CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE KING’S HIGHWAY
One day in the week following, Gertrude Willis and Adele were seated on the front veranda of the Doring home, when the postman came up the walk.
“Does Miss Adele Doring live here?” he asked with twinkling eyes.
“Oh, Mr. Drakely!” Adele exclaimed, skipping down the walk to meet him. “Have you really a letter for me? Thank you so much! Letters are a rare treat,” she confided to Gertrude, “because all of my friends live in Sunnyside, and so there is no one to write to me except Uncle Jerry, but this letter hasn’t a foreign post-mark and so it isn’t from him. Why, it’s from Dorchester, and so, of course, Madge Peterson must have written it. She is that charming artist that I have been telling you about, Gertrude. I am so eager to have you meet her.”
Then Adele, reseating herself in the porch-swing, tore open the pale blue envelope, with its delicate odor of spring violets, and read aloud:
“Dear Dryad Oakleaf:
“I just happened to remember that you once told me that you belong to a clan of seven girls. Are there any among them who have talents which they are eager to cultivate? If so, do bring them with you on Saturday mornings to attend the Institute. The more the merrier, and I shall be glad to have them take luncheon with me, as I shall always expect you and Eva and Amanda to do.
“Oh, Gertrude!” Adele cried joyfully. “Could anything be nicer? I have so wished that you might go with me to take composition. I am just sure that you have talent for writing. Do you suppose that your mother could spare you?”
“If mother will permit me to do my share of the cleaning on Friday,” Gertrude said, “I would be glad to go, and, since it is vacation, I am sure that I can. I do want to study everything that will help me to become a writer. I enjoy that more than anything else, and I am eager to find some way to earn money, so that I may help educate the babies. There are so many of us, and a minister’s salary is not princely.”
“Then I will write Miss Peterson this very day and tell her that one of my dearest, bestest friends will gladly accept her invitation,” Adele exclaimed happily, as she gave Gertrude an impulsive hug.
Although Adele loved all of the Sunny Six, some way Gertrude was a little nearer and dearer, and she was beginning to think that, next to her, she loved Eva Dearman most among her friends.
Mrs. Willis was as pleased with the invitation as Adele and Gertrude had been, and the very next Saturday four girls instead of three went into the city of Dorchester. This time they traveled by train, but the station being within a few blocks of the Institute, the country girls were in no danger of being lost.
Madge was charmed with gentle Gertrude and welcomed her graciously. “Girls,” she said, as she drew on her gloves, “it is early, and since I have an errand in another part of town, I thought that perhaps you would like to accompany me.”
“We would, indeed,” Adele replied, and soon they were all in Everett’s big car and that youth was slowly driving them through the crowded down-town district. The streets became narrower and noisier. The people were shabbily dressed, dirty children played in the gutters, loafers lounged on the corners. The air seemed hot and heavy with unpleasant odors. On both sides of the street were wretched tenement-houses.
“I have heard of this district,” Gertrude said, “but I never before visited it. Oh, Miss Peterson, doesn’t it make one’s heart ache to think that so very near are fields of daisies and buttercups, and yet these babies have to play in the gutters?”
Madge nodded, and then, as the car was stopping at the curb, she opened the door, and, taking a covered basket, led the way across the walk. Ragged little children stopped their play and watched them curiously with open eyes and mouths. Madge smiled down at them and then entered a dark, narrow hallway and began climbing the rickety stairs.
“I thought it was hard to have to live in the Home,” Eva said softly to Adele, “but how thankful we ought to be that we do not have to live in a place like this.”
Soon Madge was rapping on an upper door.
“Come in, Fairy Godmother!” an eager boy’s voice called. Madge opened the door and they entered a room which was very different from the dark, shabby halls which they had just left. Here all was clean and home-like. The windows were filled with blossoming plants, and a canary, hanging in the sunshine, was warbling his cheeriest song. Goldfish splashed and sparkled in their big shining bowl. A fluffy white kitten on the floor frisked about with a red ball for a playmate. A bright-eyed little hunchbacked boy sat on a softly-cushioned wheeled chair. He looked up with eager eyes.
“Good morning, Roberty-Bob,” Madge said. “I have brought some of my friends to call upon you. We cannot stay long, however, as we are on our way to the Art Institute, but I found the book that you wanted in the library this morning, and so I brought it right over.”
“Oh, good!” Roberty-Bob said with shining eyes. “The last one you brought was such a beautiful story, Fairy Godmother. It was all about the King’s Highway.” Then, turning to Gertrude, he asked in his eager, friendly way, “Do you know where the King’s Highway is?”
“I suppose it is where a king lives, and where princes and princesses play in beautiful gardens,” Gertrude replied, with her sweet smile.
“You are wrong!” the strange child exclaimed. “She is wrong, isn’t she, Fairy Godmother? God is the King, and His Highway is just wherever you are.”
Gertrude’s heart was touched by what she had seen and heard, and when they were in the street again she looked at the forlorn little children playing in the gutters and she said to Adele, “And so this is the King’s Highway, and oh, Della, I was being so thankful before we went up-stairs that we didn’t have to live here!”
Roberty-Bob was waving to them from his high window, and the girls waved in return.
“I guess I won’t grumble any more,” Amanda Brown declared. “Here I have a straight back and I can run if I want to, but it seems I’m always feeling fretful about something, and there’s that little fellow, with his crooked back, keeping so bright and cheerful.”
“Does Roberty-Bob have to sit alone all day long?” Adele asked, as the car was slowly wending its way back to a pleasanter part of the city.
“Yes,” Madge replied. “His mother works in a factory, and she leaves early in the morning and does not return until late, but Roberty-Bob is never lonely. He can wheel his chair about the room and feed his goldfish and pussy, and water his plants, and sometimes Muffin, the kitten, rides around with him. Then he loves to read, and every Saturday afternoon the children who live in the rooms near by go in and sit on the floor, and he reads to them or tells them stories. I used to take him riding in the car, and how he enjoyed it! but the jarring made the pain in his back so much worse that we had to give that up.”
The Art Institute was soon reached and the girls went to their classes. Adele and Gertrude found that they were to write a composition on whatever had most impressed them that morning. They were glad to do this, although neither had any expectation of winning the high marks, and so, on the following Saturday, they were indeed surprised when the teacher, Miss Fenton, said, “The best composition for last week was written by our newest pupil, Miss Gertrude Willis.” And then, before that astonished girl could fully grasp this surprising announcement, the teacher was saying in her kindly way, “It is our custom to have the best composition read aloud each week, and so, Miss Willis, will you please come forward and read yours?”
Gertrude, self-possessed by nature, soon quieted the tumult in her heart, and, stepping to the platform, she took the composition which Miss Fenton handed to her, and then, in her clear, sweet voice, she read:
“Once upon a time there was a great city, and in the lower part of it there were narrow streets, with ragged children playing in the gutters, and loafers standing on the corners. If there ever had been hope in their hearts it had long since fled. And many of the mothers were shut in shops where they toiled all day and earned very little, that they might feed their children.
“The sun never seemed to shine in the lower part of that great city. The fog hung gray and dismal, and there was constantly the sharp clanging noise of traffic. The children in the gutter did not seem to mind, for they knew no different, but one day an artist was forced, through poverty, to move to this lower end of the city, and with him was his little daughter, Alicia. Her startled blue eyes looked about, and she clung to her father’s hand as they wended their way down one of the narrow streets.
“‘Must we live here, father?’ she asked, and the artist sadly bowed his head.
“Alicia tried to make the barren room in the tenement look as home-like as possible, but she dreaded going to the corner store to buy even the few provisions that were needed.
“She shrank from touching the raggedly dressed children, who, attracted by her golden hair, would leave their play when she passed and whisper, ‘Pretty! Pretty!’
“But Alicia paid no heed. Her one thought was how sorry she was for herself. If only she could live again in that lovely home which they had lost.
“All of her life she had lived in a beautiful garden, where high ivy-covered walls had sheltered her from the winds, where a fountain had sparkled for her, and where the birds had sung to her. But now,—The sensitive child looked about her and shuddered.
“One day her father brought her a book, and while she was alone she read the stories it contained, and one of them was called ‘The King’s Highway.’ Alicia fell to daydreaming, as was her wont, and she thought how wonderful it would be, this King’s Highway. There would be castles on either side, and the pavement would be of gold. Gorgeous carriages, drawn by milk-white horses, would be passing up and down, and in them would be princesses and noble ladies, richly dressed, and they would have pages with plumed hats to attend them. As she thought of all this, and wished that she might be on the King’s Highway, she fell asleep and dreamed, and in her dream an angel came to her and said, ‘Alicia, the King is your Heavenly Father, and to-day you are living on the King’s Highway.’
“Alicia, awakening, sprang up, and, seeing that it was late, she went out to do her marketing. The fog had not lifted all day. The children on the curb seemed weary and tired of their play. Many of their faces looked pinched, as though they did not have enough to eat. ‘And so this is the King’s Highway,’ Alicia thought, ‘and these are the King’s children.’ And then the angel that was always with Alicia whispered, ‘And what are you doing on the King’s Highway?’
“‘Nothing,’ Alicia replied, ‘only to be sorry for myself because I am there.’
“And then, to the surprise of the ragged children, the pretty Alicia went over and sat on the curb in their midst, and, putting her arms about those nearest, she said, ‘Little ones, do you like stories?’ ‘What are stories?’ one small boy asked, nestling close to her. ‘I will tell you,’ Alicia replied, and soon she was repeating a fairytale that they could all understand.
“From that day Alicia was very happy. She was never lonely because she was kept so busy making others happy on the King’s Highway.”