Growing Up: A Story of the Girlhood of Judith Mackenzie

It was six o’clock that May evening, and Joe was running away. He did not know he was running away. He had never been taught to read, and no one had ever told him a story, and his own experience of life was so limited, that he did not know that he was starting out in the world to find adventures, to find good or evil, to find a new life, and that new life, shaped more by what was inside of himself, than what was outside of himself. If the man who just passed him had asked him what he was doing, he would have said, had he not been overcome by one of his fits of shyness, that he was “gittin’ out.”

The air was damp, and sweet with the scent of blossoms. At his right ran a range of low hills, abrupt and green; at his left, as far as he could see, stretched the swamp, miles of meadow, over-flooded in the spring, waving with grass in the summer, and homely with unpainted one-story houses, and out-buildings in various stages of decay; it was a pasture land for the cattle of the farmers in the upland district, and Joe’s bare feet had trodden its miles morning and night ever since he had been old enough to drive the cows.

He went on slowly, with his hands in his pockets, too heavy-hearted to whistle, not thinking about anything, only feeling, with something in his throat that would not be swallowed down, miserable and defiant; remembering nothing in his past to regret not having learned that there was anything in his future to hope for, he was conscious only of something stirring within, stirring to action, to wideness, to freedom, and therefore he must “git out” to find it; therefore he was getting out.

His plan, if he had a plan, was to find a woman in the village who had once spoken kindly to him, and given him a huge slice of warm bread and butter; in the swamp he knew he might find work among the Germans, but the swamp was so lonely at night, and he did not like the ways of the Germans; in all the world he had but one friend, this woman who had spoken kindly to him.

She might not give him work, or a bed, but she would look at him, as no one else ever looked, and she would speak kindly. The road over the hill drew his lagging feet, then he stood, hesitating, at the turn of the hill road and swamp road; the hill road led to people, and a church, a store, where boys and men gathered at night to read the newspaper, and smoke, and have fun; to the blacksmith’s shop, and, most of all, to the little house next door, where the woman lived who had cut that large slice across her big, hot loaf.

A German, in the swamp, had told him to come to him for a home and work, if he ever wanted to leave his place; work he must, and a home—the woman’s face came between him and the German, his heart began to beat very fast, he wondered why his heart beat so fast sometimes, and he took his life in his hands, and started on a run for the road over the hill, where was the only thing in the world that seemed like love, although of love he had never had one thought. Then he began to walk slowly again; he had decided there was no need of hurrying, there was no need of doing anything—he had never been given a reason for doing anything excepting that one or the other of the old men with whom he had lived all his remembered life bade him do it. He had done things because he was told; he did not know why, excepting that because he was told.

If he were being told now to run away, he did not know; he had never thought that he might tell himself to do things. Not for a moment did he believe that the two old men would take the trouble to look for him, or to wish him back; every day, one, or both, said to each other or to him that he was not worth his salt, and would never amount to anything; they must be glad he was gone. But the cows. They would be sorry, especially Beauty; one of the old men would milk her to-night, but they would not pat her and talk to her, and ask her if she were glad she was a cow and not a boy, and was worth her salt, and all her feed beside; she had no friend but him, and she would look around for him with her big eyes; again he stood hesitating—Beauty wanted him—his tears fell fast; but he must go on, he wanted something better than Beauty.

So he went on down the hill, past the pretty parsonage and the church—wondering, if he had no place to sleep, if he might sleep in the church; then past the school-house, with its large play-ground, and turned by the liberty-pole, and walked very slowly along the street until he reached the blacksmith’s shop, and there, in the doorway of the small house, stood the woman looking for him.

“Why, Joe, what are you doing here at milking time?” she asked in a brisk tone, as the boy stopped before the gate.

“I’m done milking for them two old men,” he said, in a voice he tried hard to make brave. “Chris and Sam don’t want me any longer; I’m gittin’ out.” And then, big boy as he was, feeling lost in a strange world, he began to cry.

“There! there! Sonny,” soothed the voice, changing from its briskness into sympathy, as the woman stepped down the three steps; “Come and eat supper with me; I know what I’ll do with you. I’m glad you happened to come along this way.”

Pushing open the gate, she laid her hand on his arm and drew him into the house by his soiled and ragged sleeve.

“We don’t want a boy, haven’t work enough; but I know somebody who does, late in the season as it is. Mr. Brush, Mr. Cephas Brush, he farms the Sparrow place, you know; while he was waiting at the shop this very morning, he came to the well for a drink, and I went out to give him a glass so he needn’t drink out of that rusty tin cup, and he asked me if I knew where he could find a boy. His boy went off in March. He’s a good master, and that’s a good home; Miss Affy is like a mother to every stray thing and you won’t mind if Miss Rody does scold, she never means any harm. I’ll take you down there right after supper. Mr. Evans had his early because he wanted to go to town, and I was feeding my chickens, two hundred and five now,—Nettie puts down every new brood in a book—and couldn’t stop to eat. I didn’t think I was going to have company for supper. Nettie had hers earlier than usual because she was tired, and wanted to go to bed.” She pulled him through the narrow hall as she talked, Joe, once in a while, giving a quick, hard sob, and opened the door into the tiny kitchen.

The tea-kettle on the stove was singing a cheery welcome, the white cloth and pink dishes on the round table in the centre of the room gave him another welcome, and the touch and tone of the woman who had been kind to him brought him the cheeriest welcome of all, as she pushed him down into the chair opposite her own at the table, saying: “I know what men’s cooking is, and I know you are half-starved. Who made the bread?”

“I got that at the store.”

“You had potatoes, of course.”

“Oh, yes, and fried pork, lots of it, and pan-cakes. My! can’t Chris make good pan-cakes!”

“Can he?” inquired Mrs. Evans, doubtfully, taking the tea-pot off the stove and setting it on the table.

“Now, here’s hot fried potatoes for you, and good bread and butter, and a big saucer of rice pudding—Mr. Evans is never tired of rice pudding,—and sponge cake that little Judith brought to Nettie to-day because it is her own baking. Nettie took a bite and said I must put the rest on the supper-table. And you can have tea or milk, or both.”

After bustling about in the shed, Mrs. Evans seated herself at the table opposite her guest.

“Who would have thought I was going to eat supper with you, Joe? The world does turn on its axis once every twenty-four hours, and unexpected things do happen. I’ll tell Nettie all about it tomorrow; it will make a happening in her poor little life.”

Joe gave her a shy, quick glance, then bowed his head; some time, somewhere, not with the old men, certainly, he had bowed his head and said something at the table; he did not remember where it was, or what words he said, or why he said anything at all, but the pretty tea-table, or the savory food reminded him of a life he had once lived; he listened for a chorus of voices:—

“For what we are about to receive—receive—truly thankful.”

It was like music in the boy’s heart; he lifted his head with a light shining in his tear-blurred eyes.

“Well, I never,” ejaculated Mrs. Evans.

The boy held his knife and fork with a grace her husband had not acquired, taking his food as slowly and daintily as a girl.

“Those Tucker men, that old Chris and Sam have no claim on you, and they haven’t done as well by you as they promised they would when they took you, a little fellow, out of the Christie Home. I’ve often spoken to Mr. Evans about it, but he’s so easy going I might as well have talked to the wind. I told our new minister that he must ‘high-way and hedge’ you; he has noticed you; but he is feeling his way among the people, and couldn’t make a stir as soon as he came.”

“Is that where I was?” asked astonished Joe. “I thought I used to be somewhere. They never told me. I seem to remember things that happened before I can remember. They told me that I hadn’t any father or mother, and wouldn’t have any home if they had not taken me in.”

“People thought you ought to be sent to school and Sunday-school, but what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business. I’m glad enough you have left them, but you should have told them you wanted to leave.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good,” he muttered “they wouldn’t have said anything.”

“Now, I’ll put out the cat, and leave the table standing, and bolt the shed door, and lock the front door, and put on my things, and we’ll be off. Nettie is fast asleep and will never miss me.”

“I will wash the dishes for you; we put them under the pump, then wipe them on anything.”

“That wouldn’t suit me, thank you,” laughed Mrs. Evans; “you can hoe corn better than wipe dishes, and Mr. Brush has acres and acres of corn to hoe, and potatoes too: he’s making that old Sparrow farm pay.”

Joe did not know that he had been lost, but he began to feel very much found.

“I’m glad you went out to the well with that glass,” he said, as his hostess wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and tied the blue ribbons of a blue wool hood under her chin.

“I’m usually glad of kind things I do; I suppose that’s one reason I do them.”

Joe unlatched the gate, holding it open for her to pass through, then pushed it shut; Beauty and this woman seemed to belong to the same order of creaturehood; the woman’s eyes were like Beauty’s, soft, and big and brown, and they answered you. She took his hand and drew it under her arm in a sort of comradeship, and then they went on, the woman and the boy, to find the gate that would swing open into a world of which it had never entered the boy’s heart to dream.

The gate was shut and a man in shirt-sleeves with a pipe in his mouth was standing on the mysterious and happy side of it resting his elbows on the pickets, and, attracted by voices, looking up the road in the starlight towards the two figures.

“You stay here, Joe—that’s Mr. Brush. I’ll tell him all your story.”

“My story?” repeated Joe, in amazement.

“You didn’t know you had any,” she laughed. “Well, folks don’t usually until it is all lived through. I didn’t know I had any girlhood until I married and lost it.”

“I haven’t lost anything,” said Joe, bewildered.

“No; and I think you have got something—stand back, till I call you.”

She went on, and Joe heard the two voices exchange a friendly “Good evening,” and then to escape his “story” climbed up the steep, green bank, and waited under a cherry tree. Cherry blossoms were not as pretty as apple blossoms, he meditated; it was queer how the blossoms would fall off, and the hard, green fruit come—but it always did, somehow.

He wished Mrs. Evans would come back and take his hand again, making him feel ashamed and glad, and say, “Joe, you are going home with me. That man doesn’t want you, and I do.”

And there he stood, not still, but first on one bare foot, and then on the other, and then he whistled; the stars shining down through the cherry blossoms were almost as kind as Beauty’s eyes, but they were so far off.

The low voices talked on and on; at last, to the great relief of the boy who was waiting to know if anybody in the world wanted to own him, the man’s voice was raised in a cheerful: “Well, I’ll see Mr. Chris Tucker to-morrow, and make it right.”

And, then, in her brisk way, Mrs. Evans called, “Come, Joe; it is all right.”

The barefoot, ragged boy emerged out of the shade of the cherry limbs and went, faint-heartedly to answer the call.

“Well, Joe,” welcomed the old man, unlatching the gate and throwing it wide open, “come in and stay with me awhile. I guess I want you and you want me.”

But Joe begun to cry, and rub his eyes with the back of his dirty brown hand: “I am sixteen years old, and I am a stump of a thing, and will eat you out of house and home, and shan’t never amount to much.”

“Tut, nonsense!” exclaimed the old man; “don’t you like to work?”

“I never did nothing else; I don’t like nothing else,” replied Joe, dropping his hand, somewhat reassured.

“Who said you are sixteen? Come in and let me have a look at you.”

Joe stepped inside the gate; kind, strong hands drew him within the light that streamed from the kitchen windows and open door.

“Good night, Joe,” said Mrs. Evans.

“Good night,” said Joe.

He had not learned how to say “thank you.”

“They said so,” he replied to the latest question.

“Those men. The Tucker twins. They are seventy, and hale old fellows. I’ll warrant you know how to work. You are not fourteen. You shall do a boy’s work and be a boy. You may grow to be as tall as old Christopher himself. There’s plenty of man-timber in you. Now come and see what the women-folks will say to you.”

Joe shrank back.

“I thought I was going to live with you.”

“And you thought I lived alone like the other old men? I’m a miserable old bachelor, but I’ve got plenty of women-folks, thank the Lord.”

A little girl rushed to the door, and a barking Scotch terrier made a spring at the new-comer.

“Oh, what a dog,” Joe exclaimed, stooping to catch frisking, curly Doodles into his arms. Homesick for Mrs. Evans, frightened and glad, he followed the old man into the kitchen with the curly dog in his arms.

“Affy, here’s the boy I’ve been looking for, and you’ve been praying for, I’ve no doubt.”

Aunt Affy turned and looked at the boy: short, stout, dirty, ragged, with a shock of uncombed black hair, a lock falling over his forehead, long black eyelashes concealed the eyes he kept shyly fixed upon the curly bundle in his arms.

“What is your name, dear?” she inquired.

Joe had never heard “dear” before, but supposed she must be speaking to him; he raised his eyes and smiled; they were shy, honest eyes; Aunt Affy smiled too.

“I am Joe,” he said, pulling Doodles’ ears.

“Do you remember your father and mother?”

“No; I don’t remember nobody but Chris and Sam.”

“Is your name Joseph?”

“I don’t know; I never thought. I guess it’s Joseph—or Jo—no, now I remember another name: Josiah. Is that a boy’s name?”

“A boy’s name, and a king’s name. I am glad your name is Josiah. I will tell you about him some time.”

The little girl stood near the lady, but she did not stare at him, and Joe gave her glances now and then from under his long lashes; he would like to know her name, and what she was here for. A man’s fur cap covered the black head; when he left the house, angry and discouraged, he had put upon his head the first thing he seized.

“Doodles hasn’t given you time to take your hat off, Joe, or did you forget?” suggested Aunt Affy’s unreproachful voice.

“Didn’t forget it,” said Joe, pulling it off and dropping it on the floor. “They used to eat with their hats on, but I always took mine off.”

“I should think you would,” exclaimed indignant Judith.

Joe put his cheek down upon Doodles’ head, smoothing the sleeping head with his brown cheek.

“What is the dog’s name?” he inquired.

“Doodles,” answered Judith, hastening to speak to the rude, strange boy who had traveled from an unknown country.

“O, Doodles, Doodles, Doodles,” whispered Joe, in a fond voice, rubbing his cheek on the soft head.

“Well, Joe, do you love cows as well as dogs?” inquired Mr. Brush.

“Yes,” said Joe, thinking of the cow that was missing him to-night. He hoped she was asleep now. “But I’m glad I found Doodles.”

“Now, Joe, drop Doodles,” said Aunt Affy, “and follow me up these kitchen stairs. I have a room ready for an obedient, truthful, industrious boy.”

“Where is he?” asked Joe, lifting his shaggy head.

They all laughed, and laughing, also, Joe followed the plump, sweet-faced lady up the kitchen stairs.

IX. THE FLOWERS THAT CAME TO THE WELL.

Nettie Evans sat in her invalid chair leaning forward with her chin on the window-sill looking down into her father’s untidy back yard.

The only pleasant thing in it was a lilac bush that was a marvel of beauty when it was in bloom, but that had faded many weary days ago, leaving ugly brown bunches where the lilacs had been; there were two well-worn paths, one leading to the kitchen door, and the other to the well, and nothing besides, excepting weeds with a background of apple orchard. If Nettie had raised her eyes she would have seen woods, and hills and fields of grain, a bit of road, a wooden bridge, and a deep blue sky full of puffy, white clouds, but she would not raise her eyes; when her back ached as it did to-day she never saw anything but the weeds in the yard, especially those tall rag-weeds growing close around the well. Her father had promised to “clear up” the yard after planting, but planting had come and gone, and he was still too busy.

“Oh, if I were only able to pull weeds,” she sighed.

It was a very gentle sigh, she was not strong enough to sigh heavily. Three years ago she could shout and run, to-day she could not move her feet, and there were many days during the year when she must lie still in bed.

In winter, she had a south room, at the front of house, where she saw the rising and the setting sun, and had a good view of all the people who passed back and forth from the village; in summer, she had this cool north room that looked out on the back yard.

The back yard was full of interest to her—when she could forget the weeds. Twenty times a day her mother came to the kitchen door to look up at her, and tell her how the work was going on; she knew what was cooking by the odors that came up to her and what all the noises meant, from the click of the egg-beater to the thud of the churn-dasher, and she saw old Mrs. Finch when she came to borrow baking powder, and the pedlars, and book-agents, and apple-tree men; but best of all she liked to watch for her father to come in to dinner and supper.

In blue flannel shirt and big straw hat, tired and dusty and warm, he never failed to look up and call: “Why, hello, you there, daughter?” just as if she were well, and had only run up stairs for a moment. And her weak, “I’m here, father,” made the sadness and the happiness of his life.

Nettie moved her head slightly, and gained a view of the pasture where three cows were feeding; she could not see the brook, but she knew that it ran through the pasture, and she knew there were blue lilies all along the brook, some of them growing in the water.

How she longed to see those lilies growing in the water!

She was only ten years old the last time she saw those lilies: she was driving home the cows at night, in her pink calico dress and stout leather shoes, with her father’s old straw hat on the back of her head, “a picture of a happy, healthy, country lassie,” her father thought as he watched her standing by the clump of lilies while she waited for the cows to drink. She was thinking she would gather a big bunch of the lilies as soon as they were opened the next morning—but the pet calf came behind her and butted her down, and her father carried home in his arms a helpless little daughter. And there were tiger lilies in bloom; she could not see the place where they were growing, but it was only a quarter of a mile away in a fence corner, such a patch of them! Oh, how she longed to see those tiger lilies growing! The last time she saw the tiger lilies was the Sunday before she said good-bye to the blue lilies—she was walking home alone from Sunday-school in white dress and blue ribbons, and brown kid shoes, and when she came to the fence corner with the great clump of tiger lilies, she thought of picking a large bunch of them, but just then she heard a noise behind her, and turning, saw a neighbor’s three little black and white pigs; they had followed her all the way from the corner, and it was so funny to think how she had walked along unconsciously, with those pigs in single file behind her, that she just stood and laughed, and then she clapped her hands at them and chased them back, and forgot all about the tiger lilies.

“Oh, blue lilies, oh, tiger lilies, I’ll never see you growing any more,” she sighed.

“Why, hello, daughter, you up there?” called the voice below her.

Nettie did not answer; she felt too discouraged to speak, but she looked down and tried to smile at her father.

Her father looked just as usual, only he had a scythe over his shoulder.

“I came in a little earlier to cut down your weeds,” he called cheerily.

Nettie watched him as he swung the scythe, and listened to the swish, swish, as the tall weeds fell; when the weeds around the well grew less she caught a glimpse of something blue, and then of something red; she pulled herself up to the window, and leaned out, and then she shrieked:—

“Father, don’t cut down the lilies!”

There they were, blue lilies and tiger lilies, growing together, close by the well!

“How did they get there, father?” she called.

“They must have been in the sod that I put around the well last fall,” he replied; “I remember now that I got it from two different places. If I had cut down the weeds before the lilies bloomed, I shouldn’t have known they were there, and should have cut them all down together.”

Nettie fell back in her chair with a sigh of delight, watching her father while with his hands he pulled all the weeds away from the lilies.

“Mother,” she called, lifting herself forward, and resting her chin again on the window-sill.

“Well, Deary,” came in a quick voice from the shed, and her mother appeared in the shed doorway with the dish of boiled potatoes she held in her hand when Nettie’s voice reached her.

“Mother, will you ask Judith to stop and see my lilies the next time she goes past?”

“Your lilies, child?”

“Yes, my own lilies, there by the well. They came and grew just for me.”

Mrs. Evans gave a glance toward the well, then hastened to set the potato dish on the dinner table.

“Of all things! And how she has wanted to see lilies grow! The blessed child is watched over and done for as her father and I can’t do. I declare,” in a shame-faced way, all to herself, “when such things happen I wish I was a Christian.”

“Mother, mother,” called the happy voice again; “I want Joe to see my lilies too.”

“Yes, Deary,” promised her mother from within the shed.

X. THE LAST APPLE.

That afternoon as Nettie was slowly rousing herself from her afternoon nap in her chair, she heard a low, joyful exclamation under her windows.

“Oh, lovely. Mrs. Evans, it’s like—a poem.”

Then a light flashed over the pale face, and Nettie lifted herself forward to look, and to speak.

“O, Judith, I wanted you to see them. You do love pretty things so.”

Judith came through the shed, and up the narrow rag-carpeted stairs to the open door of Nettie’s chamber.

“I wish you would write a poem for me.”

Nettie Evans was Judith’s “public,” and a most enthusiastic one; the young author looked very grave one day when Nettie told her that she liked her poems better than the ones she read to her from the Longfellow book.

“I have brought a poem for you; no one has seen it yet; I’ve copied it to send to my Cousin Don; you know he’s in Switzerland, climbing mountains, and having splendid times. It happened one Thanksgiving—I was here in the country, you remember, with my mother. I saw one rosy apple left on the top of a tree, and I felt so sorry for it. One day I thought of it again, and I wrote this.”

Judith drew her chair close to Nettie’s and took the folded sheet of note paper from her pocket.

“Oh, I wish I could make poems and sew carpet rags,” moaned Nettie.

Judith dared not say she wished she might, she dared not pity her, or look at her; she unfolded her poem and began to read:—

THE LAST APPLE.

Nettie nodded approval, and the poet read modestly on:—

In Nettie’s radiant face and tear-filled eyes Judith found the appreciation for which her soul thirsted.

“That’s lovely,” exclaimed Nettie, “may I keep it and learn it?”

“Of course you may. I’ll copy it for you.”

“And I’ll say it in the night if I cannot go to sleep. How much I’ve had in one day. The lilies and the red apple. Don’t you believe that if you can’t go out and get things they always come?”

“But part of the fun is going out to get them,” said Judith, and then, in quick penitence, “but it must be so lovely to have them come to you.”

“Agnes Trembly came yesterday to make me a new blue wrapper; I like to have her sew here with me. Her mother is blind and that is harder than my lot. Agnes said she wished she was a queen. But I never thought of that.”

“Now I’ll tell you a story. There is a little girl somewhere who is a queen, and sometimes she has to sit in state and receive people, and do other queenly things. One day when she was playing with her dolls, what do you think she said?”

“What?” asked Nettie, her face beaming.

“If you are naughty again, I will make you a queen.”

Nettie laughed to the story-teller’s content.

“Now, I’ll tell you a chicken story. This happened to me. Aunt Rody often lets me help her feed the chickens. We had a brood of little chickens, and all died but two of them; I don’t know why, I took good care of them. One morning I found the mother dead. And what do you think?—those two poor motherless little sisters cuddled under their dead mother’s wing. I would like to write a poem about that, only it breaks my heart, and I like to write about happy things. The next day one of them died, and the left one hadn’t any chicken companion. And then, what do you think? A hen mother who had only one chicken, deserted that and went to roost; and this one little black chicken tried to make friends with the sisterless little white chicken. It was too pretty to watch them. The one whose mother deserted went into her little coop and called and called to the other one; but the white chicken didn’t understand at first; when she did understand, the black chicken made it so plain, and she ran to the coop, and the little black chicken and the little white chicken cuddled together as loving and happy as could be.”

“You can put that into a poem,” suggested Nettie, her eyes alight with Judith’s presence and stories.

“Nettie,” said Judith, impulsively, “I love to have you to tell things to.”

XI. HOW JEAN HAD AN OUTING.

Jean had been crying; in fact, she was crying now, but the tears were stopped on their way down her cheeks by the rush of her new thought. She was always having new thoughts; but this was the most splendid new thought she had ever had in her fourteen years of life.

“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed aloud, springing to her feet. “I’ll just do it, and nobody will know but myself. I’ll go away to a new place and stay two weeks.”

In her delight she clapped her hands and whirled about the room. It was such a small room to clap your hands and whirl about in. That was the cause of her tears—that small room; that and the house, the farm, and everything she had to do—and doing the same disagreeable things every day, and never going anywhere.

School closed yesterday; and this morning Sophie Elting, her best friend, had gone away, for an outing she called it, with a little city air she had caught from her cousins. She was going to the sea-shore to be gone two weeks.

“I’ll play go,” cried Jean, “and I’ll stay at home and do all the things here that people do when they go on an outing.”

The first thing was to pack up. Sophie had a new trunk, and had shown her all her pretty things packed snugly in it: cologne, a box of paper, new handkerchiefs, and ever so many things to go on an outing with. How could Jean play she had things which she hadn’t? And she had no trunk. She would “pack” in a shawl-strap.

She put in her Sunday dress, her morning gingham, two white aprons, her Bible and tooth-brush. She had ever so many things to take on an outing. In half an hour her shawl-strap was packed. She looked down at it with a sigh of relief and pleasure. Now she had started.

“Jean,” came up the stairway, “do you want to go to town?”

Of course she did! The coming back would be “getting there.” She was going into the country for two weeks to board. The boarding was a part of it. She had never boarded in her life; she would be a summer boarder at Daisy Farm.

“There’s the butter to take,” the voice at the foot of the stairs went on, “and you may as well get your shoes, and I’ll give you twenty-five cents to spend as you like.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried Jean, delightedly. That would buy a box of paper and envelopes, and she had twenty cents for stamps. She could not think of another thing she wanted.

At six o’clock that afternoon, when Jean drove back into the yard with her father, she had two packages, her shoes and the box of paper. She had not been her usual talkative self on the way home. This gentleman sitting beside her was the farmer to whose house she was going. He had met her at the train. She was looking about the country and admiring things; she found seven things to admire which she had never noticed before. At the tea-table she intended to talk about them—“rave,” as the summer boarders did.

She went up to her little room and gravely unpacked her shawl-strap, putting the things into the drawers and the closet.

Her sister Lottie was setting the tea-table,—not in her play, but in sober reality,—and it was Minnie’s turn to milk to-night. The four sisters shared the housework with their mother; Jean was number three. Pet, eleven years old, was the youngest.

“I must take a great interest in everybody,” Jean said to herself. “Boarders always do. I must try to do good to somebody, as Mrs. Lane helped me last summer.”

At the supper-table she began to talk about the beautiful five-mile drive from town, and the sunset from the top of the hill.

“It is pretty,” said Minnie.

“And the bridge with the willows. It is pretty enough for a picture; and the ducks sailing down the stream.”

“I always said we had pretty things near home,” remarked her father.

Then Lottie found a nook in the woods to talk about, and Pet told of a place like a cave, and the view on the top after you climbed the big rock. The tired mother brightened. After supper Jean followed her father out the back door and stood beside him.

“How is the watermelon patch doing?” she asked, in a voice of great interest, after thinking a minute.

“Finely! Never so well before. Come and look at it.”

It was a pleasant walk. Jean imagined that she had a white shawl thrown about her, and once in a while gave it a twitch as she listened while the farmer talked about his melons. She asked questions she had never thought of asking before, and learned several new things about the farm.

“It’s a good thing to be a good farmer,” she said. “I never thought before how much farmers had to know.” Her father looked pleased.

It was Jean’s work to wash the milk-pails and milk-pans. She did it that night with a sense of enjoyment which she had never had before, for she was simply “helping” of her own accord. She would be very helpful; she would try to make these strangers care very much for her. She would watch every day to see what she could do for them. Mrs. Lane last summer had taught the class in the Sunday-school to which Jean belonged, and had said that “all must try to be a blessing to every one whom their life touched.” It appeared to Jean that her life touched everybody’s in this house.

Sunday was a wonderful day. She listened to the new preacher, and the new Sunday-school was certainly very pleasant. She spoke to a little girl she had never noticed before, and gave a rose to Julia Weed, whom she had always disliked. She was trying to be like Mrs. Lane.

In the evening she stayed at home from church with her mother, because her mother’s head ached; and when, for the first time in her life, she proposed reading her Sunday-school book to her mother, she was both pleased and rebuked to hear her reply, “Oh yes, I should like it! I can’t read evenings, and I often think how interesting your books look.”

“And if I can’t finish it to-night, may I read tomorrow night?” Jean asked eagerly.

“If I am not too tired.”

“But it will rest you.”

“Perhaps so. It will be something new.”

Something new for her to be thoughtful about her own hard-working mother! And she had to imagine herself in somebody else’s home to think of it.

What a day Monday was! She was busy all the morning, “helping,” and she found it good fun. In the afternoon she wrote a long letter to Sophie, and she had so much to tell that she filled three sheets. In the evening she read aloud to her mother, and her father listened, after he read his paper, and said it was a “jolly good book.”

When she left the room to go to bed, she said, “Good night!” Usually she forgot it. She was careful to remember “thank you,” and “please.”

It was not her turn to iron. To-morrow would be a long, hot ironing day, and there were so many starched things this week. Lottie was in a hurry to finish the pink muslin she was making for herself. If she should offer to iron two hours, and let Lottie sew—but how she hated to iron!

Still, she could only stay with these people two weeks—and there was nothing else Lottie would like so much; she and Lottie had not been very good friends lately, and this would “make up.” She was the one to make up, for she had been cross and had refused to do her work in order to let Lottie go to the picnic. Minnie did it, and let Lottie go, and Jean had felt mean ever since.

But she was only fourteen, and it was vacation. But Mrs. Lane said—and now she wished she hadn’t!—that nobody ever had a vacation from doing kind things.

She could help iron next week. This was her week.

“I guess it’s God’s week!” This was one of Jean’s new thoughts. Going into your own home like a new somebody was very hard work; she almost wished she were not a summer boarder, that she had stayed at home! And this last thought was so funny that the people down-stairs heard her laughing.

“Jean is a happy child,” said her mother.

“Yes, she seems to have a new kink,” replied her father. “She is taking a sudden interest in everything. I used to think she hated the farm and everything about it. The farm is all I’ve got to give my girls, and it hurts me to have them care nothing about it.”

“It’s vacation, and she’s more rested,” said Minnie. “She loves books better than any of us, and studies harder.”

“I don’t know what the secret is, but I’m glad of it,” her father replied.

With a brave heart the next morning Jean asked Lottie if she might iron two hours and let her sew on her pink muslin.

“You blessed child!” cried Lottie. “I had thought I must sit up all night to get it done for tomorrow. Two hours will be a great lift.”

Ironing was hot and hard work, beside being extremely unpleasant work to Jean; but she pushed the two hours into three, and never was so happy in her life as when her oldest sister gave her an unaccustomed kiss, which was even better than her words: “I won’t forget this, Jeanie.”

Wednesday morning Jean remembered that, as a stranger, she must learn something about the village and the village people. Bensalem was a pretty village with one long street, two churches, one store, a post-office, and an old school-house. She had another thought to-day; this, too, grew out of something Mrs. Lane said at Sunday-school. “Bind something, if you can; make some good thing fast, like forming a little society.”

How she would like to do that! She counted over the girls she liked best. There were nine, and ten would form a society, bound fast together. This she regarded as a very promising new thought. But what should it be for? Jean pondered a great deal, but she could think of nothing but her “outing.”

Her outing! Why shouldn’t it be an Outing Society—not to get up real vacations for people, but to get them out of themselves, and into the way of helping things along, and beginning right at home. For that was the curious part of it—that you didn’t have to go away anywhere. It seemed to come to you.

Jean resolved to call on the girls and tell them about it, and ask them to come to her house and talk it over. She knew now what she would call it: The Outing Ten.

First she would call at the Parsonage and tell Miss Marion about it, and ask her what to do first and next.

But she could not tell Miss Marion about it all herself; perhaps Judith Mackenzie would go; Judith knew Miss Marion better than any of the girls. She was always staying at the Parsonage “for company” for Miss Marion.

XII. A SECRET ERRAND.