CHAPTER XX
Sixweeks later found Joyce well established in her comfortable little home, and spending her mornings teaching in a summer Bible School connected with the church which she found that first Sunday evening of her stay in Silverdale.
It all came about in this way:
Christian Endeavor was in session when she entered the church and an enthusiastic set of young people were conducting it. The pastor sat in front near the leader in pleasant accord with all that went on. He seemed to be an intimate friend of every boy and girl present. Joyce looked on wistfully. This was like home. Doctor Ballantine had been like that with all the young people of the town.
At the close of the meeting he made several announcements. One which interested Joyce was that there was need of another teacher in the Bible School to take the place of Miss Brown, who had recently lost her health and been obliged to go away for a year. He told them to remember that it meant giving every morning for five days in the week for six weeks to actual teaching and some time to preparing for teaching; that there was a remuneration of ten dollars a week for the work; but that no one need apply who was not a Christian, or did not intend to be present at every session, or who had not had some experience and preparation for teaching.
The pastor, by some magic, was at the door as soonas the meeting was over, and took her hand cordially in welcome. She looked into his grave, pleasant face and impulsively spoke the wish that had been in her heart since she had heard the announcement.
“I’m so interested in your Bible School! I wish I could teach in it, but I don’t suppose you’d care to try a stranger, would you?”
The minute she had spoken the color flooded her face, for she felt as if she had been presumptuous, but the minister’s eyes lighted and he smiled in a kindly way.
“Are you a Christian?” he asked, his pleasant eyes searching her face.
“Oh, yes,” said Joyce, with a proud ring to her voice as if he had asked her if she were the daughter of some great man.
“Have you ever taught in public school?”
“No,” said Joyce wistfully, “but I’ve been preparing to teach for several years. I love it. I’m hoping to get a position near here this fall. But I haven’t any credentials yet. I would have to take examinations—”
“Come and see me tomorrow at my house. Any time. It’s right next door to the church. If I don’t happen to be there Mrs. Lyman will talk with you. It’s all the same. Can you come at nine o’clock? Well, I’ll be there then. Glad to have you come. Perhaps the Lord has sent you in answer to our prayer.”
So Joyce went to see the Lymans and as a result was engaged to teach in the Bible School, which would begin as soon as the public schools closed, and be in session for six weeks. She would have to be at the church at half past eight and stay until half past eleven. The pay wasn’tgreat, but it took only half her day and she loved the work. She might be able to get something else afternoons occasionally to help out. In the meantime she could live on that ten dollars if she had to, and she meant to. As for the interval before the Bible School opened, there would be something to do, she was sure. And, anyhow, the barrel of meal hadn’t wasted yet, and she felt sure the Lord would take care of her. Besides, she needed some time to fix up her little home and make it liveable. One couldn’t just exist if one was working, one had to have things tolerably comfortable for resting and eating or one couldn’t do good work.
So she went back to her little house and sat down to think. The conclusion of her meditation was that she decided to buy a saw.
Consulting Mrs. Bryant that Monday morning, she finally decided on a trip to the city, and armed with minute directions about stores and prices, she took the noon train.
Her first purchase was a Bible.
She had asked about a book-store where things would not be expensive and Mrs. Bryant had named a second-hand place where things were very nice and very cheap, she said. Joyce found a Scofield Bible, new and clean, and scarcely used at all, it seemed. It had an inscription on the fly-leaf, “To Mary, from Mother, December 25, 1922.”
Joyce felt a pitiful joy in buying that particular Bible. It seemed so sorrowful that a Bible from a mother to her child should be lying out in the open on a book-stall like that, and only two years after it was given. What if it had been hers from her mother? What if it hadbeen Aunt Mary’s Bible! She fell to wondering about that other Mary. Was she dead, or didn’t she care about the book? Were they both dead, mother and child, in those two brief years? How did a precious, intimate thing like a Bible get to be sold in a second-hand store? It seemed almost indecent. Surely some relative or even a trustee who had to sell things at auction would have had the decency to give a Bible to some friend who would care for it, or to some mission that would use it for the glory of God. So she bought the Bible and carried it tenderly with a thought for its unknown owner and donor.
Joyce had a great many bundles when she had finished her purchases. She looked at them in amazement when she finally settled herself in the train once more for her return trip to Silverdale. She really had spent very little money for all those big packages. She began to count up. The Bible had cost fifty cents, and she knew it was very cheap. The saw was a dollar and a half, but it was the best of steel. There was a big bundle of gray denim for upholstery. She had got it at a reduced rate by taking all that was left of the piece. Two or three yards of flowered cretonne to cover her box dressing table. Perhaps she could have waited for that, but it wasn’t good policy for her to seem too poverty-stricken if she expected to get a position in school, and what she bought must be the right thing so that she would not have to renew it right away. She must make her little house look cosy if the minister and his wife dropped in to call, or any of those nice young people at the church should run in.
That big, bulky package with the handle contained a lot of wire springs, some upholstery webbing, and twine,a long, double-pointed upholstery needle, and several pounds of curled hair and cheap cotton. This constituted Joyce’s venture. With it she meant to make a bed and perhaps two chairs. Maybe it was foolish, and she ought to have bought a cot for five dollars and let it go at that, but she would have had to buy a mattress or something to put over it, and when it was done it would not be so comfortable as one that she could make. For Joyce had often watched an old neighbor of theirs in Meadow Brook who was an upholsterer. She knew all the little tricks. She knew how the webbing should be nailed on taut, how the springs must be sewed to the webbing, and then tied down level, and the padding of cotton and hair put on the top of that. She was sure she could do it, though she had never tried it. Joyce was not beyond trying anything if necessity drove her to it. She had once made a lovely feather fan out of chicken feathers and an old ivory frame. She felt she could make a bedstead if she tried hard enough. There was yet the frame to be dealt with, but she had her saw, and anyhow, the springs and webbing and hair had cost but very little, and it would surely be much more comfortable than a hard cot, besides looking a great deal better in her room, and costing no more than, nor as much as, a cot.
She had bought a few necessities for her wardrobe also, a couple of remnants to make more thin dresses, a pair of fifty-cent slippers from the bargain counter to save her shoes while she was working. In fact, most of her purchases were from the bargain counters, a hair-brush and comb, a change of undergarments and night wear, two pairs of stockings, and some towels. What a lot of thingsone needed to live! And when she counted up there was just twenty-four dollars and eighty-seven cents left of her small capital. It made her gasp as she thought of the weeks ahead before her engagement in the Bible School would commence, and how was she to live? She must be very, very economical. But yet she need not be afraid. The barrel of meal had not wasted so far. God would take care of her, and her heart began to sing as she remembered how He had brought her safely so far out of her difficulties.
Then when she got home she was hailed by Mrs. Bryant. Mrs. Ritter, down the street, wanted to know if Joyce would be willing to come in and sit with her sister for the evening. She had made an engagement to go to the city with her husband, and now her sister was sick and she didn’t like to leave her alone in the house. There was really nothing to do but give her her medicine every hour and answer the telephone and the door bell. Mrs. Ritter would be glad to pay her for her time, fifty cents an hour was what she thought would be fair. She wouldn’t be home till the midnight train, but Mr. Ritter would walk down with her after they got back, so she needn’t be afraid to come home.
Joyce thanked Mrs. Bryant for speaking of her. She said of course she would go, and went about her little house with shining eyes, singing. The barrel of meal was filling up again. How wonderful! There would be three more dollars! She had taken a good dinner in the city at an automat restaurant which Mrs. Bryant had recommended, and she did not feel the need of an elaborate meal that night. So she drank some milk and finishedher crackers and cheese, rolled up one of the remnants with her scissors and thimble and thread, and started out to Mrs. Ritter’s. If all went well she might be able to get another dress started during the evening.
The next day she invested in some boards and went to work sawing. It was rather rough work, and she got splinters in her hands and sawed some of the joints a bit crookedly, but she finally put some very creditable corners together, sawing off parts of each and dovetailing them into one another as she had seen carpenters do, until she had a good, strong framework a little over six feet long and thirty inches wide, which was the size of the space in which she could put her bed without running across the windows.
When she had satisfied herself that the framework was strong she began nailing webbing across the bottom, interlacing it rather closely, as she had seen old Mr. Carpenter do. When it was finished she lifted the structure upon two boxes and sewed the springs into place at regular distances.
It took two days to get those springs tied down satisfactorily on a perfect level, and Joyce had several pricked fingers before she was done, and was almost wishing she had bought a hard little army cot and learned to enjoy it. But the third morning she covered the springs with a layer of cheap cloth, then the cotton, and lastly the hair, covering the whole with ticking. Then, with her big needle, she tied this down at every three or four inches, until she had a soft, firm mattress, fine enough for a princess. The work really, though crude in some ways, was a great success, and one to be proud of, and when itwas done she put it on the floor and threw herself down upon it with a great sigh of relief. Now, at last, she had a spot where the tired would be taken out of her when she had worked to the limit of her strength, something to look forward to when she came to her lonely little house at night after a hard day.
By this time Mrs. Bryant had managed to do a good deal of talking in the neighborhood about the bright young teacher who had come there to live and was having a little spare time this summer to help people out in an emergency, and several calls had come for her.
Once she had had to drop her hammer and saw and go to help Mrs. Smith to finish canning cherries, and succeeded in being so satisfactory that she was engaged to help with the strawberry preserves, gooseberry jam, and currant jelly.
Mrs. Jennings, on the next block, heard of her and engaged an afternoon a week at fifty cents an hour to take care of her children while she went out to the club meeting, and sometimes an extra evening. During these evenings she got quite a lot of sewing done, gradually acquiring a complete little wardrobe of plain, simple clothing made all by hand, but quite serviceable and pretty.
She met the gray-haired librarian of the Silverdale Memorial Library, and was asked to come in and help with the new cataloging. This took several afternoons and evenings, and meanwhile the furnishings of her little home grew slowly.
Once she was called in for three days to take care of some children while their mother went to the hospital for an operation on her throat; and several times afterthat she went to help nurse some one in a slight illness, where training was not required. She began to be known as the “Emergency Girl,” and thought about putting out a sign and getting a telephone.
Meantime, she had met a kindly old man who was on the School Board, and had arranged to take examinations and put in her application for a position should any be vacant for the next winter. This necessitated the purchase of some books, and another trip to the second-hand book-store.
She had been living most economically, getting one meal a day usually, at a little restaurant among the stores where the tradespeople ate, and good wholesome food could be had at most reasonable rates. This gave her always something hot once a day. For the rest, she was living on ready-to-eat cereals, fruit, bread and butter, and milk, or if it rained too hard to go out she would cook an egg on her little alcohol can and eat her dinner at home. It really cost very little to live when one was careful. As for heat and light, she did not need either at this time of year. A candle did for emergencies. The twilight was long, and the electric light in the street was quite enough to go to bed by. Often she was out at somebody’s house for the evening, caring for a child or an old person while the family amused themselves in the city, and there was always plenty of time then to read or study or sew.
So her life had settled into a pleasant little groove with interesting prospects ahead, and still the “barrel of meal,” as she called her worn little pocketbook, always contained enough to live upon and get the real necessities, and sometimes a fragment or two of luxury. Winter was comingsometime, of course, with need for heat and light, and she must prepare for it too, but it wasn’t here yet. Still, she did not feel that she had arrived at the point where she cared to let the Meadow Brook people know where she was. Some of them might take it into their heads to hunt her up on a motor trip, and she wasn’t just prepared yet to show off her little house. Besides, she wanted to be anchored firmly with a regular school job before she told any one where she was. Well, she knew there were people in Meadow Brook who would gladly have offered her a home just for Aunt Mary’s sake, and she was a proud little girl and didn’t want to have anybody feel they must offer her help. Besides, it wasn’t exactly loyal to the family to explain her position at present, and she was one who would be loyal to her family even if her family were not loyal to her.
So she went her various helpful ways, and eked out her small necessities, with always something in the little brown pocketbook. Day by day the little house grew more homelike and cosy.
The home-made bed was a wonderful success. Mounted on four solid little square boxes six inches high, and nailed firmly to them, with a valance and cover of gray denim, and cotton pillows covered with the same, it seemed a luxurious couch. At night when the cover was removed it made a wonderful bed. When Joyce finally attained a fluffy pink comfortable made of cotton batting and a remnant of pink cheese cloth tied with pink yarn, she felt that she slept in luxury. Sheets and pillow-cases were not expensive when one bought remnants of coarse cloth and hemmed them; and washing was not hard to do withthe outside faucet and drain so near. It might not be so easy in winter, but it was all right in summer. And presently Mrs. Bryant made it still easier for her by suggesting that she use the tubs and hot water in the laundry in return for helping her out by getting supper once in a while when she had company.
Gradually the little house in the side yard took on an atmosphere of home. The two barrels, sawed in the middle half around, fitted with four springs in the seats, and upholstered in gray denim with padded backs and valanced standards, became two easy chairs, really comfortable to sit in. Joyce was proud of them. She invited Mrs. Bryant to take a seat in one when it was finished, and that good lady was almost disposed to doubt the girl’s word when she told her it was made out of a barrel.
“My grandmother made one,” explained Joyce, “and we always kept it carefully. I often wanted to make one when I saw a nice clean barrel, and now I’ve done it.”
“Well, I think you’re a wonder,” said Mrs. Bryant, after she had lifted the valance and felt the sturdy barrel staves for herself. “Just a wonder! You get so much more out of life than those flapper girls do! I wonder they like to be such fools. I can’t see what the boys see in them. My Jimmie don’t like ’em. He says, ‘Mother, you don’t know what the girls are like nowadays,’ and I believe him. I’m sure I hope he stays sensible and finds a girl some day that will be the right kind. I was most afraid there weren’t any left, but now I’ve seen you I’m real encouraged.”
The said Jimmie appeared at home one week-end from technical school, where he was learning to be an electricalengineer, and kindly offered to wire her little house for her, probably at his mother’s suggestion. So, at last, she had light and a place to cook, and she saved enough from getting her own dinners to buy a tiny electric grill, which gave her great comfort.
One corner which she called her diningroom blossomed out with shelves, on which little blue and white cups and plates, bought at the ten-cent store, made quite a display.
She found a table and two wooden kitchen chairs at a second-hand store one day and bought the lot for two dollars, painted them gray, and she had a diningroom set. The box dressing table had long ago been decked out in pink-flowered cretonne and made a commodious harbor for her meagre wardrobe. By and by she would find a chest of drawers and paint that gray also and then she would be fixed.
The only thing that really troubled her when she stopped to think was how she was going to keep the place warm when winter came. And presently that problem, too, was solved, for Jimmie, hearing of the difficulty on one of his week-ends at home, suggested that he would build her a chimney out of the big pile of stones on the back of his father’s lot, with a fireplace of stone in the room. If that didn’t give her heat enough in the middle of winter she could get a little coal stove and set it up in one corner with a pipe into the chimney. Thereafter every Saturday when he came home he worked for several hours on the chimney, in return for which Joyce helped him with his mathematics for the next week, so that she did not feel he was making her chimney for nothing.
By the time the Vacation Bible School opened Joyce felt quite at home in the church of her choice, and was growing shyly intimate with Mrs. Lyman, the minister’s wife. They had given her the primary department, and when she arrived at the church on the opening morning of the Bible School, she found that there were forty-nine little midgets, not one of them over five years old, all ready and eager to study the Bible. Joyce, with reverent heart, set about her glorious task, praying that she might be allowed to lay the foundation of belief in Christ and the Holy Scriptures even while they were so young. She entered into her work with eagerness and was inclined to spend even more time than she was required in preparing for each day’s work, it was all such a joy to her.
But, sometimes, when she lay on the soft couch alone in her little toy house at night, and the streets were still save for the night watchman’s whistle now and again in the distance, and the electric light flickered softly over her white wall, and played tricks of design on her curtains and draperies, she thought of the days at home with Aunt Mary, and how different it all would be if her precious aunt could have been with her here. How she longed to tell her everything that had happened, and talk over each day’s doings just as she used to do. The loneliness was inexpressible, and the tears would come. Then her heart would go back to the dear home where she had spent so many years, and familiar faces would come back, and little happenings, till she felt as if she could not bear it, being away like this. And then she would remember Nan and Gene and how hard the days had been before she left, and knew that she had done the wisest thing ingoing, and that God had set his seal upon her choice by prospering her in her way.
But always, when she had one of these times of retrospect, she did not fail to remember the boy who had spent that happy day with her and Aunt Mary in the woods so long ago, and to feel again the pain of that night when she found him and knew that somehow he had been doing something unworthy. Then she would pray with all her heart, as indeed she prayed every night, for him, that he might be converted and get to know Jesus Christ. Indeed, this was the great prayer of her life, the one big desire that her heart had set above all other desires. And as the days went by and she prayed for it, she grew gradually to feel that somehow it would be accomplished. She might never see, might never even know on this earth that it had been done, but she had faith to believe it would be done because the Bible said:
“If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it,” and because He also said, “It is not his will thatanyshould perish; but thatallshould come to repentance.”
And so she came to feel that some day her friend would find the way, and that perhaps, sometime in a heavenlier sphere, she would see him again with the smile of a reconciled God reflected in his face. And her heart was comforted.