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Interrupted

by Pansy · English · Gutenberg #45537 · 439,210 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Interrupted

Author: Pansy


        
Release date: April 30, 2014 [eBook #45537]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTERRUPTED ***

[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and
italic text is surrounded by _underscores_.]

[Illustration: Louis and Alice Ansted call on Claire.    p. 206]




INTERRUPTED

    BY
    PANSY

    AUTHOR OF "AN ENDLESS CHAIN," "MRS. SOLOMON SMITH LOOKING
    ON," "CHRISTIE'S CHRISTMAS," "A HEDGE FENCE," "ESTER
    RIED YET SPEAKING," "THE HALL IN THE GROVE,"
    "CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS," "RUTH ERSKINE'S
    CROSSES," "THE MAN OF THE HOUSE,"
    ETC., ETC.

[Illustration]

    BOSTON
    LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY




    COPYRIGHT, 1885,
    BY
    D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY.

    _All rights reserved._


    PANSY
    TRADE-MARK REGISTERED JUNE 4, 1895.




CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER I.
    REACHING INTO TO-MORROW      7

    CHAPTER II.
    WHY?                        22

    CHAPTER III.
    OUT IN THE WORLD            36

    CHAPTER IV.
    AN OPEN DOOR                51

    CHAPTER V.
    TRYING TO ENDURE            65

    CHAPTER VI.
    LIFTED UP                   79

    CHAPTER VII.
    "OUR CHURCH."               93

    CHAPTER VIII.
    MAKING OPPORTUNITIES       108

    CHAPTER IX.
    OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE         123

    CHAPTER X.
    AN OPEN DOOR               138

    CHAPTER XI.
    A "FANATIC."               153

    CHAPTER XII.
    LOGIC AND LABOR            168

    CHAPTER XIII.
    INNOVATIONS                183

    CHAPTER XIV.
    BLIND                      200

    CHAPTER XV.
    STARTING FOR HOME          218

    CHAPTER XVI.
    LOST FRIENDS               235

    CHAPTER XVII.
    SPREADING NETS             254

    CHAPTER XVIII.
    BUD IN SEARCH OF COMFORT   271

    CHAPTER XIX.
    COMFORTED                  287

    CHAPTER XX.
    BUD AS A TEACHER           303

    CHAPTER XXI.
    ONE OF THE VICTIMS         318

    CHAPTER XXII.
    NEW LINES OF WORK          332

    CHAPTER XXIII.
    UNPALATABLE TRUTHS         347

    CHAPTER XXIV.
    RECOGNITION                362

    CHAPTER XXV.
    DANGERS SEEN AND UNSEEN    376

    CHAPTER XXVI.
    AN ESCAPED VICTIM          391

    CHAPTER XXVII.
    THE SUMMER'S STORY         408

    CHAPTER XXVIII.
    A FAMILY SECRET            423




INTERRUPTED.




CHAPTER I.

REACHING INTO TO-MORROW.


FROM the back parlor there came the sound of fresh young voices
brimming with energy. Several voices at once, indeed, after the
fashion of eager young ladies well acquainted with one another, and
having important schemes to further. Occasionally there were bursts of
laughter, indicating that freedom of speech and good fellowship reigned
among the workers.

The committee, or the society, or the association, whatever it was, was
breaking up, for the door was ajar, one young lady standing near it,
her hand out as if to open it wider, preparatory to departure, while
she waited to say another of the many last things. Others were drawing
wraps about them, or donning furs and overshoes, and talking as they
worked. Their voices, clear and brisk, sounded distinctly down the long
hall.

"And about the Committee on Award; you will attend to that, Claire,
will you not?"

"Oh, and what are we to do about Mrs. Stuart?"

"Why, Claire promised to see her. She is just the one to do it. Mrs.
Stuart will do anything for her."

"And, Claire, you must be sure to see the Snyders before the judge
starts on his Southern trip! If we don't get his positive promise, we
may have trouble."

"Claire Benedict, you promised to help me with my Turkish costume, you
know. I haven't the least idea how to get it up."

Then a younger voice:

"Miss Claire, you will drill me on my recitation, won't you? Mamma says
you are just the one to show me how."

"And, oh! Claire, don't forget to see that ponderous Doctor Wheelock
and get his subscription. It frightens me to think of going to him."

In the sitting-room opposite stood Claire's younger sister, Dora
Benedict. She had just come in from the outer world, and with part of
her wraps still gathered about her, stood watching the falling snow,
and listening to the voices in the back parlor. At this point she spoke:

"Mamma, just hear the girls! They are heaping up the work on Claire,
giving her the planning and the collecting and the drilling, and the
greater portion of the programme to attend to, and she calmly agrees to
do it all."

"Your sister has a great amount of executive ability, my dear, and
is always to be depended on. Such people are sure to have plenty of
burdens to carry."

Mrs. Benedict said this in a gently modulated, satisfied voice, and
leaned back in her easy chair and smiled as she spoke. She delayed a
stitch in her crimson tidy, while she listened a moment to the sound of
Claire's voice, calmly and assuringly shouldering the burdens of work;
promising here, offering there, until the listeners in the sitting-room
were prepared to sympathize with the words spoken in the parlor in a
relieved tone of voice:

"I declare, Claire Benedict, you are a host in yourself! What we should
do without you is more than I can imagine."

"I should think as much!" This from the girl in the brown-plumed hat,
who listened in the next room. "You couldn't do without her! that is
just all there would be about it! Two thirds of your nice plans, for
which you get so much credit, would fall through. Mamma, do you think
Claire ought to attempt so much?"

"Well, I don't know," responded the gentle-faced woman thus appealed
to, pausing again in her fancy work to consider the question. "Claire
has remarkable talent, you know, in all these directions. She is a born
organizer and leader, and the girls are willing to follow her lead. I
don't know but she works too hard. It is difficult to avoid that, with
so many people depending on her I don't myself see how they would
manage without her. You know Doctor Ellis feels much the same. He was
telling your father, only last night, that there was not another young
lady in the church on whom he could depend as he did on her. Your
father was amused at his earnestness. He said he should almost feel
like giving up his pastorate here, if he should lose her. Claire is
certainly a power in the church, and the society generally. I should
feel sorry for them if they were to lose her."

The mother spoke this sentence quietly, with the unruffled look of
peace and satisfaction on her face. No foreboding of loss came to her.
She thought, it is true, of the barely possible time when her eldest
daughter might go out from this home into some other, and have other
cares and responsibilities, but the day seemed very remote. Claire was
young, and was absorbed in her church and home work.

Apparently, even the _suggestion_ of another home had not come to her.
It might never come. She might live always in the dear home nest,
sheltered, and sheltering, in her turn, others less favored. Or in the
event of a change, some time in the future, it might be, possibly, just
from one street in the same city to another, and much of the old life
go on still; and in any event the mother could say "their loss," not
mine; for the sense of possible separation had not come near enough to
shadow the mother's heart as yet; she lived in the dreamland of belief
that a married daughter would be as near to the mother and the home
as an unmarried one. Therefore her face was placid, and she sewed her
crimson threads and talked placidly of what might have been, but was
not; the future looked secure and smiling.

"You see," she continued to the young and but half-satisfied daughter,
"it is an unusual combination of things that makes your sister so
important to this society. There are not many girls in it who have
wealth and leisure, and the peculiar talents required for leadership.
Run over the list in your mind, and you will notice that those who have
plenty of time would not know what to do with it unless Claire were
here to tell them, and those who have plenty of money would fritter it
all away, without her to guide, and set a grand example for them."

"I am not questioning her ability, mamma," the daughter said, with a
little laugh, "that is, her mental ability; but it seems to me they
ought to remember that she has a body, as well as the others. Still,
she will always work at something, I suppose; she is made in that mold.
Mamma, what do you suppose Claire would do if she were poor?"

"I haven't the least idea, daughter. I hope she would do the best she
could; but I think I feel grateful that there seems little probability
of our discovering by experience."

"Still, one can never tell what may happen."

"Oh, no, that is true; I was speaking of probabilities."

Still the mother's face was placid. She called them probabilities,
but when she thought of her husband's wealth and position in the
mercantile world, they really seemed to her very much like certainties.

And now the little coterie in the back parlor broke up in earnest, and,
exclaiming over the lateness of the hour, made haste into the snowy
world outside.

Claire followed the last one to the door; a young and pretty girl,
afraid of her own decided capabilities, unless kissed and petted by
this stronger spirit into using them.

"You will be sure to do well, Alice dear, and remember I depend on you."

This was the last drop of dew for the frightened young flower, and it
brightened visibly under it, and murmured:

"I will do my best; I don't want to disappoint you."

Then Claire came into the sitting-room, and dropped with an air of
satisfied weariness into one of the luxurious chairs, and folded her
hands to rest.

"Dora thinks you are carrying too much on your shoulders, dear." This
from the fancy worker.

"Oh, no, mamma, my shoulders are strong. Everything is in fine train.
I think our girls are really getting interested in missions now, as
well as in having a good time, that is what I am after, you know, but
some of them don't suspect it. Why didn't you come to the committee
meeting, Dora?"

"I have but just come in from Strausser's, on that commission, you
know, and I thought if I appeared, there would be so many questions
to answer, and so much to explain, that the girls would not get away
to-night."

"Oh, did you see Mr. Strausser? Well, what did he say?" And Claire sat
erect, her weariness gone, and gave herself to work again.

The door bell rang, and she was presently summoned to the hall.

"One of your poor persons," was the servant's message.

There seemed to be a long story to tell, and Claire listened, and
questioned, and commented, and rang the bell to give directions for a
certain package from a certain closet to be brought, and sent Dora to
her room for her pocket-book, and finally the "poor person" went away,
her voice sounding cheered and grateful as she said inquiringly:

"Then you will be sure to come over to-morrow?"

Dora laughed, as Claire returned to the easy chair.

"How many things you are going to do to-morrow, Claire? I heard you
promise the girls a dozen or so. And that reminds me that Doctor Ellis
wants to know if you will look in to-morrow, and go with Mrs. Ellis to
call on a new family, of whom he said he told you."

"I know," said Claire, "I was thinking about them this morning. I must
try and go to-morrow. They are people who ought not to be neglected.
Did he say at what hour? Oh, mamma, have you that broth ready for
aunt Kate? I might go around there with it now: I shall not have time
to-morrow, and I promised her I would come myself before the week
closed."

Then the fast falling snow was discussed, and demurred over a little
by mother and younger sister, and laughingly accepted by Claire as a
pleasant accessory to a winter walk; and it ended, as things were apt
to end in that family, in Claire having her own way, and sallying forth
equipped for the storm, with her basket of comforts on her arm.

She looked back to Dora to say that mamma must not worry if she were
detained, for she had promised to look in at Mr. Anstead's and make
some arrangements for to-morrow's committee meeting; and to add that
the papers in the library were to be left as they were, ready for
to-morrow.

"It is the eventful day," she said, laughingly, "our work is to
culminate then. We are to discover what the fruit of all this getting
ready is; we are to have things just as they are to be, without a break
or a pause."

"Perhaps," said Dora.

"Why do you say 'perhaps,' you naughty croaker? Do you dare to think
that anything will be less than perfect after the weeks of labor we
have given it?"

"How can I tell? Nothing is ever perfect. Did you never notice, Claire,
that it is impossible to get through a single day just as one plans it?"

"I have noticed it," Claire answered, smiling, "but I did not know that
your young head had taken it in."

"Ah, but I have. _I_ plan occasionally, myself, but I am like Paul
in one thing, any way, 'how to perform I find not.' It is worse on
Saturday than any other day. I almost never do as I intended."

"I wouldn't quote Bible verses with a twisted meaning, if I were you,
little girl. It is a dangerous habit; I know by experience. They so
perfectly fit into life, that one is sorely tempted. But I am not often
troubled in the way you mention; my plans generally come out all right.
Possibly because I have studied them from several sides, and foreseen
and provided for hindrances. There is a great deal in that. You see,
to-morrow, if I don't get through with all the engagements laid out for
it. I have studied them all, and there really _can't_ anything happen
to throw me very far off my programme."

There was an air of complacency about the speaker, and a satisfied
smile on her face as she tripped briskly away. She was a skilful and
successful general. Was there any harm in her realizing it?

Dora went back to the gentle mother.

"The house will be alive all day to-morrow, mamma. Claire has half a
dozen committee meetings here at different hours, and a great rehearsal
of all their exercises for the literary entertainment. There will be
no place for quiet, well-behaved people like you and me. What do you
suppose is the matter with me? I feel like a croaker. If Claire had not
just scolded me for quoting the Bible to suit my moods, I should have
said to her, 'Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what
a day may bring forth.'"

Mrs. Benedict looked up searchingly into the face of her young
daughter, who was so unlike her sister, who took life doubtfully,
and bristled with interrogation points, and dreamed while the other
worked, and leaned on Claire everywhere and always, even as she knew
she did herself.

"Claire isn't boastful, dear, I think," she said gently. "It is
right for her to rest in the brightness of the present and to trust
to-morrow."

"Oh, she has planned to-morrow, mamma; there is nothing to trust about."

Then after a moment:

"Mamma, she is good and splendid, just as she always is, and I am
cross."

Whereupon she sprang to meet her father, and before he had divested
himself of his snowy great-coat, she had covered his bearded face with
kisses and dropped some tears on his hands.

It was after family worship that evening, when the father stood with
a daughter on either side of him, with an arm around each, that he
rallied Dora on her tearful greeting.

"Dora is mercurial," her mother said. "Her birthday comes in April, and
there is very apt to be a shower right in the midst of sunshine."

"She has studied too hard to-day," the father said, kissing her fondly.
"After a good night's rest, the sunshine will get the better of the
showers."

"They both need developing in exactly different ways," he said to the
mother when they were left to themselves.

He looked after his two beautiful girls fondly as he spoke, but the
last words they had heard from him were:

"Good-night, daughters! Get ready for a bright to-morrow. The storm is
about over."

"The storm did not trouble me," said Claire. "Real work often gets on
better in a storm; and I think we shall have a chance to try it. I
think papa is mistaken; the sky says to me that we shall have a stormy
day."

When "to-morrow" came, the sun shone brilliantly in a cloudless sky;
but every shutter in the Benedict mansion was closed, and crape
streamed from the doorknobs; and during all that memorable day neither
daughter did one thing that had been planned for the day before.




CHAPTER II.

WHY?


JUST at midnight--that is, just at the dawning of the "to-morrow"
for which so much had been planned--Claire was awakened by a quick,
decisive knock at her door, followed by a voice which expressed haste
and terror:

"Miss Claire, your mother wants you to come right away, and bring Miss
Dora. Your father is sick."

And Claire was alert in an instant, wakening, soothing and helping the
frightened Dora. She herself was not greatly alarmed. It is true, her
father was not subject to sudden illnesses; but then, men were often
sick, and very sick, too, while the attack lasted. She called to mind
the story Nettie Stuart had told her that afternoon, how "papa was
so ill the night before that they really thought he would die, and
everybody in the house was up waiting on him." Yet "papa" had been at
the bank that next day, looking nearly as well as usual. Had it been
her frail mother who was ill, Claire felt that her pulses would have
quickened more than they did now. Mamma did not seem strong enough to
bear much pain, but papa was a man of iron frame, everybody said.

She told over some of these encouraging thoughts to Dora, while she
helped her to dress:

"Don't tremble so, darling; there is nothing to be frightened about.
Papa has one of his dreadful headaches, I presume, and mamma needs us
to help care for him. You know she is not feeling so well as usual.
She promised to call me the next time papa needed nursing. Men are so
unused to suffering, that a pain is something terrible to them while it
lasts."

They sped down the stairs together, Claire having slackened none of her
speed because she believed there was no cause for alarm. Her hand was
on her mother's doorknob, when the door swung open, and the mother's
white face made her start back in affright.

"Where are they?" she said, in a strange, agonized voice, groping about
with her hand as though she did not see distinctly, though the hall
was brightly lighted. "O, children, children, you are too late! Oh,
why"--and she fell senseless at their feet; and Claire was bending over
her, lifting her in trembling arms, trying to speak soothing words, all
the time wondering in a terror-stricken way what all this could mean!
Too late for what?

They had to settle down to inevitable facts, as so many poor souls
before, and since, have had to do. Of course, the first wildness of
grief passed, and they realized but too well that the father who had
kissed them and bade them look out for a bright to-morrow, had gone
away, and taken all the brightness of the to-morrow with him. At first
they could not believe it possible. Father dead! Why, his robust frame
and splendid physique had been the remark of guests ever since they
could remember! He had been fond of boasting that a physician had not
been called for him in twenty years.

Well, the physician arrived too late on this particular night, when
he had been called; another call had been louder, and the father went
to answer to it. Well for him that he had long before made ready for
this journey, and that there was nothing in the summons that would have
alarmed him, had he been given time to have realized it.

The poor widow went over, again and again, the details of that awful
hour:

"We had a little talk together, just as usual. Much of it was about
you; that was natural, too; he talked a great deal about you, children;
and on that evening, he said, after you left the room, that you both
needed developing in different ways, and sometimes it troubled him
to know how it was to be done. I did not understand him, and I asked
what he meant. He said some things that I will try to tell you when my
head is clearer. He was very earnest about it, and asked me to kneel
down with him, and he prayed again for you, dear girls, and for me, a
wonderful prayer. It wasn't like any that I ever heard before. Oh, I
might have known then that it was to prepare me; but I didn't think of
such a thing. I asked him if he felt well, and he said, oh, yes, only
more tired than usual; it had been a hard day, and there were business
matters that were not so smooth as he could wish. But he told me there
was nothing to worry about; only affairs that would require careful
handling, such as he meant to give them. Then he dropped to sleep, and
I lay awake a little, thinking over what he had said about you two, and
wondering if he was right in his conclusions. At last I slept, too, and
I knew nothing more until his heavy breathing awakened me.

"I made all possible haste for lights, and sent for the doctor and for
you just as soon as I could get an answer to the bell; and Thomas was
quick, too, but it seemed an age. The moment I had a glimpse of your
father's face, I knew something dreadful was the matter; but I did not
think, even then, that he was going to leave me."

At this point the desolate wife would break into a storm of tears,
and the daughters would give themselves to soothing words and tender
kisses, and put aside as best they could the consuming desire to know
what that dear father's last thoughts had been for them.

Well, the days passed. Isn't it curious how time moves along steadily,
after the object for which we think time was made has slipped away?

This sudden death, however, had made an unusual break in the usual
order of things. Mr. Benedict's name was too closely identified with
all the business interests of the city, as well as with its moral and
religious interests, not to have his departure from their midst make
great differences, and be widely felt.

The few days following his death were days of general and spontaneous
public demonstration. On the afternoon of the funeral, great
warehouses were closed, because his name was identified with them;
stores were closed, because crape waved from the doors of his, the
largest in the line. The First National Bank was closed, for he was one
of the Directors. The public schools were closed, because he had been
prominent among their Board of Directors; and it was so that on every
street some token of the power of the great man gone was shown.

As for the church, and the Sabbath-school, and the prayer-room, they
were draped in mourning; but that feebly expressed the sense of loss.

"We cannot close our doors to show our sorrow," said Doctor Ellis, his
lips tremulous; "we have need to throw them more widely open, and rally
with renewed effort, for one of the mighty is fallen."

To the widow and her girls, there was, as the hours passed, a sort of
sad pleasure in noting this universal mourning; in listening to the
tearful words expressing a sense of personal loss, which came right
from the hearts of so many men and women and children. They began
to see that they had not half realized his power in the community,
as young men in plain, sometimes rough dress, men whose names they
had never heard, and whose faces they had never seen, came and stood
over the coffin, and dropped great tears as they told in the brief
and subdued language of the heart, of some lift, or word, or touch of
kindness, that this man had given them, just when they needed it most.

Born of these tender and grateful tributes from all classes, was a
drop of bitterness that seemed to spread as Claire turned it over in
her troubled heart. It could all be suggested to those familiar with
the intricacies of the human heart, by that one little word, Why?
It sometimes becomes an awful word, with power to torture the torn
heart almost to madness. "Why was father, a man so good, so true, so
grand, so sadly needed in this wicked world, snatched from it just
in the prime of his power?" She brooded over this in silence and in
secret--not wishing to burden her mother's heart by the query, not
liking to add a suggestion of bitterness to Dora's sorrowful cup. Only
once, when a fresh exhibition of his care for others, and the fruit it
bore, was unexpectedly made to them, she was betrayed into exclaiming:

"I cannot understand why it was!"

Whether the mother understood her or not, she did not know. She hoped
not; she was sorry she had spoken. But presently the mother roused
herself to say gently:

"You girls were on your father's heart in a strange way. That last talk
about you I must try to tell you of, when I can. The substance of it
I have told you. He thought you both needed developing. Dora dear, he
said you needed more self-reliance; that you had too many props, and
depended on them. He might have said the same of me; I depended on him
more than I knew. He said you needed to be thrust out a little, and
learn to stand alone, and brave winds and storms. And Claire, I don't
think I fully understood what he wanted for you, only he said that you
needed to trust less to your own self, and lean on Christ."

After this word from her father, Claire sat in startled silence for a
few minutes, then took it to her room.

Did you ever notice that the storms of life seem almost never to come
in detached waves, but follow each other in rapid succession?

When the Benedict family parted for the night, less than a week after
the father had been laid in the grave, Dora said listlessly to her
sister:

"There is one little alleviation, I think, to a heavy blow--for a
while, at least, nothing else seems heavy. Things that troubled me last
week seem so utterly foolish to-day. I don't this evening seem to care
for anything that could happen to us now; to us three, I mean."

Before noon of the next day she thought of that sentence again with a
sort of dull surprise at her own folly.

How do such things occur? I can not tell. Yet how many times in your
life have you personally known of them--families who are millionnaires
to-day, and beggars to-morrow? It was just that sort of blow which
came to the Benedicts. Came, indeed, because of the other one, and
followed hard after it. Business men tried to explain matters to the
widow. A peculiar complication of circumstances existed, which called
for her husband's clear brain and wise handling. Had he lived, all
would have been well; there was scarcely a doubt of it. Had he been
able to give one week more to business, he would have shaped everything
to his mind; but the call came just at the moment when he could least
be spared, and financial ruin had followed.

Mrs. Benedict, in her widow's cap, with her plaintive white face, her
delicate, trembling hands working nervously in her lap, from which the
crimson fancy work was gone, tried to understand the bewilderments
which, one after another, were presented to her, and grew less and
less able to take in the meaning of the great words, and at last
raised herself from her easy chair, looked round pitifully for Claire,
and sank back among the cushions--her face, if possible, whiter than
before.

The elder daughter came swiftly forward from her obscurity in the back
parlor, and stood beside her mother.

"I beg pardon, gentlemen, but mamma does not understand business terms;
my father never burdened her with them. Will you let me ask you a few
plain questions? Is my father's money all gone?"

The gentlemen looked from one to another, and hesitated. At last the
lawyer among them said he feared--that is, it was believed--it seemed
to be almost certain that when all the business was settled, there
would be a mere pittance left.

The next question caused two red spots to glow on Claire's cheeks, but
she held her head erect, and her voice was steady:

"And do they--does anybody think that my father did wrong in any way?"

"Mamma," with a tender, apologetic glance at her, "people say such
things sometimes, you know, when they do not understand."

But the gentlemen could be voluble now:

"Oh, no! no, indeed! not a breath of suspicion attached to his name.
His intentions were as clear as the sunlight, and the fact was, he had
periled his own fortune in a dangerous time, to help others who were in
straits, and he had been called to leave it at a dangerous time, and
disaster has followed."

One question more:

"Will others be sufferers through this disaster?"

The answer was not so ready. The gentlemen seemed to find it necessary
to look again at one another. They, however, finally admitted, to each
other, that there was property enough to cover everybody's loss, if
that were the wish of the family; this, without any doubt, but there
would be almost nothing left.

"Very well," Claire said, "then we can bear it. We thank you,
gentlemen, and you may be sure of this one thing--that no person shall
lose a penny through our father's loss, if we can help it. Now, may
I ask you to leave further particulars until another time? Mamma has
borne as much as she can to-day."

And the gentlemen, as they went down the steps of the great brownstone
front, said to each other that Benedict had left a splendid girl, with
self-reliance enough to manage for herself and take care of the family.

Yet I suppose there had never been a time when Claire Benedict felt
more as though all the powers which had hitherto sustained her,
were about to desert, and leave her helpless, than she did when she
controlled her own dismay, and helped her mother to bed, and sat beside
her, and bathed her head, and steadily refused to talk, or to hear her
mother talk, about this new calamity, but literally hushed her into
quiet and to sleep.

Then, indeed, she took time to cry, as few girls cry; as Claire
Benedict had never cried before in her life.

Her self-reliance seemed gone. As the passion of her voiceless grief
swayed and fairly frightened her, there stole suddenly into her heart
the memory of the last message: "Claire needs to trust less to herself,
and lean on Christ."




CHAPTER III.

OUT IN THE WORLD.


I AM not sure that I would, even if I could, give you a detailed
account of the days which followed.

What is the use of trying to live pain over again on paper? Yet some
people need practice of this sort to enable them to have any idea of
the sorrows of other hearts.

I wonder if you ever went through a large, elegantly furnished house,
from room to room, and dismantled it? Packing away this thing as far as
possible from curious eyes, soiling the velvet, or the satin, or the
gilding of it, perhaps, with bitter tears while you worked; marking
that thing with a ticket containing two words which had become hateful
to you, "For sale;" hiding away some special treasure in haste, lest
the unexpected sight of it might break a heart that was just now
bearing all it could. Has such experience ever been yours? Then you
know all about it, and can in imagination follow Claire Benedict from
attic to basement of her father's house; and no words of mine can make
the picture plainer. If it is something you have never experienced, or
even remotely touched, you may think you are sympathetic, and you may
gravely try to be, but nothing that printed words can say will be apt
to help you much in realizing the bitterness of such hours.

Isn't it a blessed thing that it is so? Suppose we actually bore on
our hearts the individual griefs of the world? How long would our poor
bodies be in breaking under the strain? "He hath borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows." It took the Infinite to do this.

Through all the miseries of the two weeks during which the process
of dismantling went on, Claire Benedict sustained her character for
self-reliance and systematic energy. She stood between her mother and
the world. She interviewed carmen, and porters, and auctioneers, and
talked calmly about the prices of things, the thought of selling which
made her flesh fairly quiver.

She superintended the moving of heavy furniture, and the packing of
delicate glasses and vases, after they had been chosen from the home
treasures at private sale.

She discussed with possible purchasers the value of this or that
carpet, and calculated back to see how long it had been in use, when
the very bringing of it into the home had marked an anniversary which
made her cheek pale and her breath come hard as she tried to speak the
date.

There were some who tried to shield her from some of these bitter
experiences. There were kind offers of assistance; made, it is true, in
the main, by those who were willing, but incompetent; but Claire was
in the mood to decline all the help she could. Do her best, there was
still so much help actually required, that it made her blush to think
of it.

"There are a hundred things they want to know," she would explain to
those who begged her not to tear her heart and wear her strength
by walking through the rooms with those who had come to purchase,
possibly, certainly to see, and to ask. "There are a hundred things
they want to know that only mamma or I can tell them. It shall never
be mamma, and I would rather face them and wait on them alone, than to
creep out at call, like an ashamed creature, to answer their demands.
There is nothing wicked about it, and I ought to be able to bear what
others have had to."

Nevertheless, it was cruel work. She knew when the two weeks of private
sale were over, and she stood battered and bruised in soul, over the
forlorn wrecks of the ruined home, that she had not understood before
what a strain it was to be. She had almost borne it alone. It was true,
as she had said, that it must be either mamma or herself. Those who in
all loving tenderness had tried to help, realized this after the first
day. "I don't know, really; I will ask Miss Benedict," was the most
frequent answer to the endless questions. Dora's pitiful attempts to
help bear the burden seemed to give her sister more pain than anything
else. And one day, when to the persistent questioning of a woman in a
cotton velvet sack, about the first value of a Persian rug of peculiar
pattern and coloring, Dora dropped down on a hassock in a burst of
tears, and sobbed: "Oh, I don't know how much it cost; but I know papa
brought it when he came from Europe the day I was fourteen. Oh, papa,
papa, what shall I do!" Claire came from the next room, calm, pale,
cold as a statue, just a swift touch of tenderness for Dora as she
stooped over her, saying--

"Run away, darling, I will attend to this," then she was ready to
discuss the merits, possible and probable, of the Persian rug, or of
anything else in the room. When the woman in the sham velvet bunglingly
attempted to explain that she did not mean to hurt poor Dora's
feelings, she was answered quietly, even gently, that no harm had been
done, that Dora was but a child. When the woman was gone, without the
Persian rug--the price having been too great for her purse--Claire
went swiftly to the sobbing Dora, and extracted a promise from her that
she would never, no, never, attempt to enter one of the public rooms
again during those hateful two weeks, and she kept her promise.

The next thing, now that the private sale had closed, and Claire
could be off guard, was house-hunting. Not in the style of some of
her acquaintances, with whom she had explored certain handsome rows
of houses "for rent," feeling secretly very sorry for them that they
had to submit to the humiliation of living in rented houses and be
occasionally subject to the miseries of moving. Claire Benedict had
never moved but once, which was when her father changed from his
handsome house on one avenue to his far handsomer one on a grander
avenue, which experience was full of delight to the energetic young
girl. Very different was this moving to be. She was not looking for
a house; she was not even looking for a handsome half of a double
house, which wore the air of belonging to one family; nor could she
even honestly say she was looking for a "flat," because they must, if
possible, get along with even less room than this. To so low an estate
had they fallen in an hour!

You do not want me to linger over the story, nor try to give you any
of the shuddering details. The rooms were found and rented, Claire
adding another drop to her bitter cup by seeking out Judge Symonds as
her security. They were moved into; not until they had been carefully
cleaned and brightened to the best of the determined young girl's
ability. Two carpets had been saved from the wreck for mother's room
and the general sitting-room; and a pitiful, not to say painful,
effort had been made to throw something like an air of elegance around
"mamma's room." She recognized it the moment she looked on it, with
lips that quivered, but with a face that bravely smiled as she said:
"Daughter, you have done wonders." She wanted, instead, to cry out:
"Woe is me! What shall I do?"

This little mother, used to sheltering hands, had been a constant and
tender lesson to Claire all through the days.

She had not broken down, and lain down and died, as at first Claire
had feared she would; neither had she wept and moaned as one who would
not be comforted. She had leaned on Claire, it is true, but not in
a way that seemed like an added burden; it was rather a balm to the
sore heart to have "mamma" gently turn to her for a decisive word, and
depend on her advice somewhat as she had depended on the father.

It had not been difficult to get a promise from her to have nothing
to do with the dreadful sales. "No, dear," she had said quietly, when
Claire made her plea, "I will not try to help in that direction; I know
that I should hinder rather than help. You can do it all, much better
than I. You are like your father, my child; he always took the hard
things, so that I did not learn how."

The very work with which the mother quietly occupied herself was
pathetic. It had been their pleasure to see her fair hands busy
with the bright wools, and silks and velvets of fancy work, such as
the restless young schoolgirl was too nervous to care for, and the
energetic elder daughter was too busy to find time for. It had been
their pride to point to many delicate pieces of cunning workmanship,
and say they were "mamma's."

"So different from most other mothers," Dora would say, fondly and
proudly.

But on the morning that the sale commenced, the mother had gone over
all the wools, and silks, and canvas, and packed them away with that
unfinished piece of crimson; and thereafter, her needle, though busy,
took the stitches that the discharged seamstress had been wont to take.
Claire found her one day patiently darning a rent in a fast breaking
tablecloth, which had been consigned by the housekeeper to the drawer
for old linen. Scarcely anything in the history of the long, weary day
touched Claire so much as this.

Such power have the little things to sting us! Some way we make
ourselves proof against the larger ones.

There had been very little about the experiences of these trying
weeks that had to be brought before the family for discussion. They
were spared the pain of argument. There had not been two minds about
the matter for a moment. Everything must go; the creditors must be
satisfied to the uttermost farthing, if possible. That, as a matter of
course. Never mind what the law allowed them. They knew nothing about
the law, cared nothing for it; they would even have given up their
keepsakes and their very dresses, had there been need, and they could
have found purchasers.

But there had been no need. Disastrous as the failure had been, it was
found that there was unincumbered property enough to pay every creditor
and have more furniture left than they knew what to do with, besides a
sum of money; so small, indeed, that at first poor Claire, unused to
calculating on such a small scale, had curled her lip in very scorn,
and thought that it might as well have gone with the rest.

There came a day when they were settled in those ridiculously small
rooms, with every corner and cranny in immaculate order, and had
reached the disastrous moment when they might fold their hands and do
nothing. Alas for Claire! If there was one thing that she had always
hated, it was to do nothing. She was almost glad that it was not
possible for her to do this. The absurd little sum set to their credit
in the First National Bank, of which her father had for so many years
been a part, would barely suffice to pay the ridiculously small rent of
these wretched rooms and provide her mother with food and clothing. She
must support herself. She must do more than that: Dora must be kept in
school. But how was all this to be done?

The old question! She had puzzled over it a hundred times for some poor
woman on her list. She thought of them now only with shivers. Executive
ability? Dear! yes, she had always been admired for having it.

But it is one thing to execute, when you have but to put your hand
in your pocket for the money that is needed for carrying out your
designs; or, if there chance not to be enough therein, trip lightly up
the great, granite steps of the all-powerful bank, ask to see "papa"
a minute, and come out replenished. It was quite another thing when
neither pocket nor bank had aught for her, and the first snows of
winter were falling on the father's grave.

She had one talent, marked and cultivated to an unusual degree. She
had thought of it several times with a little feeling of assurance.
Everybody knew that her musical education had been thorough in the
extreme, and that her voice was wonderful.

She had been told by her teachers many a time that a fortune lay locked
up in it. Now was the time for the fortune to come forth. She must
teach music; she must secure a position in which to sing on a salary.
Claire Benedict of two months ago had been given to curling her lip
just a little over the thought that Christian young men and women had
to be paid for contributing with their voices to the worship of God on
the Sabbath day. The Claire Benedict of to-day, with that great gulf
of experience between her and her yesterday, said, with a sob, that
she would never sneer again at any honest thing which women did to earn
their living. She herself would become a salaried singer.

Yes, but how bring it to pass? Did you ever notice how strangely the
avenues for employment which have been just at your side seem to close
when there is need? More than once had representatives of fashionable
churches said wistfully to Claire: "If we could only have your voice in
our choir!" Now, a little exertion on her part served to discover to
her the surprising fact that there were no vacancies among the churches
where salaried singers were in demand.

Yes, there was one, and they sought her out. The offered salary would
have been a small fortune to her in her present need; but she could not
worship in that church; she would not sing the praises of God merely
for money.

There was earnest urging, but she was firm. There was a specious hint
that true worship could be offered anywhere, but Claire replied:

"But your hymns ignore the doctrine on which I rest my hope for this
life and for the future."

It was a comfort to her to remember that when she mentioned the offer
to her mother and sister, and said that she could not accept it, her
mother had replied, promptly: "Of course not, daughter." And even Dora,
who was at the questioning age, inclined to toss her head a little
bit at isms and creeds, and hint at the need for liberal views and a
broader platform, said: "What an idea! I should have supposed that they
would have known better."

But it was the only church that offered. Neither did Claire blame them.
It was honest truth; there was no opening. A year ago--six months
ago--why, even two months ago, golden opportunities would have awaited
her; but just now every vacancy was satisfactorily filled. Why should
those giving satisfaction, and needing the money, be discharged,
to make room for her who needed it no less? Claire was no weak,
unreasoning girl who desired any such thing.

As for two months ago, at that time the thought of the possibility of
ever being willing to fill such a place had not occurred to her.




CHAPTER IV.

AN OPEN DOOR.


WELL, surely there was a chance to teach music to private pupils? No,
if you will credit it, there was not even such a chance! There was less
reasonable explanation for this closed door than the other. Surely,
in the great city, full of would-be musicians, she might have found a
corner! Doubtless she would have done so in time, but it amazed her as
the days went by, and one by one the pupils on whom she had counted
with almost certainty were found to have excellent reasons why they
ought to remain with their present teacher, or why they ought not to
take up music for the present.

In some cases the dilemma was real and the excuse good. In others it
was born simply of fear. Oh, yes, they knew that Miss Benedict was a
brilliant player, there was not her equal in the city; and as for her
voice, it was simply superb; but then it did not follow that a fine
musician was a fine teacher. She had not been educated for a teacher;
that had been the farthest removed from her intention until necessity
forced it upon her. It stood to reason that a girl who had been brought
up in luxury, and had cultivated her musical talent as a passion,
merely for her own pleasure, should know nothing about the principles
of teaching, and have little patience with the drudgery of it. They had
always been warned against broken-down ladies as teachers of anything.

There was a great deal of this feeling; and Claire, as she began to
realize it more, was kept from bitterness because of the honesty of her
nature. She could see that there was truth in these conclusions; and
while she knew that she could give their children such teaching as the
parents might have been glad to get, at any price, she admitted that
they could not know this as she did, and were not to blame for caution.

She was kept from bitterness by one other experience.

There came to see her one evening, a woman who had done plain sewing
for her in the days gone by; whom she had paid liberally and for whom
she had interested herself to secure better paid labor than she had
found her doing. This woman, with a certain confused air, as of one
asking a favor, had come to say that she would take it as a great
thing, if her Fanny could get into Miss Benedict's music class.

Miss Benedict explained kindly that she had no music class, but if she
should form one in the city, it would give her pleasure to count Fanny
as one of her pupils, and the mother could pay for it, if she wished,
in doing a little sewing for them some time, when they should have
sewing again to do. The sentence ended with a sigh. But the caller's
embarrassment increased. She even forgot to thank the lady for her
gracious intention, and looked down at her somewhat faded shawl,
and twisted the fringe of it, and blushed, and tried to stammer out
something. Claire began to suspect that this was but a small part of
her errand, and to be roused to sympathy. Was there anything else she
could do for her in any way, she questioned.

No! oh, no! there was nothing, only would she--would it not be possible
to start a class with her Fanny, and let her pay, not in sewing, but
in money, and the full value of the lessons, too; and here the woman
stopped twisting the fringe of her shawl, and looked up with womanly
dignity. She was doing better, she said; a great deal better than when
Miss Benedict first sought her out. Thanks to her, she had plenty of
sewing, as much as she could do, and of a good, paying kind; and she
had thought--and here the shawl fringe was twisted again--that is, she
had supposed or imagined--well, the long and short of it was, sometimes
all that things wanted was a beginning, and she thought maybe if Miss
Benedict could be so kind as to begin with Fanny, others would come in,
and a good class get started before she knew it.

There was a suspicious quiver of Claire's chin as she listened to this,
but her voice was clear and very gentle as she spoke:

"Tell me frankly, Mrs. Jones, do you think Fanny has a decided talent
for music, which ought to be cultivated? I don't know the child, I
think. Is she a singer?"

Then Mrs. Jones, all unused to subterfuge, and at home in the realm
of frankness, was betrayed at once into admitting that she had never
thought of such a thing as Fanny taking music lessons. No, she didn't
sing: at least, not but very little, and she never said much about
music; what she wanted was to learn to draw, but she, Mrs. Jones, had
thought, as she said--and maybe it was presumption in her to think
so--that what most things needed was to get started. No sooner did
she get started in another kind of sewing, and among another kind
of customers, than work poured in on her faster than she could do,
and she thought Fanny would do maybe to start on. Long before the
conclusion of this sentence the shawl fringe was suffering again.

Claire rose from her seat, and went over and stood before Mrs. Jones,
her voice still clear and controlled:

"I thank you, Mrs. Jones, for your kind thought. So far from being
presumptuous, it was worthy of your warm heart and unselfish nature.
I shall not forget it, and it has done me good. But if I were you, I
would not have Fanny take music lessons, and I would, if I could, give
her drawing lessons. I remember, now, your telling me that she was
always marking up her books with little bits of pictures. She probably
has a good deal of talent in this direction, and not for music; I would
cultivate her talents in the line in which they lie. Miss Parkhurst has
a drawing-class just commencing. She is not very far from your corner,
on Clark street. I hope Fanny can go to her, and if it would be any
convenience to you to pay the bills in sewing, I am quite certain that
Miss Parkhurst would be glad to do it. She was speaking about some
work of the kind only yesterday, and I recommended you to her as one
whom she could trust."

So they dropped once more into their natural characters, Claire the
suggester and helper, and Mrs. Jones the grateful recipient. She went
away thanked and comforted, and convinced that Fanny ought to have a
chance at drawing, since Miss Benedict thought she had a talent.

As for Claire, she went back to her mother with two bright spots
glowing on her cheeks, and knelt down beside her chair, and said:

"Mamma, I have just had the most delicate little bit of thoughtfulness
shown me that I ever received from the world outside, and I'll tell
you one thing it has settled; I mean to accept the first opening, from
whatever source, that will take me away from the city. I am almost sure
there is no work for me in this city."

Yet you are not to suppose that the great world of friends who had
been glad of their recognition forgot them or ignored them. Much less
are you to suppose that the great church--of which Mr. Benedict was
such a prominent part that the projected entertainment for which the
young people had been so nearly ready, missionary though it was, was
indefinitely postponed when he died--forgot them or grew cold. Whatever
the world may do, or whatever solitary individuals in the church may do
under financial ruins, the great heart of the true church beats away
for its own. And bravely they rallied around the widow, and heartily
they tried to be helpful, and were helpful, indeed, so far as warm
words and earnest efforts were concerned.

But they could not make vacancies for Claire in the line in which her
talents fitted her to work. They could not make a strong woman of the
mother, able to shoulder burdens such as are always waiting for strong
shoulders. They could and would have supported them. For a time, at
least, this would have been done joyfully; they longed to do it. They
offered help in all possible delicate ways. The trouble was, this
family would have none of it. Grateful?--oh, yes, but persistent in
gently declining that which was not an absolute necessity.

In the very nature of things, as the days passed, they would be in a
sense forgotten. Claire saw this, and the mother saw it. The rooms they
had taken were very far removed from the old church and the old home
and the old circle of friends. It consumed hours of the day to make the
journey back and forth. Of course, it could not be made often, nor by
many. Of course, the gaps which their changes had made would be filled
in time; it was not reasonable to expect otherwise. Nobody expected it,
but it was very bitter.

And the very first open door that Claire saw was an opportunity
to teach music in a little unpretentious academy, in a little
unpretentious town, away back among the hills, two hundred miles from
the city that had always been her home.

It took talking--much of it--to reconcile the mother and sister to
the thought of a separation. Through all their changes this one had
not been suggested to their minds. They had expected, as a matter of
course, to keep together. But necessity is a wonderful logician. The
bank account was alarmingly small, and growing daily smaller. Even
the unpractical mother and sister could see this. Something must be
done, and here was the open door. Why not enter it at once, instead
of waiting in idleness and suspense through the winter for something
better? Thus argued Claire: "It will not be very easy to leave you,
mamma, as you may well imagine," and here the sensitive chin would
quiver, "but I should feel safe in doing so, for these ugly rooms are
really very conveniently arranged, and Dora would learn to look after
everything that Molly could not do by giving two days of work in a
week. I have made positive arrangements with her for two days, and
she depends upon it; you must not disappoint her. And, mamma, I have
thought of what papa said about us," here the low voice took on a tone
of peculiar tenderness, "perhaps Dora will learn self-reliance if she
is left to shield and care for you; it will be a powerful motive. You
know she leans on me now, naturally."

This was Claire's strongest argument, and, together with the argument
of necessity, prevailed.

Barely four weeks from the "to-morrow" which had contained her last
bright plans, she was installed as music teacher in the plain little
academy building situated in South Plains.

And now I know that I need not even attempt to describe the sinking of
heart with which she moved down the shabby narrow aisle, and seated
herself in the uncushioned pew of the shabby little church on that
first Sabbath morning.

Uncushioned! that was by no means the worst of the pew's failings. The
back was at least four inches lower than it ought to have been, even
for so slight a form as Claire's, and was finished with a moulding that
projected enough to form a decided ridge. Of course, for purpose of
support, the thing was a failure, and, as to appearance, nothing more
awkward in the line of sittings could be imagined.

Fairly seated in this comfortless spot, the homesick girl looked about
her to take in her dreary surroundings. Bare floors, not over clean,
the most offensive looking faded red curtains flapping disconsolately
against the old-fashioned, small-paned soiled windows; a platform,
whose attempts at carpeting represented a large-patterned, soiled
ingrain rag, whose colors, once much too bright for the place, had
faded into disreputable ghosts of their former selves. The whole
effect seemed to Claire by far more dreary than the bare floor of the
aisles. A plain, square, four-legged table, that had not even been
dusted lately, did duty as a pulpit desk, and a plain, wooden-backed,
wooden-seated chair stood behind it. These were the sole attempts
at furnishing. The walls of this desolate sanctuary seemed begrimed
with the smoke of ages; they were festooned with cobwebs, these
furnishing the only attempts at hiding the unsightly cracks. The few
dreary-looking kerosene lamps disposed about the room gave the same
evidence of neglect in their sadly smoked chimneys and general air of
discouragement. However, had Claire but known it, she had cause for
gratitude over the fact that they were not lighted, for they could
prove their unfitness for the place they occupied in a much more
offensive way.

Such, then, in brief, was the scene that greeted her sad eyes that
morning. How utterly homesick and disheartened she was! It was all so
different from the surroundings to which she had all her life been
accustomed! She closed her eyes to hide the rush of tears, and to
think, foolish girl that she was, of that other church miles and miles
away. She could seem to see familiar forms gliding at this moment down
the aisles, whose rich carpets gave back no sound of footfall. How
soft and clear the colors of that carpet were! A suggestion of the
delicately carpeted woods, and the shimmer of sunlight on a summer
day toward the sun setting. She had helped to select that carpet
herself, and she knew that she had an artist's eye for colors and for
harmony. It was not an extravagantly elegant church--as city churches
rank--that one to which her heart went back, but just one of those
exquisitely finished buildings where every bit of color and carving and
design which meet the cultured eye, rests and satisfies. Where the law
of harmony touches the delicately frescoed ceiling, reaches down to the
luxuriously upholstered pews, finds its home in the trailing vines of
the carpet, and breathes out in the roll of the deep-toned organ.

It was in such a church, down such a broad and friendly aisle, that
Claire Benedict had been wont to follow her father and mother on
Sabbath mornings, keeping step to the melody which seemed to steal
of itself from the organ, and fill the lofty room. Can you imagine
something of the contrast?




CHAPTER V.

TRYING TO ENDURE.


OF course there were other contrasts than those suggested by the two
churches which persisted in presenting themselves to this lonely girl.

How could she help remembering that in the old home she had been Sidney
Benedict's daughter? A fact which of itself gave her place and power in
all the doings of the sanctuary. Alas for the changes that a few brief
months can make!

Sidney Benedict lying in his grave, and his daughter an obscure
music-teacher in an obscure boarding and day school; an object to be
stared at, and pointed out by the villagers as the new teacher.

But for another contrast, which from some divine source stole over
her just then, the hot tears which burned her eyes would surely
have fallen. Sidney Benedict was not sleeping in the grave; that was
only the house of clay in which he had lived. She knew, and suddenly
remembered it with a thrill, that his freed soul was in Heaven. What
did that mean? she wondered. In vain her imagination tried to paint the
contrast. There had been times since his going when she had longed with
all the passion of her intense nature to know by actual experience just
what Heaven is. But these were cowardly moments. Generally, she had
been able to feel thankful that she was here to help mamma and Dora.
She remembered this now, along with the memory of her father's joy, and
it helped her to choke back the tears, and struggle bravely with her
homesickness.

Meantime, it was hard for her to forget that she was the observed
of all observers. But she did not half understand why this was so.
She could not know what a rare bit of beauty she looked in the dingy
church; almost like a ray of brightness astray from another world.

From her standpoint, her dress was simplicity itself; and she had
not lived long enough in this outer circle of society to understand
that there are different degrees of simplicity, as well as different
opinions concerning the meaning of the word.

Her black silk dress was very plainly made, and her seal sacque had
been so long worn, that Claire, the millionnaire's daughter, had
remarked only last winter that it had served its time and must be
supplanted by a new one; the present Claire, of course, did not think
of such a thing, but meekly accepted it as part of her cross!

Her plain black velvet hat had no other trimming than the long plume
which swept all around it, and had been worn the winter before. How
could she be expected to have any conception of the effect of her
toilet on the country people by whom she was surrounded. Her world had
been so far removed from theirs, that had one told her that to them
she seemed dressed like a princess, she would have been bewildered and
incredulous.

Her dress was very far from suiting herself. Her mood had been to
envelop herself in heaviest black, and shroud her face from curious
gaze behind folds of crape. The only reason she had not done so, had
been because the strict sense of honor which governed the fallen family
would not allow them to add thus heavily to their expenses. Indeed, to
have dressed in such mourning as would have alone appeared suitable to
them, would have been impossible. The mother had not seemed to feel
this much. "It doesn't matter, children," she had said gently; "they
know we miss papa; we have no need of crape to help us tell that story,
and for ourselves it would not make our sorrow any less heavy." But the
girls had shrunk painfully from curious eyes and conjectured curious
remarks, and had shed tears in secret over even this phase of the
trouble.

The bell whose sharp clang was a continued trial to her cultured ears,
ceased its twanging at last, and then it was the wheezy little cabinet
organ's turn; and, indeed, those who do not know the capabilities for
torture that some of those instruments have, are fortunate. Claire
Benedict set her teeth firmly. This was an hundred degrees more painful
than the bell, for the name of this was music. How could any person be
so depraved in taste as to believe it other than a misnomer!

While the choir of seven voices roared through the hymn, Claire shut
her eyes, grasped her hymn-book tightly with both hands, set her lips,
and endured. What a tremendous bass it was! How fearfully the leading
soprano "sang through her nose," in common parlance, though almost
everybody understands that we mean precisely opposite! How horribly the
tenor flatted, and how entirely did the alto lose the key more than
once during the infliction of those six verses!

The hymn was an old one, a favorite with Claire, as it had been with
her father; but as that choir shrieked out the familiar words--

    I love her gates, I love the road,
      The church adorned with grace,
    Stands like a palace built for God,
      To show his milder face,

it seemed hardly possible for one reared as she had been, to turn
from her surroundings and lose herself in the deep spiritual meaning
intended. Nay, when the line,

    Stands like a palace built for God,

was triumphantly hurled at her through those discordant voices, she
could hardly keep her sad lips from curling into a sarcastic smile, as
she thought of the cracked and smoky walls, the dreadful curtains, the
dust and disorder.

"A palace built for God!" her heart said in disdain, almost in disgust.
"It isn't a decent stopping-place for a respectable man."

Then her momentary inclination to smile yielded to genuine indignation.
What possible excuse could be offered for such a state of things? Why
did respectable people permit such a disgrace? She had seen at least
the outside of several of the homes in South Plains, and nothing like
the disorder and desolation which reigned here, was permitted about
those homes. How could Christian people think they were honoring God
by meeting for his worship in a place that would have made the worst
housekeeper among them blush for shame had it been her own home.

Indignation helped her through the hymn, and with bowed head and
throbbing heart, she tried, during the prayer, to come into accord with
the spirit of worship.

But the whole service was one to be remembered as connected with a
weary and nearly fruitless struggle with wayward thoughts. What was the
burden of the sermon? She tried in vain afterwards to recall it.

A series of well-meant and poorly expressed platitudes. "Nothing wrong
about it," thought poor Claire, "except the sin of calling it the
gospel, and reading it off to these sleepy people as though he really
thought it might do them some good!"

Indeed, the minister was almost sleepy himself, or else utterly
discouraged. Claire tried to rouse herself to a little interest in him,
to wonder whether he were a down-hearted, disappointed man. His coat
was seedy, his collar limp and his cuffs frayed at the edges.

Yes, these were actually some of the things she thought while he said
his sermon over to them!

She brought her thoughts with sharp reprimand back to the work of the
hour, but they roved again almost as quickly as recalled. At last
she gave over the struggle, and set herself to the dangerous work
of wondering what Doctor Ellis was saying this morning in the dear
old pulpit; whether mamma and Dora missed him as much as she did;
whether he looked over occasionally to their vacant seat and missed
all the absent ones, papa most of all. But the seat was not vacant,
probably; already somebody sat at the head of the pew in papa's place,
and somebody's daughters, or sisters, or friends, had her place, and
mamma's and Dora's. The niches were filled, doubtless, and the work of
the church was going on just the same, and it was only they who were
left out in the cold, their hearts bleeding over a gap that would never
be filled. Dangerous thoughts, these!

One little strain in another key came in again to help her: Papa was
not left out; he had gone up higher. What was the old church to him now
that he had entered into the church triumphant? He might love it still,
but there must be a little pity mingled with the love, and a wistful
looking forward to the time when they would all reach to his height,
and at that time, mamma and Dora and she would not be left out.

If this mood had but lasted, it would have been well; but her
undisciplined heart was too much for her, and constantly she wandered
back to the thoughts which made the sense of desolation roll over her.

She was glad when at last the dreary service was concluded, and she
could rush away from the dreary church to the privacy of her small,
plain room in the academy, and throw herself on the bed, and indulge to
the utmost the passionate burst of sorrow.

The tears spent their first force soon, but they left their victim
almost sullen. She allowed herself to go over, in imagination, the
Sundays which were to come, and pictured all their unutterable
dreariness.

Did I tell you about the rusty stoves, whose rusty and cobwebby pipes
seemed to wander at their own erratic will about that church? It was
curious how poor Claire's excited brain fastened upon those stovepipes
as the drop too much in her accumulation of horrors. It seemed to
her that she could not endure to sit under them, no, not for another
Sabbath; and here was a long winter and spring stretching out before
her! She was not even to go home for the spring vacation; her poor,
ruined purse would not admit of any such extravagance. It would be
almost midsummer before she could hope to see mamma and Dora again. And
in the meantime, how many Sundays there were! She vexed herself trying
to make out the exact number and their exact dates.

This mood, miserable as it was, possessed her all the afternoon. It
seemed not possible to get away from it. She crept forlornly from her
bed presently, because of the necessity of seeing to her expiring fire.
She was shivering with the cold; but as she struggled with the damp
wood, trying to blow the perverse smoke into a flame, she went on with
her indignant, not to say defiant thoughts. She went back again to that
dreadful church, and the fires in those neglected stoves.

She determined resolutely that her hours spent in that building should
be as few as possible. Of course, she must attend the morning service;
but nothing could induce her to spend her evenings there.

"I might much better sit in my room and read my Bible, and write good
Sunday letters to mamma and Dora," she told herself, grimly, as the
spiteful smoke suddenly changed its course and puffed in her face.
"At least, I shall not go to church. I don't belong to that church,
I am thankful to remember, and never shall; I have no special duties
toward it; I shall just keep away from it and from contact with the
people here, as much as possible. It is enough for me if I do my duty
toward those giggling girls who think they are to become musicians
under my tuition. I will do my best for them, and I shall certainly
earn all the salary I am offered here; then my work in this place
will be accomplished. I have nothing to do with the horrors of that
church. If the people choose to insult God by worshiping him in such an
abomination of desolations as that, it is nothing to me. I must just
endure so much of it as I am obliged to, until I can get away from
here. I am not to spend my life in South Plains, I should hope."

She shuddered over the possibility of this. She did not understand her
present state of mind. She seemed to herself not Claire Benedict at
all, but a miserable caricature of her. What had become of the strong,
bright, willing spirit with which she had been wont to take hold of
life? Energetic she had always been called; "self-reliant," she had
heard that word applied to herself almost from childhood. "A girl who
had a great deal of executive talent." Yes, she used to have; but she
seemed now to have no talent of any sort. She felt crushed; as though
the motive power had been removed from her.

She had borne up bravely while with her mother and younger sister. She
had felt the necessity for doing so; her mother's last earthly prop
must not fail her, and therefore Claire had done her best. But now
there was no more need for endurance. Her tears could not pain mamma or
Dora; she had a right to give her grief full sway. She felt responsible
to nobody. Her work in the world was done. Not by any intention of
hers, she told herself drearily; she had been willing and glad to work;
she had rejoiced in it, and had planned for a vigorous and aggressive
future, having to do with the best interests of the church. Only think
how full of work her hours had been, that day when the clouds shut down
on her and set her aside! There was nothing more for her to do. Her
plans were shattered, her opportunities swept away, everything had been
cruelly interrupted; she could not help it, and she knew no reason for
it; certainly she had tried to do her best. But, at least, with her
opportunities closed, her responsibility was gone; nothing more could
be expected of her; henceforth she must just _endure_.

This is just the way life looked to the poor girl on this sad Sabbath.
She was still trying to rely on herself; and because herself was found
to be such a miserable source of reliance, she gloomily blamed her hard
fate, and said that at least her responsibility was over. She did not
say in words--"God has taken away all my chances, and he must just be
willing to bear the consequences of my enforced idleness;" she would
have been shocked had she supposed that such thoughts were being nursed
in her heart; but when you look the matter over, what else was she
saying? A great many of our half-formed thoughts on which we brood,
will not bear the clear gaze of a quiet hour when we mean honest work.




CHAPTER VI.

LIFTED UP.


IT was a very quiet, cold-faced girl who presently obeyed the summons
to dinner. Had it not been for those suspiciously red eyes, and a
certain pitiful droop of the eyelids, Mrs. Foster would hardly have
ventured to break the casing of haughty reserve in which her young
music teacher had decided to wrap herself.

A rare woman was Mrs. Foster. I wish you knew her well; my pen pauses
over an attempt to describe her. I believe descriptions of people never
read as the writer intended they should; and there never was a woman
harder to put on paper than this same Mrs. Foster.

Ostensibly she was the principal of this little academy, which was at
present engaged in reaping the results of years of mismanagement and
third-rate work. People shook their heads when she took the position,
and said that she was foolish. She would never earn her living there in
the world; the academy at South Plains was too much run down ever to
revive, and there never had been a decent school there anyway, and they
didn't believe there ever would be. And, of course, people of this mind
did what they could, with their tongues and their apathy, so far as
money and pupils were concerned, to prove the truth of their prophecies.

But Mrs. Foster, wise, sweet, patient woman that she was, quietly bided
her time, and worked her way through seemingly endless discouragements.
She was after much more than bread and butter. In reality there was
never a more persistent and patient and wise and wary fisher for
_souls_ found among quiet and little known human kind than was Mrs.
Foster. Had they but known it, there were communities which could have
afforded to support her for the sake of the power she would have
been in their midst. Nay, there were fathers who could have afforded
to make her independent for life, so far as the needs of this world
were concerned, for the sake of the influence she would have exerted
over their young and tempted sons and daughters. But they did not know
it, and she, being as humble as she was earnest, did not half know it
herself, and expected nothing of anybody but a fair chance to earn her
living, and do all the good she could.

In point of fact, she had some difficulty in getting hold of the
little, badly-used academy at South Plains. The people who thought
she was utterly foolish for attempting anything so hopeless, were
supplemented by the people who thought she could not be much, or she
would never be willing to come to South Plains Academy. So between them
they made it as hard for her as they could.

Claire Benedict did not know it until long afterwards, but the fact
was, that during her father's funeral services she had been selected
as the girl whom Mrs. Foster wanted with her at South Plains. It
happened, so we are fond of saying, that Mrs. Foster was spending a
few days on business in the city that had always been Claire's home,
and she saw how wonderfully large portions of that city were stirred
by one death, when Sydney Benedict went to heaven. She speculated
much over the sort of life he must have led to have gotten the hold
he had on the people. She began to inquire about his family, about
his children. Then she heard much of Claire, and grew interested in
her, in a manner which seemed strange even to herself. And when at the
funeral she first caught a glimpse of the pale face and earnest eyes
of the girl who looked only, and with a certain watchful air at her
mother, as if she would shield her from every touch that she could,
Mrs. Foster had murmured under her breath, "I think this is the girl
I want with me." She prayed about it a good deal during the next few
days, and grew sure of it, and waited only to make the way plain, so
that she could venture her modest little offer, and felt sure that
if the Master intended it thus, the offer would be accepted. And it
was, but in blindness, so far as Claire Benedict was concerned. I have
sometimes questioned whether, if a bright angel had come down out of
heaven and stood beside Claire, and said: "The King wants you to go
with all speed to South Plains; he has special and important work for
you there; he has opened the way for you," the child would not have
been more content, and had much less of the feeling that her work was
interrupted. But I do not know, she might rather have said:

"Why in the world must I go to South Plains? I had work enough to do at
home, and I was doing it; and now it will all come to nought because
there is no leader! It stands to reason that I, in my poverty and
obscurity, down in that out-of-the-way village, can not do as much as
I, with my full purse, and leisure days, and happy surroundings, and
large acquaintances could do here."

We love to be governed by reason, and hate to walk in the dark. I
have always wondered what Philip said when called to leave his great
meeting, where it seemed hardly possible to do without him, and go
toward the south on a desert road. That he went, and promptly, is, I
think, a wonderful thing for Philip.

Well, the red eyes of the young music-teacher by no means escaped the
watchful ones of Mrs. Foster. Neither had her short, almost sharp,
negative in reply to a somewhat timidly put question of a pupil,
as to whether she was going out to church that evening. There were
reasons why Mrs. Foster believed that it would be much better for her
sad-hearted music-teacher to go to church than to remain glooming at
home. There were, indeed, very special reasons on that particular
evening. The Ansted girls' uncle was going to preach, she had heard,
but should she go to this young Christian, of whom she as yet knew but
little, and offer as a reason for church-going that a stranger was to
preach instead of the pastor! However she managed it, Mrs. Foster was
sure she would not do that. Yet it will give you a hint of the little
woman's ways when I tell you that she was almost equally sure she
should manage it in some way.

Half an hour before evening service there was a tap at Claire's door,
and the principal entered, and came directly to the point: Would Miss
Benedict be so kind as to accompany Fanny and Ella Ansted to church
that evening? Miss Parsons was suffering with sick headache, and she
herself could not leave her. There was no other available chaperone
for the young girls, who were not accustomed to going out alone in the
evening, but who were unusually anxious to attend church, as their
uncle, who had been stopped over the Sabbath by an accident, was to
preach.

Miss Benedict had her lips parted, ready to say that she was not
going out, but paused in the act. What excuse could she give? No sick
headache to plead, and nobody to care for; the night was not stormy, if
it was sullen, and the church was not a great distance away. She had
been wont to accommodate people always, but she never felt so little
like it as to-night. However, there stood Mrs. Foster quietly awaiting
an answer, and her face seemed to express the belief that of course,
the answer would be as she wished.

"Very well," came at last from the teacher's lips, and she began at
once to make ready.

"It is for this I was hired," she told herself bitterly. "I must not
forget how utterly changed my life is in this respect as in all others.
I am my own mistress no longer, but even in the matter of church-going
must hold myself at the call of others."

As for the principal, as she closed the door with a gentle "Thank you,"
she told herself that it was much better for the poor child to go; and
that she must see to it what she could do during the week to brighten
that room a little.

The stuffy church was the same; nay, it was more so, for every vile
lamp was lighted now, and sent a sickly, smoky shadow to the ceiling,
and cast as little light upon the surrounding darkness as possible.
But the uncle! I do not know how to describe to you the difference
between him and the dreary reader of the morning! It was not simply
the difference in appearance and voice, though really these were
tremendous, but he had a solemn message for the people, and not only
for the people whose Sabbath home was in that church, but for Claire
Benedict as well.

She did not think it at first. She smiled drearily over the almost
ludicrous incongruity of the text as measured by the surroundings. "If
I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy."

The folly of supposing that any sane person preferred such a desolate,
modern Jerusalem as this above his chief joy! The very care with which
the men brushed a clear spot for their hats on the dusty seats, and the
manner in which the women gathered their dresses about them, to keep
them from contact with the floor, showed the place which the sanctuary
held in their affections.

But as the preacher developed his theme, it would almost seem that
he had selected it for Claire Benedict's special benefit. It was not
what had been done, or was being done, that he desired to impress, but
rather what ought to be done.

The earthly Jerusalem, instead of being one particular church building,
was any church of Christ where a Christian's lot was cast, even for
a single Sabbath. He or she was bound by solemn covenant vows to
do all for that church which lay in his or her power; as fully, as
unreservedly, as though that church, and that alone, represented his
or her visible connection with the great Head. What solemn words were
these, breaking in on the flimsy walls of exclusiveness which this
young disciple had been busy all the afternoon building up about her!
The church at South Plains her place of service! actually bound to it
by the terms of her covenant!

Others had their message from that plainly-worded, intensely-earnest
sermon. I have no doubt there was a special crumb for each
listener--it is a peculiarity belonging to any real breaking of the
bread of life--but Claire Benedict busied herself with none of them.
Her roused and startled heart had enough to do to digest the solid food
that was given as her portion.

The truth was made very plain to her that she had no more right to
build a shell and creep into it, and declare that this church, and this
choir, and this Sunday-school, and this prayer-meeting, yes, and even
this smoking stove and wheezing organ, were nothing to her because she
was to stay in South Plains but a few months, and her home was far
away in the city, than she had to say that she had nothing to do with
the people or the places on this earth, no sense or responsibility
concerning them, no duties connected with them, because she was to be
here only for a few years and her home was in heaven.

Gradually this keen-edged truth seemed to penetrate every fibre of her
being. This very church, cobweb-trimmed, musty-smelling, was for the
time being her individual working ground, to be preferred above her
chief joy! Nay, the very red curtain that swayed back and forth, blown
by the north wind which found its way through a hole in the window, and
which she _hated_, became a faded bit of individual property for which
she was, in a sense, responsible.

She walked home almost in silence. The girls about her chattered of
the sermon; pronounced it splendid, and admitted that they would just
a little rather hear Uncle Eben preach than anybody else, and it was
no wonder that his people almost worshiped him, and had raised his
salary only last month. Claire listened, or appeared to, and answered
directly put questions with some show of knowledge as to what was being
discussed; but for herself, Dr. Ansted had gone out of her thoughts.
She liked his voice, and his manner, and his elocution, but the force
behind all these had put them all aside, and the words which repeated
themselves to her soul were these: "If I prefer not Jerusalem above my
chief joy!" What then? Why, then I am false to my covenant vows, and
the possibilities are that I am none of His.

Mrs. Foster was in the hall when the party from the church arrived.
Wide open as to eyes and mental vision, quiet as to voice and manner,
she had staid at home and ministered to the victim of sick headache.
She had been tender and low-voiced, and deft-handed, and untiring; but
during the lulls when there had been comparative quiet, she had bowed
her head and prayed that the sad-hearted young music-teacher might meet
Christ in his temple that evening, and come home up-lifted. She did not
know how it was to be done.

She knew nothing about the Ansted uncle save that he was an ambassador
of Christ, and she knew that the Lord _could_ use the shabbily-dressed
ambassador of the morning as well as he; she did not rely on the
instruments, except as they lay in the hand of God. She did not ask
for any special thought to be given to Claire Benedict; faith left
that, too, in the hand of the Lord. She only asked that she should
be ministered unto, and strengthened for the work, whatever it was
that he desired of her. And she needed not to question, to discover
that her prayer, while she had yet been speaking, was answered. The
music-teacher did not bring home the same thoughts that she had taken
away with her.

She went swiftly to her room. The fire had been remembered, and was
burning brightly.

The first thing she did was to feed its glowing coals with the letter
that had been commenced to mamma and Dora during the afternoon. Not
that there had been anything in it about her heaped-up sorrows, or her
miserable surroundings, or her gloomy resolves, but in the light of the
present revelation she did not like the tone of it.

She went to her knees, presently, but it would have been noticeable
there that she said almost nothing about resolves, or failures. Her
uttered words were brief; were, indeed, only these: "Dear Christ, it
is true I needed less of self and more of thee. Myself has failed me
utterly; Jesus, I come to thee."




CHAPTER VII.

"OUR CHURCH."


THE dreary weather was not gone by the next morning. A keen wind was
blowing, and ominous flakes of snow were fluttering their signals in
the air; but the music-room was warm, and the music-teacher herself had
gotten above the weather. She was at the piano, waiting for the bell to
ring that should give the signal for morning prayers.

Around the stove were gathered a group of girls who had hushed their
voices at her entrance. They were afraid of the pale music-teacher.
Hitherto they had regarded her with mingled feelings of awe and dislike.

Her very dress, plain black though it was, with its exquisite fit
and finish, seemed to mark her as belonging to another world than
themselves. They expected to learn music of her, but they expected
nothing else.

It was therefore with a visible start of surprise that they received
her first advances in the shape of a question, as she suddenly wheeled
on the piano-stool and confronted them:

"Girls, don't you think our church is just dreadful?"

Whether it was a delicate tact, or a sweet spirit born of the last
evening's experience, that led Claire Benedict to introduce that potent
little "our" into her sentence, I will leave you to judge.

It had a curious effect on the girls around the stove. These
bright-faced, keen-brained, thoroughly-good girls, who had lived
all their lives in a different atmosphere from hers. They were good
scholars in algebra, they were making creditable progress in Latin,
and some of them were doing fairly well in music; but they could no
more set their hats on their heads with the nameless grace which
hovered around Claire Benedict's plainly-trimmed plush one, than they
could fly through the air. This is just one illustration of the many
differences between them. This young lady had lived all her days in
the environments of city culture; they had caught glimpses of city
life, and it meant to them an unattainable fairy-land, full of lovely
opportunities and probabilities, such as would never come to them. It
struck every one of those girls as a peculiarly pleasant thing that
their lovely music-teacher had said "our" instead of "your."

One of the less timid presently rallied sufficiently to make answer:

"Dreadful? It is just perfectly horrid! It fairly gives me the blues
to go to church. Girls, mother has almost spoiled her new cashmere
sweeping the church floor with it. She says she would be ashamed to
have our wood-shed look as badly as that floor does. I don't see why
the trustees allow such slovenliness."

"It is because we can not afford to pay a decent sexton," sighed one of
the others. "We are so awful poor! That is the cry you always hear if
there is a thing said. I don't believe we deserve a church at all."

Claire had partially turned back to the piano, and she touched the keys
softly, recalling a long-forgotten strain about "Girding on the armor,"
before she produced her next startling sentence.

"Girls, let us dress up that church until it doesn't know itself."

If the first words had astonished them, this suggestion for a moment
struck them dumb. They looked at one another, then at the resolute face
of the musician. Then one of them gasped out:

"Us girls?"

"You don't mean it!" from two dismayed voices.

"How could we do anything?" from a gentle timid one.

"But the girl who had found courage to speak before, and to volunteer
her opinion as to the disgraced church, sounded her reply on a
different note:

"When?"

"Right away," said the music teacher, smiling brightly on them all, but
answering only the last speaker.

Then she left the piano, and came over to the centre of the group,
which parted to let her in.

"Just as soon as we can, I mean. We must first secure the money; but I
think we can work fast, with such a motive."

Then came the chorus of discouragements:

"Miss Benedict, you don't know South Plains. We never can raise this
money in the world. It has been tried a dozen different times, and
there are a dozen different parties, as sure as we try to do anything.
Some people won't give toward the old church, because they want a new
one. As if we could ever have a new church! Others think it is well
enough as it is, if it could be swept now and then. And there is one
woman who always goes to talking about the time she gave the most for
that old rag of a carpet on the platform, and then they went and bought
it at another store instead of at theirs, where they ought to, and
for her part, she will never give another cent toward fixing up that
church."

Another voice chimed in:

"Yes; and there is an old man who says honesty comes before
benevolence. He seems to think it would be quite a benevolence to
somebody to fix up that old rookery; and they owe him ten dollars for
coal, and they will never prosper in the world until they pay him."

"Is it true about the society owing him?"

"No, ma'am; it isn't. Father says they paid him more than the coal was
worth. He is an old scamp. But it is just a specimen of the way things
go here; hundreds of reasons seem to pop up to hinder people from
doing a thing; and all the old stories are raked up, and after awhile
everybody gets mad with everybody else, and won't try to do anything.
You never saw such a place as South Plains."

But the music-teacher laughed. She was so sure of what ought to be
done, and therefore, of course, of what could be done, that she could
afford to laugh over the ludicrous side of this doleful story.

The girls, however, did not see the ludicrous side.

"It makes me cold all over, just thinking about trying to beg money in
South Plains for anything; and for the church most of all!"

To be sure this was Nettie Burdick's statement, and she was noted for
timidity; but none of the bolder ones controverted her position.

But Miss Benedict had another bomb-shell to throw into their midst.

"Begging money is dreadful work, I suppose. I never did much of it.
My collecting route lay among people who were pledged to give just so
much, and who as fully expected to pay it when the collector called,
as they expected to pay their gas bill or their city taxes. But don't
let us think of doing any such thing. Let us raise the money right here
among ourselves."

Blank silence greeted her. Had she been able to look into their
hearts, she would have seen something like this: Oh, yes! it is all
very well for you to talk of raising money. Anybody can see by your
dress, and your style, and everything, that you have plenty of it; but
if you expect money from us, you don't know what you are talking about.
The most of us have to work so hard, and coax so long to get decent
things to wear, that we are almost tired of a dress or a bonnet before
it is worn. But this they did not want to put into words. Neither did
Miss Benedict wait for them.

"We must earn it, of course, you know."

"Earn it! How?" Half a dozen voices this time.

"Oh, in a dozen ways," smiling brightly. "To begin with, there is
voluntary contribution. Perhaps we can not all help in that way, but
some of us can, and every little helps. My salary, for instance, is
three hundred a year."

She caught her breath as she said this, and paled a little. It was much
less than Sydney Benedict had allowed his daughter for spending money;
but to those girls it sounded like a little fortune.

"That is twenty-five dollars a month, and a tenth of that is two
dollars and a half. Now I propose to start this scheme by giving the
'tenths' of two months' salary. Come, Nettie, get your pencil, and be
our secretary. We might as well put it in black and white, and make a
beginning."

"Do you always give a tenth of everything you have?"

It was Nannie Howard's question, asked in a hesitating, thoughtful
tone, while Nettie blushing and laughing, went into the depths of her
pocket for a pencil, tore a fly-leaf from her algebra, and wrote Miss
Benedict's name.

"Always!" said the music-teacher, gently, her lip trembling and her
voice quivering a little. "It was my father's rule. He taught it to me
when I was a little, little girl."

They could not know how pitiful it seemed to her that the daughter of
the man who had given his annual thousands as tenths, had really to
spend an hour in planning, so that she might see her way clear toward
giving two dollars and a half a month! Not that this young Christian
intended to wait until she could see her way clear. Her education had
been, The tenth belongs to God. As much more as you can conscientiously
spare, of course; but this is to be laid aside without question. Her
education, built on the rock of Christian principle, had laid it aside
as a matter of course, and then her human nature had lain awake and
planned how to get along without it, and yet not draw on the sacred
fund at the bank.

"I suppose it is a good rule," Mary Burton said, "though I never
thought of doing such a thing. Well," after another thoughtful pause,
"I may as well begin, I suppose. I have a dollar a month to do what I
like with. I'll give two dollars to the fund."

"Good!" said Miss Benedict. "Why, girls, we have a splendid beginning."

But Mary Burton was an exception; not another girl in the group had an
allowance. A few minutes of total silence followed; then a new type of
character came to the front.

"Father gave me a dollar this morning to get me a new pair of gloves;
but I suppose I can make the old ones do. I'll give that."

"O, Kate! your gloves look just horrid." This from a younger sister.

"I know they do, but I don't care," with a little laugh that belied the
words; "so does the church."

"That's true," said Anna Graves. "It gives one the horrors just to
think of it. I gave up all hope of its being fixed, long ago, because I
knew the men would never do it in the world; but if there is anything
we can accomplish, let's do it. I say we try. I was going to trim my
brown dress with velvet. It will cost two dollars. I'll give it up and
trim with the same. Nettie Burdick, put me down for two dollars."

This, or something else, set the two timid ones, who were sisters,
to whispering; presently they nodded their heads in satisfaction.
Whatever their plan was, they kept it to themselves. It undoubtedly
included self-sacrifice, as they belonged to a family who honestly had
but little from which to give, but they presently directed that their
names be set down for a dollar each.

Apparently, the crowning bit of sacrifice came from Ruth Jennings.

"Father has been promising me a piano-stool for more than a year," she
explained, laughing. "This morning he gave me the money, and I have a
note written to Benny Brooks to bring it down with him next Saturday;
but I do so dreadfully hate those red curtains, that if you will
promise to do something with the windows the first thing, I'll sit on
the dictionary and the Patent Office Reports for another year. A stool
such as I was going to get, costs four dollars. Put it down, Nettie,
quick!"

A general clapping of hands ensued. Not a girl present but appreciated
that to Ruth Jennings this was quite a sacrifice. As for Miss Benedict,
her eyes were brimming.

"You dear girls," she said, eagerly, "I feel as though I wanted to
kiss every one of you. We will certainly have our church made over.
I feel sure of it now. I think some of you must prefer it above your
chief joy."

This called forth a chorus of voices:

"O, Miss Benedict, you don't think that velvet ribbons, and gloves, and
such things, are our chief joys, do you?"

"Or even piano-stools!" This from Ruth Jennings, amid much laughter.
But Miss Benedict's face was grave.

"Has the _church_ been?" She asked the question gently, yet in a
sufficiently significant tone.

The reply was prompt.

"I should think not! Such a horrid old den as it is! How could there be
any joy about it!"

The words of the evening's text were repeating themselves so forcibly
in their teacher's heart that she could not refrain from quoting: "Let
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem
above my chief joy."

The laughter was hushed.

"But that doesn't mean the building, does it, Miss Benedict?"

"The building is the outward sign of His presence, is it not? And
suggests one of the ways in which we can show our love for the God to
whose worship the church is dedicated?"

As she spoke she wound an arm around the young girl's waist, and was
answered, thoughtfully:

"I suppose so. It seems wrong to talk about worshipping God in a place
that is not even clean, doesn't it?"

How familiar they were growing with their pretty young teacher, of
whom they had thought, only the day before, that they should always be
afraid.

"Isn't she sweet?"

This question they repeated one to another, as, in answer to the bell
summoning them to morning prayers, they moved down the hall.

"So quick-witted and so unselfish!" said a second.

"And not a bit 'stuck up'!" declared a third.

And with their brains throbbing with new ideas, they went in to
prayers. They glanced at one another and smiled, when Mrs. Foster
announced the hymn,

    Work, for the night is coming,
    Work through the morning hour.

They every one meant to work.




CHAPTER VIII.

MAKING OPPORTUNITIES.


THEN began a new era in the life of the girls at South Plains Academy.
They had work to do. A common interest possessed them. They had a
leader; such an one as they had never known before. She was capable of
originating and guiding. She not only knew how to talk, but how to _do_.

Committee meetings became the fashion of the day. No time now for
loitering over lessons, no weary yawning behind the covers of wearisome
text-books.

Promptly at four o'clock was to be a meeting of importance. It
would be "just horrid" to be detained in the recitation-room over
an imperfectly-prepared lesson, while the others hastened to Miss
Benedict's room, to be met with her questioning as to the where and
why of the absent member. Mrs. Foster had never seen better work done
than went on among her girls during the weeks that followed.

There was need for committee meetings, and for almost endless
discussions of ways and means. The voluntary offerings were all in, and
though each had done her best, all knew that the sum total was meager
enough. Money must certainly be earned, but the grave question was, How?

"Oh, there are ways," declared Miss Benedict, with a confidence that of
itself inspired courage. "Of course, there are a good many ways; and we
must think them up. Earning money is never very easy business, and we
must begin by understanding, that as a matter of course, there is work,
and disagreeable work, of some sort, in store for each one of us."

The girls, each and all, declared themselves ready for work, but
totally in the dark. They knew how to save money, the most of them,
provided they could get hold of any to save; but as for earning it,
they really had never earned a cent in their lives. There had been no
opportunity, so they declared.

"We will make opportunities," announced the brave young leader, to
whom money had hitherto flowed in an unbroken stream. But her courage
was contagious, as true courage often is, and the girls laughed,
and announced themselves as ready, even to _make_ opportunities, if
somebody would show them how.

"Let me see," said Miss Benedict; her head dropped a little to one
side, her chin resting on her hand in the attitude that she used to
assume, when Dora said she was planning a house and lot for some
protégé. "To begin with, there are things to be sold by agencies."

Two or three girls gravely shook their heads; one shrugged her
shoulders as an evidence of dismay, not to say disgust, and Ruth
Jennings spoke:

"Book agents! We can't do it, Miss Benedict. There are not three people
in South Plains who ever think of buying a book. One of the creatures
canvassed the whole town last summer; was in every house within three
miles, and she sold just four books. A good book it was, too; but the
people who had money to spare didn't want it, and the people who wanted
it hadn't the money. I was never more sorry for anybody in my life than
I was for that poor girl, who wore out a pair of shoes and a pair of
gloves, and spoiled her bonnet, to say nothing of her temper. And she
was voted the greatest nuisance we ever had in this village, and that
is saying a great deal."

Miss Benedict laughed merrily. Ruth's voluble tongue always amused her.

"I don't mean books," she explained. "There are other things; for
instance, hair-pins."

The sentence closed with a little laugh, and seemed to be suggested
by the dropping of one of the gleaming things at that moment from her
hair; but there was that in her voice which made the girls think there
was a real suggestion hidden in it, though they could not see how.

"Hair-pins!" repeated Ruth, in puzzled tone.

"Yes: really and truly, not metaphorically. I bought some last night
at the store in the village; the best, the clerk gravely assured me,
that were to be had. Wretched things! I wore one for an hour, then
threw it in the stove; it seemed to me that it pulled each hair of
my head during that one hour. Look at the kind we ought to have!"
Whereupon she drew the gleaming thing out again, and passed it around
for minute scrutiny. "Blued steel, they are, you see; that is the trade
mark; each one is finished to a high degree of smoothness. One who has
used a single paper of them could not be persuaded to content herself
with any other kind. Cheap they are, too. Actually cheaper than those
instruments of torture I bought last night. I sent to my sister by the
morning mail, to send me a box forthwith. That suggested the business
to me, I presume. There are worthless imitations, but the genuine sort
can be bought by the quantity very cheaply indeed, and a respectable
profit might be made on them until the people were supplied. It
isn't as though we were at work in a city, where women could supply
themselves without any trouble. It is a work of genuine mercy, I think,
to rescue the ladies from those prongs to which they have to submit."

"Turn hair-pin pedlers!" said Mary Burton. There was a laugh on her
face, but the slightest upward curve to her pretty lip. Mary felt above
the suggestion.

Her father was a farmer, decidedly well-to-do, and owned and lived in
one of the prettiest places about South Plains.

"Yes," said the millionnaire's daughter, who had lived all her life in
a palatial home such as Mary Burton could not even imagine, "pedlers,
if you like the name; why not? It is a good, honest business, if one
keeps good stock, and sells at honest prices.

"I like it very much better than selling cake, and flowers, and
nuts, and candy, in the church, at wicked prices, in the name of
benevolence."

There was a general laugh over this hint. South Plains had had its day
at such work as this, and those girls knew just how "wicked" the prices
were, and how questionable the ways which had been resorted to in order
to secure customers.

"I'd as soon sell hair-pins as anything else," affirmed Ruth Jennings.
"I would like some of them myself; we always get wretched ones down at
the corner store. But, Miss Benedict, do you believe much could be made
just out of hair-pins?"

"Not out of hair-pins alone; but there are other things, plenty of
them; little conveniences, you know, that people do not think of, until
they are brought to their doors, and that are so cheap, it seems a pity
not to buy them, if only for the sake of getting pleasantly rid of a
nuisance." This with a merry glance at Ruth.

"For instance, there are some charming little calendar cards being
gotten up for the holiday sales, on purpose for the children. They
are mounted on an easel, and contain a Bible verse for every day in
the year, with a bit of a quotation from some good author, in verse,
you know; exquisite little selections, just suited to children; on
each Sabbath the card contains the Golden Text of the Sabbath-school
lesson. They are just as pretty as possible, and retail for twenty
cents. I don't believe there are many mothers who could resist the
temptation of buying one for their children. But useful things, viewed
from a practical standpoint, sell the best. I have always heard that
the country was the place to get pies, and custards, and all such good
things?"

"It is," said one of the girls, with a confident nod of her head. "This
is the greatest place for pies you ever saw! I know people who have a
pie of some sort for breakfast, dinner and supper. No use in trying to
start a bakery here. People all make their own, and plenty of it."

Miss Benedict looked her satisfaction.

"Then there are plenty of burnt fingers, I am sure. Nettie, my dear,
you said you helped your mother on Saturday, which I suppose is
baking-day. How many times have you blistered your poor little fingers
trying to lift out a hot and heavy pie from the oven?"

"More times than I should think of trying to count; and, for that
matter, I have done a great deal worse than to burn my fingers. Only
last Saturday I tipped a pumpkin pie upside down on the floor; mother's
clean floor, it had just been mopped. The tin was hot, you see, and
the cloth slipped somehow, so that my bare fingers came right on the
hottest part, and I just squealed, and dropped the whole thing. Oh,
such a mess!"

"Precisely," said Miss Benedict, looking unsympathetically pleased with
the story. "I have no doubt that we should find quite a noble army of
martyrs among you in that very line, or among your mothers; you girls
would be more likely to 'squeal and drop it,' as Nettie has said. But
now I want to know what is to hinder us from being benefactors to our
race, and earning an honest penny in the bargain, by sending for a
box full of pie-lifters, and offering one to every housekeeper in
South Plains? They are cheap, and I don't believe many pie-bakers would
refuse one."

"Pie-lifters!" "I never heard of such an institution." "What in the
world are they?" Three questioning voices.

"Oh, just ingenious little pieces of iron, so contrived that they will
open and shut like an old-fashioned pair of tongs, only much more
gracefully; they adjust themselves to the size of the tin, or plate,
and close firmly, so that even a novice can lift the hottest pumpkin
pie that ever bubbled, and set it with composure and complacency on the
table at her leisure."

"I should think they would be splendid!"

This, in varying phraseology, was the general vote.

"Then I'll tell you of one of the greatest nuisances out. Look here!
Did you ever see a more starched-up linen cuff than this is?"

The girls looked admiringly. No; they never did. It shone with a lovely
polish, the means of securing which was unknown to the most domestic
of them.

"Well," explained Miss Benedict, "it isn't linen at all. By the way, I
am trying to economize in laundry work. It is nothing but paper, but
with such a good linen finish that nobody ever discovers it, and they
answer every purpose. I find they don't keep them at the corner store,
and your young gentleman friends would like them, I am sure. They can
be had at the factory very reasonably, indeed. I shouldn't wonder if
we would better invest in some. But that was not what I started out to
say. When you get a pair of cuffs nicely laundried, so that they are
stiff and shining, how do you enjoy struggling with them to get the
cuff button in, or to get it out--especially if you are in a hurry?"

This query produced much merriment among two of the girls, which the
elder sister presently explained:

"You ought to ask that question of our brother Dick. He does have the
most trying times with his cuff buttons. He wants his cuffs so stiff
they can almost walk alone, and then he fusses and struggles to get the
buttons in so as not to break the cuff. He is just at the age, Miss
Benedict, to be very particular about such things, and sometimes he
gets into such a rage. Last Sunday he split one of his buttons in half
a dozen pieces tugging at it. I tried to help him, but I couldn't get
the thing in; they are a dreadful nuisance."

"Ah, but look at this." A sudden, dexterous movement, and the button
was standing perpendicularly across the button-hole, and could be
slipped in or out with perfect ease.

The girls looked and admired and exclaimed. They had never seen such a
contrivance.

"But they are very expensive, are they not?" This question came from
the ever-practical Ruth.

Miss Benedict readjusted her cuff with a sudden quivering of the lip,
as a rush of memories swept over her. Those heavy gold cuff buttons,
with their rare and delicate designs, had been among her father's
gifts, less than a year ago.

"These are rather so," she said presently, struggling to keep her voice
steady, "but the device for opening and shutting is introduced into
plain buttons, which can be had for twenty-five cents a set; and I
think they are a great comfort especially to young men."

This is only a hint of the talk. It was continued at several meetings,
and plans at last were perfected, and orders made out and sent to the
city for a dozen or more useful articles, none of them bulky, all of
them cheap. The arrangement was, that each young lady should take her
share of the articles, keep her individual account, and thenceforth go
armed; hair-pins and cuff buttons in her pocket, ready, as opportunity
offered, to suggest to a friend the advisability of making a desirable
purchase. If she went to a neighbor's of an errand, she was in duty
bound to take a pie-lifter under her shawl, and describe its merits.
Did she meet a reasonably-indulgent mother, out were to come the pretty
calendar cards, and the agent thereof was to hold herself prepared to
descant eloquently on their beauties. Thus, through the whole stock in
trade.

As for the "nuisance" part, of course it would be a good deal of a
nuisance, and a good deal of a cross; especially when they met with
surly people who did not even know how to _refuse_ politely. But as
workers enlisted for the war, they were to be ready to bear such
crosses, always endeavoring to carry on their work on strictly business
principles; to descend to no urging or unlady-like pressure, but simply
to courteously offer their goods at honest prices; if, after such
effort, they received replies that were hard to bear, they must just
bear them for the sake of the cause. Thus decreed the heroic leader;
adding, by way of emphasis, that all ways of earning money had their
unpleasant side she supposed, and all workers had moments in which
their work could only be looked upon in the light of a cross. _Would_
those girls ever know what a cross it had been to her, Claire Benedict,
to come to South Plains and teach them music? This part she _thought_.
Such crosses were not to be brought out to be talked about. Hers was
connected with such a heavy one, that it would bear mentioning only to
Him who "carried her sorrows."




CHAPTER IX.

OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE.


"WHY are not the Ansted girls included among our workers?"

It was the music-teacher who asked this question, as she waited in
the music-room for recess to close, and her work to begin. Around the
stove gathered the usual group of girls, talking eagerly. An absorbing
topic had been opened before them, one with unending resources. Ruth
Jennings had had unprecedented success, the Saturday before, disposing
of pie-lifters. She was detailing some of her curious experiences. Also
she had received an order for a certain kind of egg-beater, the like
of which had never been seen in South Plains. She had duly reported
the mysteriously-described thing to Miss Benedict, who had at once
recognized it, and sent her order out by the morning mail--not for
one, but two dozen. Why should not other families in South Plains beat
eggs in comfort? It was strange that she had not thought of those nice
little egg-beaters.

This and a dozen other matters of interest were being repeated and
discussed, the lady at the piano being constantly appealed to for
information, or to confirm some surprising statement. During a
momentary lull in the talk, she asked her question.

Ruth Jennings answered:

"Oh, the Ansted girls! Why, Miss Benedict, is it possible that you have
not discovered that they belong to a higher sphere? Dear me! They have
nothing to do with South Plains, except to tolerate it during a few
months of the summer because the old homestead is here, and they can't
very well move it to the city. They live in that lovely place at the
top of Curve Hill. You have been up there, haven't you? It is the only
really lovely spot in South Plains. In summer their grounds are just
elegant!"

Yes, Miss Benedict had been in that direction, and every other. She
rested herself, body and soul, by long, brisk, lonely walks. She had
noticed the place and wondered over it, and had meant to ask its
history. So unlike every other spot in the withered village. Great
broad fields stretching into the distance; handsome iron fence, with
massive gate-posts, guarded by fierce-looking dogs in iron; a trellised
arbor, the outline of a croquet-ground; a hint of wide-spreading,
carefully kept lawns, showing between patches of the snow; a
summerhouse that in the season of vines and blossoms must be lovely;
a circle that suggested an artificial pond, centred with a fountain,
where she could imagine the water playing rainbows with the sunshine in
the long summer days.

And in short, there were all about this place very unmistakable tokens
of the sort of refinement which is only to be secured by a full purse
and an abundance of elegant leisure on the part of some one whose
tastes are cultured to the highest degree. Shrouded in the snows of
midwinter, with a shut-up look about the large, old-fashioned, roomy
house, kept in a state of perfect repair, yet kept carefully for what
it was, a country home, the place was marked and exceptional.

It spoke a language that could be found nowhere else, in the village
or out of it for miles around. Miss Benedict had looked upon it with
loving eyes. It spoke to her of the world from which she had come
away; of the sort of life which had always heretofore been hers. It
did not look elegant to her, except by contrast with the surrounding
shabbiness. She had been used to much greater elegance. It simply said
"home" to her sad heart; and only the Saturday before, she had wondered
whose home it was, and why she never saw people who seemed to match it,
and when it would be opened again for residence, and whether she should
ever get a chance to visit that lovely greenhouse, all aglow even now.

It came to her as a surprise that it really was the home of two of her
pupils.

"Do you mean that the Ansteds _live_ there?" she questioned. "Where is
the family? and why are the girls here?"

"Oh, the family are everywhere. They scatter in the winter like the
birds. Go South, you know, or West, or wherever suits their royal
fancy. They have no home but this, because they can not make up their
minds where to settle down for one, so they board all over the world.
Do business in the city, live in South Plains, and stay in Europe; that
is about their history."

"And the girls remain here while their parents are away?"

"Part of the time, yes'm. Mrs. Ansted was a schoolmate of Mrs. Foster,
I have heard, and respects her very highly, and would prefer having the
girls with her to sending them anywhere else. Mr. Ansted is a merchant
in the city. In the summer he comes out home every night, and some of
them stay in town with him a great deal. It is only ten miles away,
you know. If they did not charge so dreadfully on the new railroad, we
might get a chance to look at its splendors once in a while ourselves;
but the Ansteds don't care for high prices. Mr. Ansted is one of the
directors, and I suppose they ride for nothing, just because they could
afford to pay eighty cents a day as well as not. That seems to be the
way things work."

"But the family attend this church, of course, while they are here. I
should think the girls would be interested to join us."

"Oh, no, ma'am; indeed, they don't. They haven't been inside the church
six times in as many years. They go to town."

"Not to church!"

"Yes'm; they do. Every pleasant day their carriage rolls by our house
about half-past eight, and makes me feel cross and envious all day."

"But do you really mean that they habitually go ten miles to church
each Sabbath, when there is one right at their doors that they might
attend? What denomination are they?"

"The very same as our own," the girl said, laughing over Miss
Benedict's astonished face.

Then the gentle Nettie added her explanation:

"Well, but, girls, you know they don't really go _ten_ miles. There is
an elegant church, Miss Benedict, just about seven, or maybe almost
eight, miles from here. It was built by wealthy people who live out
there in the suburbs, and it is said to be the prettiest church in
town, and the Ansteds go to that."

"But eight miles every Sabbath, and return, must make a busy and
wearying day of the Sabbath, I should think, when there is no occasion.
How came they to fall into the habit of going so far?"

"Why, they did not use to spend their summers here; only a few weeks
during August. They had a house in town, and then Mrs. Ansted was sick,
and the doctors said she could not live in the city, and they had a
little delicate baby, who they said would die unless they kept it in
the country. So, they sold their town house, and came out here to stay
until they decided what to do, and then the railroad was built, and
Mr. Ansted found it easy enough to get back and forth to his business,
and the baby began to grow strong, and they spent a great deal of money
on the place, and grew to liking it, and they just stay on. They keep
rooms in town, and are there a great deal, but they really live in
South Plains."

"And drive to church every Sabbath!"

"Well, every Sabbath when it is pleasant. They are not very regular.
When it is too warm to go, they lounge under the trees, and when it is
too rainy they lounge in their handsome house, I suppose. At any rate,
they don't appear in our church. We don't see much more of them when
they are at home than when they are in Europe, only riding by."

"And do the girls like to be here at school while the family is away?"

"Well, that is a new thing, you see. Mrs. Foster has only been here
since September. Before that, they never looked at our school; but
directly they heard she was coming, the Ansted girls came in, and are
to board here until the family come back from Florida. We never any of
us spoke to Fannie and Ella Ansted in our lives until they appeared
here in October."

Then Mary Burton spoke:

"And we shall not get a chance to speak with their highnesses much
longer. The Ansteds are coming home in two weeks. Lilian, that's the
baby, has had a low fever, and the doctors have decided that she needs
to come home and get braced up, and the house is being aired for their
coming. Ella Ansted told me this morning. She says she and Fannie will
only be here at recitations after next week or week after. She doesn't
know just when the folks will get here, they are going to stop in New
York."

"Girls," said the music-teacher in her most resolute tone, "let us get
the Ansted girls into our circle, and set them at work for the church."

But this met with eager demurs. The Ansteds held themselves aloof from
South Plains. They never made calls among the people, or invited them
to their home, or noticed them in any way. They had nothing to do with
the poor little church; never came to the prayer meetings, nor to the
socials, nor in any way indicated that they belonged to the same flesh
and blood as the worshipers there, and South Plains held its head too
high and thought too much of itself to run after them. The girls were
well enough, Fannie and Ella, and they had been pleasant to them; but
as for stooping to coax them to help, they did not feel that they could
do it, even for Miss Benedict.

"I don't want you to stoop," declared Miss Benedict, "nor to coax. I
want you to give them a good hearty invitation to join us. Poor things!
I am just as sorry for them as I can be! Eight miles away from their
church and all church friends; no prayer meeting to attend, and no
pastor to interest himself in all they do! I have wondered why those
girls seemed so out in the cold. I begin to understand it. You think
you have been cordial; but you have just edged out a little, made a
tiny opening in your circle, and said in effect: 'Oh, you may come in,
if you will crawl in there! We will tolerate you while you are here,
if you won't expect too much, nor ask us to invite you to our special
doings of any sort. You are just outsiders, and we are not going to
stoop to you, and let you be one with us.'"

The girls laughed a little, but Ruth Jennings demurred. Nobody had
wanted them to stay outside; they had chosen to do so. They would not
attend the church, though the trustees had invited Mr. Ansted, and they
never showed in any way an interest in South Plains or its people.

Miss Benedict changed her tactics:

"Girls, wait; let me ask you, are Fannie and Ella Ansted Christians?"

"Not that I ever heard of," Ruth said, and Mary Burton added that she
knew they were not; that one day when they were talking about such
things, Ella asked the strangest questions, almost as though she were a
heathen; and Fannie did not seem to know much better.

"Well, have you made them realize that you young people belong to
Christ, and that it is a pleasant way, and you would like to have them
join it, and work for his cause? Ruth, my dear, do they know that you
desire to have them happy in Christ, and that you pray for this every
day?"

"It isn't likely they do, Miss Benedict, for it isn't true. I never
thought about them twice in my life in that connection, and I know I
never prayed for them."

"And are there any of you who can give a better record than that?"
She looked around upon the silenced group, and waited in vain for an
answer. At last she said, gently:

"Now, girls, there are only two questions more that I want to ask you.
One is: Which is it that stands aloof, and makes no effort to help
others, you or the Ansted girls, if you know Christ and they do not?
And the other is: Will you all agree to invite them to join us, and do
it heartily?"

The pealing bell cut short an answer, if one had been intended. Miss
Benedict was glad. She wanted no answer just then; she had planted her
little seed, and hoped that it would take root and grow.

"She has a way of taking things for granted," said one of the group
which moved out of the music-room, leaving Nettie to take her lesson.
"How does she know that any of us are Christians?"

There was a moment's silence, then Mary Burton asked:

"Do you really suppose there is no difference between us and others?
Can't we be told in any way?"

"I'm sure I don't know how. There hasn't been a communion service since
she came here, and we don't any of us go to prayer meeting. They say
she does. Father said she sat in one corner of that dark old church the
other night; the first woman there, and not many came afterward."

Said Mary Burton:

"I wonder what it means, any way, to come out from among them and be
separate? I came across that verse in my reading the other night, and
I wondered, then, just what it meant. We girls are certainly not any
more 'separate' since we joined the church than we were before, so far
as I know; and yet the verse some way made me think of Miss Benedict;
she seems different from other Christians. I should like to know just
what made the difference?"

"She is 'gooder,'" said Ruth Jennings, laughing a little, "that is
just the whole of it; but I wish she hadn't started out on this idea
about the Ansteds. They won't join us, and I don't want to feel myself
humiliated by asking them."

But Nettie, usually easy to be turned aside, held persistently to the
thought which troubled her.

"I know she is 'gooder,' that is what I say; but ought not we to be the
same? Ought the boys and girls with whom we five spend so much time, to
feel that we just belong to their set, and are in no sense different
from them? We are all the church-members there are among the young
people, you know. When I told Miss Benedict that the other day, she
looked astonished for a minute, and then she said: 'You dear girls,
what a work you have to do!' But I don't feel as though we were doing
it, and I, for one, don't know how; but I wish I did."

There was no answer to that. The little seed was taking root, though
not in the way that the planter had planned.




CHAPTER X.

AN OPEN DOOR.


THEREAFTER Miss Benedict thought much about the Ansteds. She herself
could hardly have told why they interested her so much, though she
attributed it to the fact that the surroundings of the old house spoke
to her of home. The family returned and established themselves there,
and the blinds were thrown open, and through the half-drawn shades,
as she took her after-school walks, she could see glimpses of bright,
beautiful life inside; she longed to get nearer, and saw no way to
accomplish it.

The Ansted girls had been invited to join the workers. Miss Benedict's
influence reached as far as this, though that lady wished she had been
sure that the invitation had sounded cordial and hearty. But they had
hesitated and hesitated, and proposed to talk with mamma about it, and
mamma was reported to have said that it was hardly worth while; they
were such entire strangers to the church and the people that of course
they could not be expected to have the interest in it which others had;
and the girls had tossed their heads and said they knew it would be
just so, they were sorry they had invited them, and they would not be
caught that way again, not even for Miss Benedict.

Meantime, Miss Benedict studied the Ansteds from a distance, and tried
to understand the reasons for their utter isolation from the good
people of the village. She cultivated the friendship of the two girls
who were her pupils, and who, now that they had declined the invitation
to join the others, were more shut off from them than before. Miss
Benedict took care, however, not to refer to this episode; there were
reasons why she did not desire to know the particulars. But she made
herself as winning as she could to the girls, and wondered how and
when she could reach their home.

As is often the case, the way opened unexpectedly.

It was a wintry evening, and she, having walked further than she had
intended, was making the return trip with all speed, lest the darkness
fast closing on the village, should envelop her before she reached the
academy.

"How foolish I was," she told herself, "to go so far! I must have
walked two miles, and it is beginning to snow. What would mamma think
to see me on the dark street alone?"

In common with most city-bred ladies, accustomed to treading the
brightly-lighted city streets with indifference, she looked upon the
darkness and silence of the country with a sort of terror, and was
making swift strides, not pausing even to get the glimpse of "home"
which shone out broadly across the snow from all the front windows of
the house on Curve Hill.

It looked very home-like, but her only home was that plain, little
upper room, at the academy, and thither she must go with all speed.
Underneath the freshly-falling snow lay a treacherous block of ice,
and as the hurrying feet touched it, they slipped from their owner's
control, and she was lying a limp heap at the foot of Curve Hill.

No use to try to rise and hasten on. A very slight effort in that
direction told her that one ankle was useless. What was to be done? She
looked up and down the street; not a person was to be seen in either
direction. Would it be of any use to call through this rising wind for
assistance? How plainly she could see the forms flitting about that
bright room! yet they might as well be miles away, so far as her power
to reach them was concerned. She made a second effort to rise, and fell
back with a groan; it was best not to attempt that again, or she should
faint, and certainly she had need of her senses now. If only one of
those queer-looking wood-sleighs, over which she had laughed only this
afternoon, would come along and pick her up, how grateful she would
be! Somebody else was coming to pick her up.

"What have we here?" said a brisk voice. "Fallen humanity? plenty of
that to be found. What is the immediate cause?" Then in a lower tone:
"I believe it is a woman!" By this time he had reached her side, a
young man, prepared to make merry over the fallen fortunes of some
child; so he had evidently at first supposed.

"I beg pardon, ma'am," he said, and even at that moment he waited to
lift his hat, "did you fall? Are you injured? How can I best help you?"

Claire Benedict of old had one peculiarity which had often vexed her
more nervous young sister: under embarrassing or trying circumstances
of any sort, where the average young woman would be likely to cry, she
was nearly certain to laugh. It was just what she did at this moment.

"I think I have sprained my ankle," she said between her laughs; "at
least, it will not allow me to move without growing faint, so I am
keeping still; I thought I needed my senses just now. If you can think
of any way of securing a wagon of some sort in which I can ride to the
academy, it will help me materially."

"To the academy! Why, that is a mile away! You must take a shorter ride
than that for the first one. You can not be very heavy, I should say.
Allow me." And before she understood what he was planning sufficiently
to attempt a protest, he had stooped and unceremoniously picked her up,
and was taking swift strides across the snow-covered lawn to the side
piazza of the Ansted house. The gate leading to the carriage-drive was
thrown open, so there had been no obstacle in his way.

It was ridiculous to laugh under such circumstances, but this was just
what Claire did, while her porter threw open the door, strode through
the wide hall, and dropped her among the cushions of a luxurious couch,
in one of the bright rooms.

"Here is a maimed lady," he said. "Mamma, Alice, where are some of
you?"

"Oh, Louis!" said a familiar voice, "what's the matter? Did you run
over her? Why, Fannie, it is Miss Benedict! Mamma! Louis, call mamma,
quick!"

And then Claire really accomplished what she had so often threatened,
and fainted entirely away.

"It is only a sprain," she explained, directly her eyes were open
again; "I was very foolish to faint."

A pleasant, motherly face was bending over her, with eyes like Ella and
hair like Fannie; this must be the mother.

"Is it a sprain, do you think?" she asked, "or only a sort of twist?
Those things are sometimes very painful for awhile. We have sent for
a physician, and shall soon know what to do for you. In the meantime,
Fannie, my dear, her boot should be removed."

Thus reminded, Fannie bent with eager fingers over the injured member.

"Did you fall, Miss Benedict? Wasn't it too bad? But since you were
going to fall, I am glad you did it right by our gate."

"Mamma, do you know? This is our music-teacher."

"So I judged, daughter. We are sorry to make her acquaintance in this
manner, and glad to be of service. Bring another pillow, Ella."

It was all gracefully and graciously said. Mrs. Ansted was not a woman
who would have thought of seeking out, and calling in a friendly
way on her daughter's music-teacher; but she was one who, when that
music-teacher appeared at her door in need of assistance, could bestow
it heartily and delicately.

"She is not like mamma in the least--oh, not in any particular--and yet
I think she means to be a good woman, so far as she sees the way to it
out of the environments of her world. I wonder if there is any way in
which I am to help her, and if this is a beginning?"

This was the mental comment of the music-teacher, who was supposed to
be absorbed in her own troubles.

It all arranged itself speedily and naturally. The doctor came and
pronounced the ankle badly sprained, advised entire quiet for a few
days, heartily seconded Mrs. Ansted's suggestion that the prisoner
should remain with them, and when Claire faintly demurred, that lady
said, decidedly:

"Why, of course, it will be the proper thing to do. It is not as though
you were at home. The academy is at best, a poor place in which to
secure quiet, and there is no occasion for submitting to the discomfort
of getting there. This is decidedly the place for you. Since it was the
treacherous ice on our walk that brought you to grief, you must allow
us to make what amends we can. I will send word to Mrs. Foster at once."

Claire yielded gracefully; in truth, she was rather anxious to do so.
She was interested in the Ansteds. She had been wondering how she could
make their acquaintance, and interest them in matters that she believed
required their aid. She had been doing more than wondering. Only this
morning, thinking of the subject, as she locked her door for prayer,
she had carried it to Christ, and asked him for opportunities, if
indeed he meant that she was to work in this direction. What a signal
opportunity! Certainly not of her planning. She must take care how
she closed the door on it. Behold her, then, an hour later, domiciled
in one of the guest chambers of the beautiful old home, where every
touch of taste and refinement, yes, and luxury, soothed her heart like
a breath from home. This was the home to which she had heretofore
been accustomed. More elegant her own had been, it is true, but the
same disregard to money that had characterized the belongings of her
father's house were apparent here; everything spoke of a full purse
and a cultured taste. It was very foolish, but Claire could not help
a little sigh of satisfaction over the delicacy of the curtains and
the fineness of the bed draperies. Had she really missed things of
that sort so much? she asked herself. Yes, she had! her truthful heart
responded. She liked all soft and fair and pretty things; but, after
all, the main reason for their soothing influence now was that they
said "home" and "mother" to her.

Laid aside thus suddenly from her regular line of work, the morning
found her, dressed, and lying on the fawn-colored couch in her pretty
room, considering what there was to do that day. She had already
feasted royally; the delicate breakfast that had been sent up to her
was served on rare old china, and accompanied with the finest of damask
and the brightest of solid silver.

They commented on her in the dining-room below after this fashion:

"Poor creature, I suppose she thinks she has dropped into fairy-land.
She looks as though she could appreciate the little refinements of
life. I quite enjoyed sending her that quaint old cream cup. I fancy
she has taste enough to admire it." This from the mother. Then Alice:

"Mamma, are not such things a sort of cruel kindness? Think of going
back to the thick dishes and cheap knives of the academy after being
served in state for a few days!"

"I know, dear; but we can not help that part. She will probably not
remain long enough to get spoiled. She is really quite interesting. I
wonder if she has seen better days?"

How would Claire have answered this question? "Fairyland?" yes, it was
something of that to her, but she was like a fairy who had been astray
in a new world, and had reached home again. The silver might be choice,
but she had seen as choice, and the china might have been handed
down for generations, yet the style of it and the feel of it were
quite familiar to her. Dainty and delicate things had been every-day
matters in her father's house. "Different" days she had seen, oh, very
different; yet this young girl, so suddenly stranded on what looked
like a rough shore, was already beginning to question whether, after
all, these were not her "better days." Had she ever before leaned her
heart on Christ as she was learning now to do? Busy in his cause she
had always been, eagerly busy, ever since she could remember; but she
began to have a dim feeling that it was one thing to be busy in his
cause, and quite another to walk with him, saying, as a child, "What
next?" and taking up the "next" with a happy unquestioning as to the
right of it. Something of this new experience was beginning to steal
over her; there seemed to be less of Claire Benedict than ever before,
but there was in her place one who was growing willing to be led, and
Claire already felt that she would not be willing to take back the old
Claire Benedict; she was growing attached to this new one.

Before that day closed, the Ansteds had a revelation.

It was Alice, the young lady daughter of the house, who had come up
to show Mrs. Foster the way, and who lingered and chatted with the
cheerful young prisoner after Mrs. Foster had taken her departure. She
stooped for Claire's handkerchief, which had dropped, and said, as her
eye fell on the name:

"I know of a young lady who has your full name. That is singular, is it
not? The name is not a common one."

"Who is she?" asked Claire, interested. "Is she nice? Shall I
immediately claim relationship?"

"I am not in the least acquainted with her, though I fancy from what
I have heard that she may be very 'nice.' She was pointed out to me
once at a concert in Boston, by a gentleman who had some acquaintance
with her. She is the daughter of Sidney L. Benedict, a millionnaire. I
suppose you do not know of her, though she is a namesake. I heard more
about her father perhaps than I did of her. Ever so many people seemed
to admire him as a wonderful man; very benevolent, you know, and sort
of hopelessly good, he seemed to me. I remember telling my brother
Louis that it must be rather oppressive to have such a reputation for
goodness to sustain. Were you ever in Boston?"

The music-teacher was so long in answering, that Miss Alice turned
toward her questioningly, and found that the eyes, but a moment, before
so bright, were brimming with tears.

"I beg your pardon," she said, sympathetically, "does your ankle pain
you so badly? Something ought to be done for it. I will call mamma."

But Claire's hand detained her.

"It is not that," she said gently, and smiled. "I forgot my ankle, and
where I was, and everything. He was a good man, Miss Ansted; good and
true to the heart's core, and his goodness was not oppressive, it was
his joy. He has gone now to wear his crown, and I am proud to be his
daughter Claire. But oh, there are times when the longing to see him
rolls over me so that it swallows every other thought." And then the
poor little teacher buried her head in the lace-trimmed pillows and
cried outright!

"Mamma, what do you think! Louis, can you believe it possible? She is
one of the Boston Benedicts! A daughter of that Sidney L. about whom we
heard so much when we were with the Maitlands!"

"I heard he had gone to smash!" said Louis, when the first astonishment
was over, "but I thought he had done it fashionably, and provided
handsomely for his family."




CHAPTER XI.

A "FANATIC."


I DO not suppose people realize how much such things influence them.
For instance, Alice Ansted was the sort of girl who would have been
ashamed of herself had she realized how much more important a person
Claire Benedict was to her as soon as it became known that she belonged
to the Boston Benedicts. But the fact was very apparent to others,
if not to Alice. She had been very glad, before this, to have Miss
Benedict enjoy the comforts of the house, but now she hovered about
her, and gave her crumbs of personal attention, and found a fascination
in hearing her talk, and, in short, was interested in her to a degree
that she could never have been simply in the poor music-teacher.

She brought her work one morning, and sat by the luxurious chair where
Claire had been imprisoned, with her injured foot skillfully arranged
on a hassock.

"How pretty it is," Claire said, watching the crimson silk flowers grow
on the canvas under skillful fingers; "do you enjoy working on it?"

The tone of voice which answered her was dissatisfied in the extreme:

"Oh, I suppose so; as well as I enjoy anything that there is to do. One
must employ one's self in some way, and we live such a humdrum life
here that there is chance for very little variety. I am puzzled to know
how you manage it, Miss Benedict; you have been accustomed to such
different surroundings. This is a sharp enough contrast to Chester.
Have you been in Chester yet, Miss Benedict? Well, it is just a nice
little city; hardly large enough to be called a city. The society is
good, and there is always something going on, and when I come out here
I am at an utter loss what to do with myself. But then, Chester is very
far from being Boston, and if I had had the advantages of Boston all
my life, as you have, I feel sure I could not endure a month of South
Plains. It is bad enough for me. How do you bear it?"

Claire could only smile in answer to this. There were circumstances
connected with her removal from Boston which were too keenly felt to
touch with a careless hand. She hastened to ask questions.

"What is there pleasant in Chester? I have promised myself to go there
some Saturday, and see what I can find in the library."

"Oh, there is a very fair library there, I believe, for a town of its
size, but I never patronize it; we have books enough. By the way, Miss
Benedict, you are welcome to the use of our library. Papa will be
glad to have some one enjoying the books. The girls have as much as
they can endure of books in school, and Louis is not literary in his
tastes; I am almost the only reader. Mamma is so busy with various city
benevolences that, what with her housekeeping and social cares, she
rarely has time for much reading. Oh, Chester is well enough. There are
concerts, you know, and lectures, or entertainments of some sort; one
can keep busy there, if one accepts invitations. But, to tell you the
truth, the whole thing often bores me beyond endurance, and I am glad
to get out here to be away from it all. I don't like my life. I think
I have talents for something better, if one could only find what it
is--the something better, I mean."

There was a pretty flush on her discontented face as she looked up
eagerly to see how this confidence was being received. Claire's face
was gently sympathetic, and grave. Alice took courage.

"Mamma laughs at me, and says I am visionary, and that I want to have
a career, and that I must be content to fill my sphere in life, as my
ancestors have done before me; but really I am not content. I don't
like the sort of life spread out before me for generations back;
marrying, you know, and keeping up a handsome house, and receiving and
paying visits, and giving a grand party once a year, when you are sure
to offend somebody to whom you were indebted in some way, and whom you
forgot. Now, do you see any particular enjoyment in that sort of thing?"

"No," said Claire unhesitatingly, "I do not."

"I'm real glad to hear you say so. Mamma thinks it is dreadful to be
discontented with one's lot; but I am. I would like a career of some
sort; anything that would absorb me. And yet I don't want to be poor. I
should shrink from that. Do you really find it easier to get along with
life, now that you have not time to think, as you used?"

Another question to be gently put aside. What did this girl know of the
charmed life which she had lived at home, and of the father who had
been its centre? She could not go into the depths of her heart and drag
out its memories, unless there were a very grave reason for so doing.

"I have always lived a very busy life," she answered, evasively; "but
before I can help you with any of my experiences, I must ask one
question: Are you not a Christian, Miss Ansted?"

Apparently it was an amazing question to the young girl. Her cheeks
took a deeper flush; she let her canvas half drop from her hand, and
fixed inquiring eyes on her questioner.

"Why, yes; that is, I suppose I am, or hope I am, or something; I am a
member of the church, if that is what you mean."

"It is not in the least what I mean. That is only the outward
sign--worthless, if it is not indeed a sign of union with Christ. Such
a union as furnishes a career, Miss Ansted, which alone is worthy of
you. Such a union as carries you captive--making your time and your
money, and your talents, not your own, but his. There is nothing
dissatisfying about such a life, my friend. It almost lifts one above
the accident of outward surroundings."

There was an undoubted amazement expressed on Miss Ansted's face now.

"I don't in the least understand you," she said. "What has my being
a member of the church to do with all this time which lies on my
hands just now, I should like to know. If you mean mission bands and
benevolent societies, and all that sort of thing, my tastes don't lie
in that direction, in the least. Mamma does enough of that for the
entire family; she always has some poky board meeting to attend. I have
sat shivering in the carriage, and waited for her last words so many
times, that I am utterly sick of the whole thing. Oh, I am a member, of
course, and give money; that is all they want. But you are mistaken in
supposing that these things help me in the least."

"I don't think so," Claire said, unable to help smiling over the
darkness which had so misunderstood and misinterpreted Christian work,
and yet feeling that it called for tears rather than smiles; "these
things are only more of the 'outward signs.'"

They were interrupted then, and Claire was not sorry. She wanted to
think over her ground. There was no use in casting these pearls of
truth before Alice Ansted, she was too utterly in the dark to see
them. A young lady she was, well educated, in the common acceptation
of that term, accomplished, so far as music and French were concerned,
skillful as regards embroidery and worsted work; but evidently the
veriest child as regarded the Christian life, though she had been a
member of the visible church for years. If she were to be helped at
all, Claire must come down from the heights where she walked and meet
her on some common ground.

"I wonder how the old church would do?" she asked herself. "I wish I
could get her interested in it, both for her sake and for the sake of
the church."

Had she heard the report given below of this brief conversation, she
might have been discouraged, for she was but a young worker after all,
and had not met with many rebuffs.

"Mamma, she is a regular little fanatic," so Alice affirmed. "You ought
to have heard her talk to me! It sounded just like quotations from that
old book of sermons that grandma used to pore over. I didn't know what
she meant."

"Probably she did not either," was the comment of this Christian
mother. "Some very young people occasionally fall into that style,
talking heroics, using theological terms of which they can not grasp
the meaning, and fancy it a higher type of religion. She will probably
know both less and more as she grows older."

Then was Miss Benedict's pupil, Ella, emboldened to come to the rescue
of her teacher's reputation:

"But, mamma, she is not so very young. I saw her birthday book, and the
date made her twenty in September."

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Ansted, with amused smile, "that is quite a
patriarchal age. She certainly ought to be well posted in all
theological dogmas by this time. My dear, it is one of the worst ages
for a young woman--if she isn't absorbed with an engagement by that
time to fancy herself superior."

"Oh, mamma! you don't know Miss Benedict. She doesn't fancy herself
superior to anybody. She is just as sweet and lovely as she can be. All
the girls like her, and I think she has the nicest religion of anybody
I know!" This outburst was from Fannie.

"Very well, dear," answered the mother complacently; "admire her as
much as you like. She is quite as safe a shrine as any for a young girl
like you to worship at. You must always have some one. I am glad the
girls like her, poor thing; her life must be doleful enough at best.
It is certainly a great change." And the benevolent mother sighed in
sympathy. She was glad to be able to put what she thought was a little
sunshine from her elegant home into the poor music-teacher's lot. She
even wondered, as she waited for her carriage to drive down town,
whether the sprained ankle were not a providential arrangement to
enable her to give a few days of rest and luxury to this unfortunate
girl.

This thought she kept quite to herself. She did not quite accept such
strained and peculiar views of Providence. It savored a little of
fanaticism--a thing which she disapproved, and Mr. Ansted disliked; but
then, some people thought such things, and it was barely possible that
they were sometimes correct.

She went out to her carriage still thinking these thoughts, and Claire,
watching her from the upper window, said to herself:

"I wonder if I can help her? I wonder if God means me to? Of course, I
am set down here for something." _She_ had no doubt at all about the
providence in it.

The son of the house had added one sentence to the family discussion:

"You might have known that she would be a fanatic, after you found
that she was Sydney Benedict's daughter. He was the wildest kind of a
visionary. Porter was talking about him to-day. He knew them in Boston.
He says Benedict gave away enough every year to support his family in
splendid style. They are reaping the results of his extravagance."

This is only one of the many different ways which there are of looking
at things.

Nevertheless the fair fanatic seemed to be an attractive object to
the entire family. Louis, not hitherto particularly fond of evenings
at home, found himself lingering in the up-stairs library, whither he
had himself wheeled the large chair with the patient seated therein.
As the days passed, she persisted in making herself useful, and Ella
and Fannie, under her daily tuition, were making very marked progress
in music, as well as in some other things that their mother did not
understand about so well. It was on one of these cosey evenings that
Louis occupied the piano-stool, he and Alice having been performing
snatches of favorite duets, until Alice was summoned to the parlors.

"Come down, won't you, Louis? that is a good boy. It is the Powell
girls, and Dick will be with them, I presume." This had been Alice's
petition just as she was leaving the room.

But Louis had elevated both eyebrows and shoulders.

"The Powell girls!" he repeated. "Not if this individual knows himself!
I never inflict myself on the Powell girls, if there is any possibility
of avoiding it; and as for Dick, I would go a square out of my way any
time, to save boring him. Excuse me, please, Alice; I am not at home,
or I _am_ at home, and indisposed--just as you please; the latter has
the merit of truth. It is my duty to stay here and entertain Miss
Benedict, since the girls have deserted her.

"I have no doubt that you would excuse me with pleasure, but
nevertheless I consider it my duty to stay!" This last was merrily
added, just as Alice closed the door.

Claire did not wait to reply to the banter, but plunged at once into
the centre of the thought which had been growing on her for several
days.

"Mr. Ansted, do you know, I wish I could enlist both you and your
sisters as helpers in the renovation of the old church down town?"

"What! the old brick rookery on the corner? My dear young lady, your
faith is sublime, and your knowledge of this precious village limited!
That concern was past renovating some years before the flood. It was
about that time, or a little later, that my respected grandfather tried
to remodel the seats, and raised such a storm of indignation about his
ears that it took a century to calm the people down; so tradition says.
Whatever you undertake to do will be a failure; I feel it my duty to
inform you of so much. And now I am burning with a desire to ask a rude
question: Why do you care to do anything with it? Why does it interest
you in the least? I beg your pardon if I am meddling with what does not
concern me, but I was amused over the affair when the girls came home
and petitioned to join the charmed circle. Why a lady who was here but
for a passing season or so, should interest herself in the old horror,
was beyond my comprehension. Is it strictly benevolence, may I ask?"

"I don't think it is benevolence at all. It is a plain-faced duty."

"Duty!" The heavy eyebrows were raised again. "I don't comprehend you.
Why should a stranger to this miserable, little, squeezed-up village,
and one who by all the laws of association and affinity will surely not
spend much of her time here, have any duties connected with that old
box, which the church fathers have allowed to run into desolation and
disgrace for so many years, that the present generation accepts it as a
matter of course?"

"Will you allow me to ask _you_ one question, Mr. Ansted? Are you a
Christian?"




CHAPTER XII.

LOGIC AND LABOR.


THE young man thus addressed gave over fingering the piano-keys, as
he had been softly doing from time to time, whirled about on the
music-stool, and indulged in a prolonged and curious stare at his
questioner.

"I beg your pardon," he said at last, with a little laugh, as he
recognized the rudeness of the proceeding; "I am struck dumb, I think.
In all my previous extended experience no more astonishing query has
ever been put to me. I don't know how to take it."

"Won't you simply answer it?"

"Why, it is too astonishing to me that the thing requires an answer!
I don't believe I even know what it is to be the sort of character to
which you refer."

"Then, am I to understand that you don't know but you may be one?"

The young man laughed again, a slightly embarrassed laugh, and gave
his visitor a swift, penetrating glance, as if he would like to know
whether she was playing a part; then finding that she waited, he said:

"Oh, not at all! In fact, I may say I am very certain that I don't
belong to the class in question, even in name."

"May I ask you why?"

"Why!" He repeated the word. There was something very bewildering and
embarrassing about these short, direct, simply-put questions. He had
never heard them before. "Really, that is harder to answer than the
first. What is it to be a Christian, Miss Benedict?"

"It is to love the Lord Jesus Christ with a love that places his honor
and his cause and his commands first, and all else secondary."

"Who does it?"

"He knows. Perhaps there are many. Why are not you one?"

He dropped his eyes now, but answered lightly:

"Hard to tell. I have never given the matter sufficiently serious
thought to be able to witness in the case."

"But is that reply worthy of a reasoning being? Won't you be frank
about the matter, Mr. Ansted? I don't mean to preach, and I did not
intend to be offensively personal. I was thinking this afternoon how
strange it was that so many well-educated, reasoning young men left
this subject outside, and were apparently indifferent to it, though
they professed to believe in the story of the Bible; and I wondered
why it was: what process of reasoning brought them to such a position.
Will you tell me about it? How do young men, who are intelligent, who
accept the Bible as a standard of morals by which the world ought to be
governed, who respect the church and think it ought to be supported,
reason about their individual positions as outsiders? They do not stand
outside of political questions where they have a settled opinion; why
do they in this?"

"I don't know," he answered at last. "The majority of them, perhaps,
never give it a thought; with others the claims which the church makes
are too squarely in contact with pre-arranged plans of life; and
none of them more than half believe in religion as exhibited in the
every-day lives about them."

"Have you given me your reason for being outside, Mr. Ansted?"

"Why, yes, I suppose so; that is, so far as I can be said to have a
reason. I don't reason about these matters."

"Will you tell me which one of the three reasons you gave is yours?"

"Were you educated for the bar, Miss Benedict? Since you press me, I
must say that a mixture of all three might be found revolving about my
inner consciousness. I rarely trouble myself with the subject. That is
foolish. I suppose; but it is really no more foolish than I am about
many things. Then so far as I may be said to have plans, what little
I know of the Bible is dreadfully opposed to the most of them, and,
well, I don't more than one third believe in any of the professions
which are being lived about me."

"But you believe in the Bible?"

"Oh, I believe it is a fine old book, which has some grand reading in
it, and some that is very dull, and I know as little about it as the
majority of men and women."

"Oh, then let me put the question a little differently: Do you believe
in Jesus Christ?"

"Believe in him!"

"Yes, as one who once lived in person on this earth, and died on a
cross, and went back to heaven, and is to come again at some future
time?"

"Oh, yes; I have no particular reason for doubting prophecy or history
on those points. I'm rather inclined to think the whole story is true."

"Do you think his character worthy of admiration?"

"Oh, yes, of course; it is a remarkable character. Even infidels
concede that, you know; and I am no infidel. Bob Ingersoll and his
follies have no charm for me. I have had that disease, Miss Benedict;
like the measles and whooping-cough, it belongs to a certain period
of life, you know, and I am past that. I had it in a very mild form,
however, and it left no trace. The fellow's logic has nothing to stand
on."

She ignored the entire sentence, save the first two words. She had not
the slightest desire to talk about Bob Ingersoll, or to let this gay
young man explain some of Bob's weak mistakes, and laugh with her over
his want of historic knowledge. She went straight to the centre of the
subject:

"Then, Mr Ansted, won't you join his army, and come over and help us?"

Nothing had ever struck the brilliant young man as being more
embarrassing than this simple question, with a pair of earnest eyes
waiting for his answer. It would not do to be merrily stupid and
pretend to misunderstand her question, as he at first meditated, and
ask her whether she really wanted him to join Ingersoll's army. Her
grave eyes were fixed on his face too searchingly for that. There was
nothing for it but to flit behind one of his flimsy reasons:

"Really, Miss Benedict, there are already enough recruits of the sort
that I should make. When I find a Christian man whom I can admire with
all my heart--instead of seeing things in him every day that even I,
with my limited knowledge, know to be contrary to his orders--I may
perhaps give the matter consideration, but, in my opinion, the army is
too large now."

"But you told me you admired Jesus Christ. I do not ask you to be like
any other person--to act in any sense like any other person whom you
ever saw or of whom you ever heard. Will you copy him, Mr. Ansted?"

There was no help for it; there must be a direct answer; she was
waiting.

"I do not suppose I will." This was his reply, but the air of gayety
with which he had been speaking was gone. You might almost have
imagined that he was ashamed of the words.

"Won't you please tell me why?"

Was there ever a man under such a direct fire of personal questions
hard to answer? Banter would not do. There was something in the face
and voice of the questioner which made him feel that it would be a
personal insult to reply other than seriously.

"There are insurmountable difficulties in the way," he said at last,
speaking in a low, grave tone.

"Difficulties too hard for God to surmount? You can not mean that?"

But he did not explain what he meant, and at that moment he received
a peremptory summons from his mother to the parlor. He arose at once,
glad, apparently, of the interruption, but did not attempt to return
to the free and easy tone with which he had carried on part of the
conversation, but bade her a grave and respectful good-night.

Left alone, poor Claire could only sigh in a disappointed way; as
usual, she had not said the words she meant to say, and she could but
feel that she had accomplished nothing. It had been her father's motto
to spend no time alone with a human being without learning whether
he belonged to the army; and if not, making an effort to secure his
enlistment. Claire, looking on, had known more than one young man, and
middle-aged man, and not a few children, who had reported in after
days that a word from her father had been their starting-point. Sadly,
she mourned, oftentimes, because she had not her father's tact and
judgment. It had seemed to her that this young man, with his handsome
face and his handsome fortune, ought to be won for Christ. Why did not
his mother win him, or his sister? Why did not she? She could but try;
so she tried, and apparently had failed; and she was still so young a
worker that she sighed, and felt discouraged, instead of being willing
to drop the seed, and leave the results with God. She belonged to that
great company of seed-sowers who are very anxious to see the mysterious
processes that go on underground, with which they have nothing whatever
to do.

The next day Claire went back to the Academy. Her twisted ankle was
still to be petted and nursed, and the piano had to move from the
music-room to a vacant one next to Claire's own, and the chapel and
dining-room did without her for a while, but the work of the day was
resumed, and went steadily forward.

It was not without earnest protest that she left the home which had
opened so royally to receive her; and it is safe to say that every
member of the family missed her, none more than Alice, who had found a
relief in her conversations from the _ennui_ and unrest which possessed
her. Louis, too, had added his entreaties that the burdens of life
at the Academy should not be assumed so soon, and evidently missed
something from the home after her departure. It was when he was helping
her to the sleigh that he said:

"You did not answer my question about the old church and your interest
in it; may I call some evening, and get my answer?"

"We shall be glad to see you at the Academy," she had replied,
cordially, "but I can answer your question now. It is because it is
the church of Christ, and it is my duty to do for it in every way all
that I can."

"But," he said, puzzled, "how is it that the church fathers, and, for
that matter, the church mothers, have let it get into such a wretched
state of repair? Why haven't they a duty concerning it, rather than a
stranger in their midst?"

"I did not say that they had not; but they don't have to report to me;
the Head of the Church will see to that."

Then Dennis, the Academy man-of-all-work, had taken the reins, while
Louis was in the act of tucking the robes more carefully about her, and
driven rapidly away.

"It is queer how things work," Ruth Jennings said, as a party of the
girls gathered around their teacher to report progress. "There are a
dozen things that have had to lie idle, waiting for you. Why do you
suppose we had to be interrupted in our plans, and almost stand still
and do nothing, while you lay on a couch with a sprained ankle? I'm
sure we were doing nice things and right things, and we needed you,
and it could do no possible good to anybody for you to lie and suffer
up there for a week. I do say it looks sometimes as if things just
_happened_ in this world, or else were managed by somebody who hated
the world and every good plan that was made for it. Don't you really
think that Satan has a good deal of control, Miss Benedict?"

But there were reasons why Miss Benedict thought it would be as
well not to let her pupil wander off just then on a misty sea of
questionings. As for herself, she had no doubt that the interruption
was for some good end; it is true, she could not see the end, but she
trusted it.

You are to remember that she had had her sharper lessons, beside which
all this was the merest child's play. Those girls could not possibly
know how that awful "why" had tortured her through days and nights
until that memorable Sunday night when God gave her victory. What
interruptions had come to her! Father and fortune, and home, and
life-work, cut off in a moment; the whole current of her life changed;
changed in ways that would not do even to hint to the girls; what was
a sprained ankle and a few days of inaction compared with these! Yet
their evident chafing over the loss of time opened her eyes to a new
truth. It seemed such a trivial thing to her, that she could scarce
restrain her lips from a smile over their folly in dwelling on it,
until suddenly there dashed over her the thought:

"What if, in the light of Heaven, my interruptions all seem as small as
this?"

The interrupted work was now taken up with renewed energy, and indeed
blossomed at once into new varieties.

"What we must do next is to give a concert."

This was the spark that the music-teacher threw into the midst of the
group of girls who occupied various attitudes about her chair. It was
evening, and they were gathered in her room for a chat as to ways and
means. Several days had passed, and the foot was so far recovered that
its owner promised it a walk down the church aisle on the following
Sabbath, provided Dennis could arrange to have it taken to the door.
It still, however, occupied a place of honor among the cushions, and
Claire sat back in the depths of a great comfortable rocker that had
been brought from the parlor for her use.

"A concert!" repeated Ruth, great dismay in her voice, "us?"

"Yes, us."

"Who would come?" This from Nettie.

"Everybody will come after we are ready, if we have managed our part of
the work well, and put our tickets low enough, and exerted ourselves to
sell them. Oh, I don't mean _play_! I mean work! We would make ready
for a first-class entertainment. Let me see, are you not all my music
pupils? Yes, every one of you, either vocal or piano pupils. What is
more natural than to suppose that 'Miss Claire Benedict, assisted by
her able and efficient class of pupils,' can 'give an entertainment
in the audience-room of the church,' etc? Isn't that the way the
advertisements head?"

"For the benefit of the church?"

But to this suggestion Miss Benedict promptly shook her head:

"No, for the benefit of ourselves."




CHAPTER XIII.

INNOVATIONS.


I DISLIKE that way of doing things. People are being educated to
suppose that they are engaged in a benevolent enterprise when they
attend a benefit concert or entertainment. Those who can not afford to
go ease their consciences by saying, 'Oh, well, it is for benevolence;'
when it really isn't, you know; it is for self-gratification or
self-improvement, and people who ought to give twenty-five dollars for
a thing learn to tell themselves that they went to the twenty-five
cent supper, or concert, and that is their share, they suppose. Let
us invite them to come to our concert because we believe that we can
entertain them, and that it will pay them to be present.

"The fact is, girls, the church of Christ doesn't _need_ any benefit.
We degrade it by talking as though it did. No, we will divide the
proceeds of the concert in shares among ourselves; that is we, the
workers, will for the time being go into business and earn money that
shall be ours. We will not plead poverty, or ask people to listen to
us because of benevolence; we will simply give them a chance to hear a
good thing if they want to, and the money shall be ours to do exactly
what we please with. Of course, if we please to give every cent of it
to the church, that is our individual affair."

New ground this, for those girls; they had never before heard the like;
but there was an instant outgrowth of self-respect because of it.

"Then we can't _coax_ people to buy tickets?" said Nettie. "I'm so
glad."

"Of course not. The very utmost that propriety will allow us to do will
be to exhibit our goods for sale, so much for such an equivalent, and
allow people the privilege of choosing what they will do, and where
they will go."

The girls, each and all, agreed that from that standpoint they would
as soon offer tickets for sale as not; and instantly they stepped
upon that new platform and argued from it in the future, to the great
amazement and somewhat to the bewilderment of some of their elders.

Thereafter, rehearsals for the concert became the daily order of
things; not much time to spend each day, for nothing could be done
until lessons were over and all regular duties honorably discharged.
The more need then for promptness and diligence on the part of each
helper, and the more glaringly improper it became to delay matters
by having to stay behind for a half-prepared lesson. Never had the
Academy, or the village, for that matter, been so full of eager,
throbbing, healthy life, as those girls made it.

Their numbers grew, also. At first, the music-class was disposed,
like the others, to be exclusive, and to shake its head with a lofty
negative when one and another of the outsiders proposed this or that
thing which they would do to help. But Miss Benedict succeeded in
tiding them over that shoal.

"It is their church, girls, as well as ours. We must not hinder them
from showing their love."

"Great love they have had," sneered one; "they never thought of doing a
thing until we commenced."

But they were all honest, these girls, and this very one who had
offered her sneer, added in sober second thought:

"Though, to be sure, for the matter of that, neither did we, until you
begun it. Well, let them come in; I don't care."

"And we want to do so much," said Miss Benedict, with enthusiasm; "if I
were you I would take all the help I could get."

Meantime, the other schemes connected with this gigantic enterprise
flourished. There seemed no end to the devices for money-making, all of
them in somewhat new channels, too.

"Not a tidy in the enterprise," said Ruth Jennings, gravely, as she
tried to explain some of the work to her mother. "Who ever heard
of a church getting itself repaired without the aid of tidies and
pin-cushions! I wonder when they began with such things, mother? Do you
suppose St. Paul had to patronize fairs, and buy slippers and things,
for the benefit of churches in Ephesus or Corinth?"

The bewildered mother, with a vague idea that Ruth was being almost
irreverent, could not, for all that, decide how to answer her.

"For there isn't any religion in those things, of course," she said to
the equally-puzzled father, "and it did sound ridiculous to hear St.
Paul's name brought into it! That Miss Benedict has all sorts of new
ideas."

In the course of time, the boys (who are quite likely to become
interested in anything that has deeply interested the girls) were
drawn into service. Here, too, the ways of working were unusual and
suggestive. Miss Benedict heard of one who had promised to give all the
cigars he would probably have smoked in two months' time, whereupon she
made this eager comment:

"Oh, what a pity that it is not going to take us fifty years to repair
the church! then we would get him to promise to give us the savings of
cigars until it was done!"

This was duly reported to him, and gave him food for thought.

Another promised the savings from sleigh-rides that he had intended
to take, and another gravely wrote down in Ruth Jennings' note-book:
"Harry Matthews, $1.10; the price of two new neckties and a bottle of
hair oil!" There was more than fun to some of these entries. Some of
the boys could not have kept their pledges if there had not been these
queer little sacrifices.

One evening there was a new development. Ruth Jennings brought the
news. The much-abused, long-suffering, neglectful sexton of the
half-alive church notified the startled trustees that he had received
a louder call to the church on the other corner, and must leave them.
It really was startling news; for bad as he had been, not one in the
little village could be thought of who would be likely to supply his
place.

Ruth reported her father as filled with consternation.

"I wish I were a man!" savagely announced Anna Graves, "then I would
offer myself for the position at once. It is as easy to make three
dollars a month in that way as it is in any other that I know of."

That was the first development of the new idea. Miss Benedict bestowed
a sudden glance, half of amusement, half of pleasure, on her aspiring
pupil, and was silent.

"If it were not for the fires," was Nettie Burdick's slow-spoken
sentence, rather as if she were thinking aloud than talking. That is
the way the idea began to grow.

Then Ruth Jennings, with a sudden dash, as she was very apt to enter
into a subject:

"It is no harder to make fires in church stoves than it is in
sitting-room ones. I've done that often. I say, girls, let's do it!"

Every one of them knew that she meant the church stoves instead of the
sitting-room ones, and that was the way that the idea took on flesh,
and stood up before them.

There followed much eager discussion and of course some demurs. Nothing
ever was done yet, or ever will be, without somebody objecting to it.
At least, this was what Ruth said; and she added that she could not,
to save her life, help being a little more settled in a determination
after she had heard somebody oppose it a trifle.

However, the trustees opposed it more than a trifle. They were amazed.
Such an innovation on the time-honored ways of South Plains had never
been heard of before. Argument ran high. The half-doubtful girls came
squarely over to the aggressive side, and waxed eloquent over the plan.
It was carried at last, as Miss Benedict, looking on and laughing, told
the girls she knew it would be.

"When you get fairly roused, my girls, I observe that you are quite apt
to carry the day." She did not tell them that they were girls after her
own heart, but I think perhaps she looked it.

One request the trustees growled vigorously over, which was that the
new sextons should be paid in advance for a half-year's work. What if
they failed?

"We won't fail," said Ruth indignantly, "and if we do, can't you
conceive of the possibility of our being honest? We will not keep a
cent of the precious money that has not been earned."

Whereupon, Mr. Jennings, in a private conference with the trustees,
went over to the enemy's side, and promised to stand security for
them, remarking apologetically that the girls had all gone crazy over
something, his Ruth among the number. Therefore eighteen dollars were
gleefully added to the treasury. The sum was certainly growing.

The Sabbath following the installation of the new sextons marked
a change in the appearance of the old church. The floors had been
carefully swept and cleansed, the young ladies drawing on their
precious funds for the purpose of paying a woman who had scrubbed
vigorously.

"It would be more fascinating," Ruth Jennings frankly admitted, "to let
all the improvements come in together in one grand blaze of glory; but
then it would be more decent to have those floors scrubbed, and I move
that we go in for decency, to the sacrifice of glory, if need be."

So they did. Not a particle of dust was to be seen on that Sabbath
morning anywhere about the sanctuary. From force of habit, the men
carefully brushed their hats with their coat-sleeves as they took
possession of them again, the service over; but the look of surprise on
the faces of some over the discovery that there was nothing to brush
away, was a source of amusement to a few of the watchful girls.

Also the few stragglers who returned for the evening service were
caught looking about them in a dazed sort of way, as though they deemed
it just possible that there might be an incipient fire in progress
that threatened the building. Not that a new lamp had been added; the
chimneys had simply been washed in soapsuds, and polished until they
shone, and new wicks had been furnished, the workers declaring that
their consciences really would not allow them to do less. The effect of
these very commonplace efforts was somewhat astonishing, even to them.

"It is well we did it," affirmed Anna Graves with serious face. "I
believe we ought to get the people used to these things by degrees or
they will be frightened."

One question Claire puzzled over in silence: Did the minister
really preach a better sermon that evening? Was it possible that
the cleanliness about him might have put a little energy into his
discouraged heart, or had she been so tired with her week of toil, that
to see every one of her dozen girls out to church, and sit back and
look at them through the brightness of clean lamps, was restful and
satisfying? She found that she could not decide on the minister as yet.
Perhaps the carrying of such a load as that church, for years, was what
had taken the spring out of his voice and the life out of his words.

About these things nothing must be said, yet could not something be
done? How could she and her girls help that pastor?

Meantime, some of the girls came to her one evening, bursting with
laughter:

"Oh, Miss Benedict, we have a new recruit! You couldn't guess who. We
shall certainly succeed now, with such a valuable reinforcement. Oh,
girls, we know now why Miss Benedict sprained her ankle, and kept us
all waiting for a week! This is a direct result from that week's work."

"What are you talking about?" said Miss Benedict, with smiling eyes
and sympathetic voice. It was a great addition to her power over those
girls that she held herself in readiness always to join their fun at
legitimate moments. Sad-hearted she often was, but what good that those
young things should see it? "Who is your recruit?"

"Why, Bud!" they said, and then there were shouts of laughter again,
and Ruth could hardly command her voice to explain: "He came to me
last night--tramped all the way up to our house in the snow, after
meeting--because he said he wasn't so ''fraid' of me as he was of 'all
them others.' Was that a compliment, girls, or an insult? Yes, Miss
Benedict, he wants to help; offers to 'tend the fires,' and I shouldn't
wonder if he could do it much better than it has been done at least. It
was real funny, and real pitiful, too. He said it was the only 'livin'
thing he knew how to do,' and _that_ he was sure and certain he could
do, and if it would help any, he would be awful glad to join."

"But doesn't he want to be paid?" screamed one of the girls.

"Paid? not he! I tell you he wants to join us. He said he wanted to do
it to please _her_. That means you, Miss Benedict. You have won his
heart in some way. Oh, it is the fruit of the sprained ankle. You know,
girls, she said it was surely for some good purpose." Then they all
went off into ecstatic laughter again. They were just at the age when
it takes so little to convulse girls.

"But I am not yet enlightened," explained Claire, as soon as there was
hope of her being heard. "Who is Bud?"

"Oh, is it possible you don't remember him? That is too cruel, when he
is just devoted to you! Why, he is the furnace-boy at the Ansteds. I
don't know where he saw you. He muttered something about the furnace
and the register that I did not understand; but he plainly intimated
that he was ready to be your devoted servant, and die for you, if need
be, or at least, make the church fires as many days and nights as you
should want them. Now the question is, what shall we do to the poor
fellow?"

The furnace-boy at the Ansteds! Oh, yes, Claire remembered him, a
great, blundering, apparently half-witted, friendless, hopeless boy.
Claire's heart had gone out in pity for him the first time she ever
saw him. He had been sent to her room to make some adjustment of the
register-screw, and she had asked him if he understood furnaces, and if
he liked to work, and if the snow was deep, and a few other aimless
questions, just for the sake of speaking to him with a pleasant voice,
and seeming to take an interest in his existence. Her father's heart
had always overflowed with tenderness and helpfulness for all such
boys. Claire had pleased herself--or perhaps I might say saddened
herself--with thinking what her father, if he were alive, and should
come in contact with Bud, would probably try to do for him. She could
think of ways in which her father would work to help him, but she
sadly told herself that all that was passed; her father was gone where
he could not help Bud, and there were few men like him; and the boy
would probably have to stumble along through a cold and lonely world.
She had not thought of one thing that _she_ could do for him; indeed,
it had not so much as occurred to her as possible that there could be
anything. After that first day she had not seen him again, until he
came to the music-room with a message for Ella, and she had turned her
head and smiled, and said "Good-morning!" and that was really all that
she knew about Bud. She had forgotten his existence; and she had been
sorrowing because her week at the Ansteds seemed to have accomplished
nothing at all.

Her face was averted for a moment from the girls, and some of them,
noticing, actually thought that their gay banter was offensive, and was
what caused the heightened color on her cheeks as she turned back to
them.

They could not have understood, even had she tried to explain, that
it was a blush of shame over the thought that the one whom possibly
she might have won from that home for the Master's service she had
forgotten, and reached out after those whom, possibly, she was not sent
to reach. Her eyes were open now; she would do what she could to repair
blunders.

"Do with him?" she said, going back to Ruth's last question. "We'll
accept him, of course, and set him to work; I should not be greatly
surprised if he should prove one of the most useful helpers on our list
before the winter is over. Look at the snow coming down, and we have a
rehearsal to-night; don't you believe he can shovel paths, as well as
make fires?"

"Sure enough!" said those girls, and they went away pleased with the
addition to the circle of workers, and prepared every one to greet him
as a helper.




CHAPTER XIV.

BLIND.


I SUPPOSE there was never a project that went forward on swifter wings
than did this one, born of the stranger's sermon preached that night
in the little neglected church at South Plains. Sometimes I am sad
over the thought that he knew nothing about it. Nobody, so far as I am
aware, ever took time to tell him that he was the prime mover in the
entire scheme.

The numerous plans for making money made progress with the rest.
Prospered, indeed, to a degree that filled the young workers with
amazement--I might almost say, with awe. They grew into the feeling
that Miss Benedict was right, and that God himself smiled on their
scheme, and gave it the power of his approval.

As the days went by, the reading spirit in the enterprise grew almost
too busy to write her daily hurried postals to her mother. These same
postals were gradually filled with items that astonished and somewhat
bewildered the mother and daughter who watched so eagerly for them.

"Would mamma be so kind as to call on Mr. Parkhurst, the one who was
chief man at the carpet factory up there by papa's old mill, you know?
Would she, on the next bright day, take the blue car line and ride up
there and talk with him? The ride would do her good, and it would be
such a help to the girls. They would need only a little carpeting, it
was true; but if Mr. Parkhurst would be so kind as to sell to them at
wholesale, factory prices, it would make a great difference with their
purses, and she was sure he would be pleased to do it if mamma would
ask him, because you know, mamma, he felt very grateful to papa for
help years ago."

This was the substance of one postal.

"One would think that Claire had bought the little old church, and was
fitting it up for her future home," commented Dora, a trifle annoyed.
The truth was, her sister seemed almost unpardonably satisfied and
happy away from them.

Another day would bring further petitions: "Would it be too much for
mamma to look at wall-papers, something very neat and plain, not at
all expensive, but suited to a small church; and make an estimate of
the expense in round numbers?" Then would follow a line of figures,
indicating length and breadth and height.

"What a child she is!" would the mother say, sighing and then
smiling--the smiles came last and oftenest in speaking of Claire. "She
was always very much like your father, and it grows on her. Well,
we must see about the wall-paper; perhaps this afternoon will be a
good time to give to it." And the commissions were executed promptly
and with painstaking care; and Claire could see that both mother and
Dora were becoming interested in the old church at South Plains, and
were absorbing a good many of their otherwise leisure and sad hours
in travelling hither and thither in search of shades and grades that
would be likely to give her satisfaction. Samples were sent to her, and
astonishingly low figures accompanied some of them; figures which were
communicated with shining eyes to the deeply-interested girls, and they
sent messages of thanks to the mother and daughter far away.

Meantime, the Ansteds were not forgotten. There was a special committee
meeting one evening in Miss Benedict's room. A letter had come "from
the foreign member of our firm," Miss Benedict had explained, laughing,
meaning her mother, and its contents were to be discussed and voted
upon. In the midst of the interest came a message from Mrs. Foster:
"Would Miss Benedict be kind enough to come to the parlor for a few
minutes, to see Mr. and Miss Ansted?"

"I must go, girls," Claire said, rising quickly. "This is the third
attempt Miss Ansted has made to call on me since their kindness to
me, and I have either been out or engaged in giving lessons. You will
have to excuse me for a little while. I will return as soon as I can.
Meantime, I am going to see if I can't secure help in that direction
for our enterprise."

"You won't," said Mary Burton, emphatically. "They say Alice Ansted is
a good singer, but she has been heard to say that she would as soon
think of singing in a barn as in our church; and that the one time she
heard our organ, she thought it was some mice squealing in the ceiling."

"Wait until we get it tuned, and the pedals oiled," said Ruth Jennings;
"I don't believe it will be such a bad-sounding instrument. At least,
it is my opinion that Alice Ansted will find herself able to endure in
that line what Miss Benedict is. Girls, I heard last night that she is
a beautiful singer. Isn't it queer that she has never sung for us?"

This last was after Claire had left them, but as she was about to close
the door, Ruth Jennings had made a remark which had drawn her back:

"Get Louis Ansted to pledge us the money which he spends in wines each
year, and that will do us good and him too."

"Does he use wines freely?" Claire said, turning back.

"Yes, indeed he does; altogether too freely for his good, if the
village boys can be believed. I heard that he came home intoxicated
only night before last."

"Why, that is nothing new!" added Nettie Burdick; "he often comes home
in that condition. Dick Fuller says it is a common experience; and he
would know what he is talking about, for he has to be at the depot when
the last train comes in. Besides, he makes his money in that way; why
shouldn't he patronize himself?"

"What do you mean?" Claire asked, her face troubled.

"Why, his money is all invested in one of the distilleries. He has a
fortune in his own right, Miss Benedict, left him by his grandmother,
and he invested it in Westlake's distillery. He is one of the owners,
though his name does not appear in the firm; the Ansted pride would
not like that; but I know this is true, for my uncle transacted the
business for him."

Claire started again, making no comment, but this time she moved more
slowly. There were reasons why the news gave her a special thrust.

The callers greeted her with evident pleasure, and expressed their
disappointment at having failed to see her in their other attempts,
and gave her messages from their mother to the effect that she was to
consider their house one of her homes. Fanatic though she was, it was
plainly to be seen that they had resolved to tolerate the fanaticism
for the sake of the pleasure of her society.

There were other callers, and in a few minutes the conversation, which
had been general, dropped into little side channels. Alice Ansted,
occupying a seat near Miss Benedict, turned to her and spoke low:

"I have wanted to see you. What you said to me that day has made
me more dissatisfied than ever, and that was unnecessary; I was
uncomfortable enough before. I did not understand you. What is there
that you want me to do?"

"How do you know I want you to do anything?" Claire could not resist
the temptation to ask the question, and to laugh a little; her
questioner's tone was so nervous, so almost rebellious, and at the same
time so pettish.

"Oh, I know well enough. You expressed surprise, and well--almost
bewilderment--that I did not find absorbing work in a channel about
which I know nothing. Suppose I am a Christian, what then? What do you
want me to do?"

"But, my dear Miss Ansted, I am not the one of whom that inquiry should
be made. If you belong to the Lord Jesus, surely he has work for you,
and is able to point it out, and to fill your heart with satisfaction
while you do his bidding."

There was a gesture almost of impatience.

"I tell you I don't understand such talk. It sounds like 'cant' to me,
and nothing else; that is, it does when other people say it, but you
seem different; you live differently, some way, and interest yourself
about different matters from those which absorb the people whom I have
heard talk that way. Now I ask you a straightforward question: What do
you want me to do? What do you see that I could do, if I were what you
mean by being a Christian?"

Claire's face brightened.

"Oh, that is such a different question!" she said. "I am really very
glad of an opportunity to answer it. I know a dozen things that you
could do. For instance, you could throw yourself into the life of this
neglected, almost deserted church, and help to make it what it should
be; you could give your time, and your money, and your voice, to making
it arise and shine."

"How? What on earth is there that I could do, even if I wanted to do
anything in that direction, which I don't?"

"I know it, but that doesn't hinder me from seeing what you _could_ do.
Why, if you want me to be very specific, if you have no better plan
than we are working on to propose, you could join us with all your
heart, and work with us, and worship with us on Sabbaths, and help us
in our preparations for a concert."

"And sing in that stuffy room, to the accompaniment of that horrid
little organ, and for the benefit of such an audience as South Plains
would furnish! Thank you, I don't mean to do it! What else?"

"Of what special use is it for me to suggest ways, since you receive
them with such determined refusals?"

"That I may have the pleasure of seeing how far your enthusiasm
reaches. I would call it fanaticism if I dared, Miss Benedict, but that
would be rude. Tell me what next?"

Claire considered, Miss Ansted meantime watching her closely. When at
last she spoke, her tone dropped lower, and was graver:

"I wish with all my soul that you would interest yourself in Bud."

"In Bud!" It was impossible not to give a start of surprise, not to
say dismay. "Now, Miss Benedict, that passes comprehension! What on
earth is there that I could do for a great, ignorant, blundering clod
like Bud? He has plenty to eat, and is decently clothed without any
assistance from me. What more can you imagine he wants?"

"He wants God," said Claire, solemnly, "and the knowledge of him in the
face of Jesus Christ. He is to live forever, Miss Ansted, as certainly
as you are; and the time hastens when food and clothing for the soul
will be a necessity for him as well as to you, or he will appear before
God naked and starved, and you will have to meet him there, and bear
some of the blame."

"I never heard a person talk so in my life. Bud is not more than
half-witted. I doubt whether he knows that there is such a being as
God. What can you fancy it possible for me to do for him?"

"Do you think, then, that he has no soul?"

"Why, I did not say that! I suppose he has, of course. He is not an
animal, though I must say he approaches very nearly to the level of
one."

"And don't you think that he will have to die, and go to the judgment,
and meet God?"

"How dreadful all these things are! Of course he will! but how can I
help it?"

"Do you suppose he is ready?"

"I don't suppose he ever thought of such a thing in his life. He hasn't
mind enough, probably, to comprehend."

"Do you really think so? Don't you believe the boy to whom you can
say, 'Close the blinds on the north side, to shut out the wind,' could
understand if you said: 'Bud, God is as surely in the world as the wind
is, though you can not see either. He has said that when you die you
shall see him, and that you shall live with him in a beautiful home, if
you will love him here, and obey his orders; and what he wants you to
do is all printed in a book that you can learn to read?' Do you think
Bud could not comprehend as much as that?"

"I never heard of such an idea in my life!" said Miss Ansted. "I don't
know how to teach such things." And she turned away and talked with a
caller about the travelling opera company who were to sing in the city
on the following evening.

Mr. Ansted had changed his seat, meantime, and was waiting for his
opportunity. He turned to Claire the moment his sister withdrew.

"I came to ask a favor of you this evening; two of them, in fact; but
the first is on such strange ground for me, that I have been studying
all day how to put it."

"And have you decided?"

"No, left it in despair; only praying that the Fates would be favorable
to me, and grant me opportunity and words. Here is the opportunity, but
where are the words?"

"I have always found it comfortable to be as simple and direct as
possible with all communications. Suppose you see how fully you can put
the thought before me in a single sentence."

The gentleman laughed.

"That would be one way to make an interview brief, if such were my
desire. I can not say, however, that that phase of the subject troubles
me any. Well, I will take your advice, and put a large portion of my
thought into a short sentence: I wish you could and would do something
for Harry Matthews."

It was not in the least what she had expected. She supposed his
words were to preface a flattering invitation, or something of that
character. An apparently earnest sentence, concerning a merry young
fellow in whom she was already somewhat interested, filled her with
surprise, and kept her silent.

"Is that brief and abrupt enough?" he asked, and then, without waiting
for answer, continued: "I mean it, strange as it may seem; and I so
rarely do unselfish things that I can imagine it seems strange enough.
I haven't a personal thought in the matter. Harry is a good fellow;
a little fast, the old ladies say, and shake their heads, but they
don't know what they mean by that. The boy is a favorite of mine;
and he is one who has a good deal of force of character without any
will-power, if that is not a contradiction. I fancy you know what I
mean. I am going to speak more plainly now. Away back in some former
generation--no, I am going to tell the naked truth. Do you know
anything of his family, Miss Benedict?"

"Not anything."

"Well, his father was a good man and a drunkard. You think that is
another contradiction of terms. Perhaps it is, as you would mean it,
but not as I do. He was a good, warm-hearted, whole-souled man, and he
drank himself into his grave; shipwrecked his property, and left his
widow and this boy dependant on wealthy relatives, or on themselves.
Harry is trying to be a man, and works hard, and is specially tempted
in the line at which I have hinted. I feel afraid for him, and the only
person in this little wretch of a village whom I think might help him
is yourself. Will you try?"

"Mr. Ansted, why don't you help him?"

It was his turn to be taken aback. He had not expected this answer.
He had looked for an instant and interested affirmative, and he had
expected to tell her more of Harry Matthews, and of his peculiar
associations and temptations.

"I!" he said, and then he laughed. "Miss Benedict, you are most
remarkable as regards your talent for asking strange questions. It is
evident that you are a stranger in South Plains; and I don't know what
the gossips have been about, that they have not posted you better. You
should know that I am really the last person in the neighborhood who is
expected to help anybody; least of all, can I help Harry Matthews. The
most helpful thing that I can think of for the boy is to keep away from
me. My influence over him is altogether bad, and growing worse. What
he needs is to be drawn away from present associations entirely, and,
indeed

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