m not going to be conditioned, and I’d rather be a little ahead. I had planned anyway to read Virgil this summer with Mr. Fifield, and I can study up whatever else is needed.”

“I think if you are going to college this fall you will need to do some sewing as well as studying,” suggested Miss Silence.

“Of course I shall. I know I can’t spend money for a great deal; what I do have I want neat and in good shape. I’m so glad to know about it now, for I can plan the dresses I will need when I graduate from the high school so I can use them then.”

“How many will you need?” asked Silence Blossom.

“The other girls say three; a suit for the Baccalaureate sermon, another for the senior reception, and the graduating dress.”

“That last will be white, and will answer for your best white dress all the year, and if you get a pretty grey for your suit that will do for fall wear.”

“That makes two new dresses,” reflected [Pg 301] Rose. “I can’t afford any more, and one other still to be evolved. I wish the waist wasn’t so badly worn to the lavender and white striped silk Great-Aunt Sarah sent in the last box; it would make a pretty dress, and I could mend up the cream lace to trim it.”

Before Rose had ceased speaking Miss Silence was turning the leaves of a fashion book. “There is a dress in this last number that I believe we can copy, and use the purple silk she sent you once to combine with it. The solid color will give it character, and the lace will soften and keep it girlish.”

Rose was looking at the plate. “Yes, that will be pretty. You are the very Wizard of Old Clothes. And if there are scraps enough of silk and lace left I will make a little hat with purple violets for trimming to wear with it.”

She paused and lifted an impressive finger. “But mind this, when I get to earning for myself I will have some pretty dresses, and never will I wear any more of Great-Aunt Sarah’s cast-offs!”

Mrs. Patience smiled indulgently. “You [Pg 302] are young, Rose, it is only natural you should feel so. But you know you are denying yourself now so that day may come.”

“I know it,” Rose nodded. “When I have had to go without things I wanted and that other girls did have, I’ve said, ‘Never mind, you are having an education.’ I expect to have to say that pretty often when I get to college—it’s hard to realize that I am going—but I’m not going to forget that I’m working for a purpose.”

“And that’s better than fine clothes.”

Rose twisted her face. “I wouldn’t object to the fine clothes if I could have them. But I suppose I shall need some dresses for everyday wear; the blue dress I had last year will do for that, won’t it?”

“Yes, and there is your green and red plaid. You can have some separate waists, too. I’m sure, Rose, we can have your wardrobe in shape, that if not fine, it will be neat and tasty.”

“What could I ever have done without you all?” Rose paused and sighed. “I am glad that I can go to college. I shall be gladder the longer I realize it. But I feel that it will [Pg 303] just break my heart to leave here. If I could only take you all with me or bring the college to Farmdale.”

“We are glad that you can go to college, Rose,” Mrs. Blossom’s voice had not quite its usual firmness, “but you may be sure of one thing, we shall miss you more than you will us. But it is a long time till September; we will not begin the parting yet.”

“And of course I shall come back in vacations; everybody goes home then, and this is my home.”

“Do you think a college freshman will remember how to gather eggs?” asked Mrs. Patience.

“This one will, you may be sure,” laughed Rose, “and how to make omelet, and custard, and cake with them when they are gathered. It’s a pity Great-Uncle Samuel never comes so I can show him how you have taught me to cook.”

It was a busy summer for Rose; she went over all the studies in which she would be examined for entrance to college, she sewed and gathered and tucked and hemmed, and when the September days came she packed [Pg 304] her modest wardrobe in her new trunk with a curious mingling of dread and delight; dread at leaving the life she knew, the friends she had proved; delight in the new and wider world opening before her.

There had been talk of Mrs. Patience going with Rose, but it had not proved possible, so when one sunny September day the stage—the same stage that had brought her to Farmdale, stopped at the white gate, and her trunk was strapped on, with a mixture of tears and smiles the good-bys were said, and Rose settled herself in the same corner of the back seat she had occupied on that day which now seemed so far, far in the past, no longer a forlorn little figure, dingy, travel worn and friendless; but a trim young girl in a pretty grey suit, leaning out and waving her handkerchief in answer to those waved to her from nearly every house. For Rose’s friends included almost every one in Farmdale, and all her friends were interested in her start for college.

THE END