Read Ebook: The Girl's Own Paper Vol. XX. No. 1028 September 9 1899 by Various

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"And I daresay the master thought pretty hardly of me when he did hear," said Pollie woefully.

"He never heard," answered Lucy. "I meant to tell him so soon as I got comfortably settled down with somebody else. But that day never came while he was in reach of letters. Once I thought all was so right that I began my letter, telling the whole story, but before it was finished there was disappointment, and that letter never went. To Charlie it must always seem as if Pollie is taking care of Hugh and me."

"I only wish it could be true!" cried Pollie. "I only wish I could afford to come over twice a week and help that nice person who tells me she is going to look after your house. I could bring the baby with me, for he is as good as gold."

Lucy looked up; a bright thought struck her.

"The question is, Pollie," she said, "could you afford the time? A married woman owes all her time to her husband's home, except under peculiar circumstances or at a pinch. And I'm sure it is wisest and best so, Pollie, for if a wife's earnings are not simply an 'extra,' evoked to meet some special visitation of God, they don't add to the household prosperity and comfort. I'm sure I've seen enough this year to prove that."

"Ay, I know it's true, ma'am," said Pollie, "but what you say is just our case. Husband had an accident last spring and was out of work three months, and on only half work for a while after, and what with him bringing in nothing, and wanting dainty food, and with a doctor's bill to pay, we got into debt, and before we left the place we had to pay off, and that meant 'putting away' a lot of our things. We're only in one room now, ma'am, and that does not suit the ways of either of us, and that room is bare enough and does not take long to keep clean. And while I might be helping to get things right again, there I sit with a heavy heart and empty hands. That's when women take to mischief--to gossiping and drinking. Tom's out from seven in the morning till six at night. But, of course, I can't do anything that would take me away from my baby. I wouldn't do that, and Tom wouldn't hear of it, not while we have a crust of bread to eat."

"But, Pollie," said Lucy, "if you can really afford the time, I can afford to pay you--I really can," she assured her former servant, seeing that she looked pitifully at her. "First of all, I earn a good deal by my work, if I can get a trustworthy person to work for me in turn; and secondly, my good friend Mrs. May, whom you have seen, refuses to take any wages, because she says she knows she will want outside help. I could afford, Pollie, to give you six shillings a week if you will come here for two days weekly from eight till four, and of course you would dine here."

"Why, that would pay our rent!" cried Pollie joyfully. "And I know what working in a nice house like this is, with a proper sitting down to good food. Husband, he said to me, 'If you go charing, it'll just be cleaning up after slovenly hussies and getting meals o' broken meat.' Won't he be pleased! And, oh, Mrs. Challoner, this makes me quite sure you are friends with me again. I only wish I'd been reasonable, and had treated you friendly, and taken counsel with you, and not been so sudden-like. Yet there's some ladies make a servant believe she's of no account, and girls are too ready to listen to 'em," added Pollie, with a side glance of memory at that conversation with Mrs. Brand which had so disturbed and unsettled her. "But now I'm sure we're friends again, ma'am."

"And all you'd done for me and my folks," murmured Pollie.

"You should act so suddenly in such an important matter, with no reference to me or my trying position," Mrs. Challoner went on. "Perhaps, in my turn, I was not considerate enough of your standpoint. Anyhow, Pollie, as you say, now we know we are friends again."

That was a pleasant interlude. Better even than its immediate comfort and security was the mystic hint that it seemed to convey not only of a far-off greater "restitution of all things," but also of a present protecting power--that Fatherly love which takes us up when, in the ways of life or of death, parents and spouses and friends forsake or fail us. "Goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life." We have to walk forward in that faith, and only by such walking forward can faith be transformed into sacred, secret knowledge.

It was well, indeed, that there was something pleasant. For, alas for human nature, it is by foreseeing evil as to its doings that one can most easily establish reputation as a far-seeing prophet!

Some days passed before the arrival of Clementina's box and the receipt of the postal order were acknowledged from Hull. Then a little parcel came.

"I should not wonder but the poor soul, if she has come a little to her senses, has sent some bit of her needlework as a peace-offering," observed Mrs. Challoner as she unfastened the string.

Far from it! The parcel contained only the half-used packet of mourning envelopes and a letter. It was a comfort to see that the epistle was by another and an apparently saner hand.

The letter was not very long. It began--

"MRS. CHALLONER,--The trunk has come to hand. We had to pay a man sixpence extra for bringing it up. Your letter and post-office order have come. We see you pay only for the current month. Considering our niece was wore out at your place and had to leave through illness caused there, we think you might have done a little more. Our niece says these envelopes don't belong to her, and she doesn't want to take away anything that isn't hers. She says she never knew such goings on as there were at your place, and if the pore dear had gone out of her mind it wouldn't have been no wonder. Maybe it is someone else as is out of their mind. Our niece has got a little means of her own, and needn't go to service except where she is valued. She won't go anywhere till she's got back the strength she lost in your place, and she won't come back to you on no account.

"Yours, "SARAH ANN MICKLEWRATH."

At another time the falseness, the selfishness, the greed, the utter injustice of that letter would have pained Lucy. It scarcely hurt her now. She showed it to Miss Latimer, and Mr. Somerset, and Mrs. May, and they were all indignant; but as for Lucy, she only smiled dimly.

"We have done all we can," she said. "We can't do any more. And we must not judge these Micklewraths too harshly. We do not know how sane and reasonable Clementina may appear to them, just as she did to us. I should not have been readily incredulous of any story Clementina might have told me about any of our tradespeople or neighbours."

It was a suspicious circumstance that Clementina's nearest relations at Inverslain preserved a dead silence so far as the little house with the verandah was concerned. It appeared, however, that they wrote to Mrs. Bray's Rachel. She forwarded their letter to Mrs. Challoner. It, too, was brief and guarded, but was quite different in its tone. It was written by Clementina's brother, who deplored the trouble his sister had given everybody--"precisely as she did when she left the Highlands without telling us where she was going or what she meant to do. She is an excitable woman," he added, "who dwells on things too much and takes violent fancies." His conclusion was that, "as her aunt and uncle at Hull had taken her in--which was more than he and his wife would dare do, owing to Clementina's temper--he hoped they would look after her, and she might quiet down after a bit."

Poor Rachel was quite self-accusatory at the sad failure of her "introduction," though really it was hard to see how she could blame herself, since her recommendation had not gone one whit beyond very good and reasonable grounds, known to herself. She ended her letter by saying--

"I fear my dear mistress is very ill indeed. I don't think she believes it of herself. At least, she doesn't wish us to know she believes it. I don't imagine she will live to return to her old house. I don't think she could be moved from here. I shouldn't be surprised myself if the end came at any moment. Mr. and Mrs. Brand have been most kind. My mistress quite looks forward to see them at almost every week's end."

HOUSEHOLD HINTS.

TO BOIL AN EGG.

TO POACH AN EGG.

BROWN THICKENING.

BROWNING.

TO BLANCH BARLEY.

TO BOIL RICE.

TO MAKE TEA.

"UPS AND DOWNS."

A TRUE STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.

BY N. O. LORIMER.

In the luxurious house Marjorie and Sadie did not miss their mother as Ada did; indeed it was a delightful change for them to have so much of their sister's society. She was more amusing than their mother, and understood their games better. When they heard that their mother had gone away to a hospital to be taken care of and made well again they said they were "dreadfully sorry," but that was partly because sister Ada looked so sad, and partly because it was polite to say so. About a week after her mother had left her home Ada was startled one evening by the old butler, an Englishman, coming up to her while she was waiting for her father to come down to dinner, and saying in a hushed voice, "Will you wait any longer, miss? I don't think the master will come home to dinner."

"Then serve it at once," Ada said; "but why do you think he will not return?"

"He left the house last night, miss, after you had gone to bed, and he has not been seen since."

Ada's heart stood still. "Not been seen since! What do you mean? Has he not been at his office? Perhaps he is with my mother?"

"I don't think so, miss. Have you not seen the evening papers?" The man held a copy behind his back, Ada heard it rustle.

"Give it me," she cried, as she put one hand on the handsomely carved pedestal which held a statue of the dancing fawn to steady herself.

"I'm sorry, miss, to be the one to hand it to you, but the whole city knows it by this time. It can't be hid from you much longer."

The girl looked at him with a kindly pity in her eyes. She was sorrier for him at that moment than for herself. He was a faithful old servant who had been with them since she was a baby. He handed her the paper and went softly from the room, having the delicacy to feel that it was not the place even of an old servant to see his young mistress's sorrow.

"He's a low skunking hound," he said to himself, "if he is my master, to leave the pretty bit of a creature like that with those two children on her hands. Whatever will happen to them, I don't know. There's about enough money in the house to pay off all these miserable servants, and not much more. It's the dirtiest trick I ever saw played. It was the disgrace and shock that sent his poor wife off her head, him living like a prince while he's been defrauding poor widows and children."

About a month from that day pretty Ada Nicoli, who had been brought up to look upon herself as an heiress, started out through the city of New York to try and find some means of livelihood for herself and her two little sisters. Her mother's little fortune brought in just enough money to pay for her residence in the comfortable asylum to which she had gone before the terrible exposure of Mr. Nicoli's failure had been made public, and to pay the weekly board for Ada and her two sisters at a plain middle-class boarding-house in East Thirty-second Street.

Ada had tried offering herself as a music teacher, for she played well and liked music, but wherever she went she was asked whom she had studied under, and if she had been taught in Germany. So to-day she was bent on another mission. She had put her pride still further down in her pocket, but unconsciously her pretty chin was tilted a little higher. She had to walk now--her tender feet were tired and weary--where she had once dashed along in a smart carriage. When she arrived at a part of the town which was little occupied by shops her steps slackened. She was thinking what she would say when she reached Madame Maude's, the fashionable milliner from whom she had been accustomed to buy her hats. Madame Maude had only one window to her shop, which was curtained and lined with red velvet. The simple sailor hat, one black toque, and a white feather boa displayed in it gave the ignorant public little idea of the fact that almost every time the door bell rang to admit a customer, it meant that Madame Maude was fifty dollars the richer. Ada stopped a moment and looked at the window. How often she had gone with her mother to the shop and come away with some pretty flowery hat without even asking the price of it. And now she sighed, for the price of one of those hats would pay for a term of Marjorie's lessons at school. They must be educated, the girl cried in her heart, and they must be brought up as her mother's children ought to be, even if they had to work afterwards. She would not let them grow up as shop-girls from childhood. She opened the door and found herself inside the shop with no words ready to meet the question of the young girl who came forward.

"Can I see Madame Maude?" she asked nervously. "I wish to speak to her alone."

The girl stared at Ada's perfectly-fitting dress, robbed of all its luxurious trimmings, as being unsuitable for her present position. Madame Maude came forward and told the girl to retire.

"What can I do for you?" she said kindly; she knew that the large bill still standing in Mrs. Nicoli's name would never be paid, but Mrs. Nicoli had been a good customer in the days gone by, and for once a woman was grateful for favours past.

"You have heard of our sad trouble," Ada began, "the world has painted it even blacker than it is, so there is no need for me to tell you what a terrible position I am in. I must make money somehow. I have tried in so many ways and failed. I came to ask you if you knew of any position in a business house that I could fill. I would not mind how hard I worked." She looked so unlike hard work that Madame Maude's heart was touched by her appeal which was so pathetically ignorant.

"What can you do?" she said, wondering what the girl called "hard work."

"I don't know," Ada replied in a shamefaced way, "for I have never tried, but I think I could learn millinery very quickly."

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