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.
"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.
"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.