When Mrs. Francis decided to play the Lady Bountiful to the Watson family, she not only ministered to their physical necessity but she conscientiously set about to do them good, if they would be done good to. Mrs. Francis's heart was kind, when you could get to it; but it was so deeply crusted over with theories and reflections and abstract truths that not very many people knew that she had one.
When little Danny's arms were thrown around her neck, and he called her his dear sweet, pink lady, her pseudo-intellectuality broke down before a power which had lain dormant. She had always talked a great deal of the joys of motherhood, and the rapturous delights of mother-love. Not many of the mothers knew as much of the proper care of an infant during the period of dentition as she. She had read papers at mothers' meetings, and was as full of health talks as a school physiology.
But it was the touch of Danny's soft cheek and clinging arms that brought to her the rapture that is so sweet it hurts, and she realised that she had missed the sweetest thing in life. A tiny flame of real love began to glimmer in her heart and feebly shed its beams among the debris of cold theories and second-hand sensations that had filled it hitherto.
She worried Danny with her attentions, although he tried hard to put up with them. She was the lady of his dreams, for Pearl's imagination had clothed her with all the virtues and graces.
Hers was a strangely inconsistent character, spiritually minded, but selfish; loving humanity when it is spelled with a capital, but knowing nothing of the individual. The flower of holiness in her heart was like the haughty orchid that blooms in the hothouse, untouched by wind or cold, beautiful to behold but comforting no one with its beauty.
Pearl Watson was like the rugged little anemone, the wind flower that lifts its head from the cheerless prairie. No kind hand softens the heat or the cold, nor tempers the wind, and yet the very winds that blow upon it and the hot sun that beats upon it bring to it a grace, a hardiness, a fragrance of good cheer, that gladdens the hearts of all who pass that way.
Mrs. Francis found herself strongly attracted to Pearl. Pearl, the housekeeper, the homemaker, a child with a woman's responsibility, appealed to Mrs. Francis. She thought about Pearl very often.
Noticing one day that Pearl was thin and pale, she decided at once that she needed a health talk. Pearl sat like a graven image while Mrs. Francis conscientiously tried to stir up in her the seeds of right living.
"Oh, ma!" Pearl said to her mother that night, when the children had gone to bed and they were sewing by the fire. "Oh, ma! she told me more to-day about me insides than I would care to remember. Mind ye, ma, there's a sthring down yer back no bigger'n a knittin' needle, and if ye ever broke it ye'd snuff out before ye knowed what ye was doin', and there's a tin pan in yer ear that if ye got a dinge in it, it wouldn't be worth a dhirty postage stamp for hearin' wid, and ye mustn't skip ma, for it will disturb yer Latin parts, and ye mustn't eat seeds, or ye'll get the thing that pa had—what is it called ma?"
Her mother told her.
"Yes, appendicitis, that's what she said. I never knowed there were so many places inside a person to go wrong, did ye, ma? I just thought we had liver and lights and a few things like that."
"Don't worry, alannah," her mother said soothingly, as she cut out the other leg of Jimmy's pants. "The Lord made us right I guess, and he won't let anything happen to us."
But Pearl was not yet satisfied. "But, oh ma," she said, as she hastily worked a buttonhole. "You don't know about the diseases that are goin' 'round. Mind ye, there's tuberoses in the cows even, and them that sly about it, and there's diseases in the milk as big as a chew o' gum and us not seein' them. Every drop of it we use should be scalded well, and oh, ma, I wonder anyone of us is alive for we're not half clean! The poison pours out of the skin night and day, carbolic acid she said, and every last wan o' us should have a sponge bath at night—that's just to slop yerself all up and down with a rag, and an oliver in the mornin'. Ma, what's an oliver, d'ye think?"
"Ask Camilla," Mrs. Watson said, somewhat alarmed at these hygienic problems. "Camilla is grand at explaining Mrs. Francis's quare ways."
Pearl's brown eyes were full of worry.
"It's hard to git time to be healthy, ma," she said; "we should keep the kittle bilin' all the time, she says, to keep the humanity in the air—Oh, I wish she hadn't a told me, I never thought atin' hurt anyone, but she says lots of things that taste good is black pison. Isn't it quare, ma, the Lord put such poor works in us and us not there at the time to raise a hand."
They sewed in silence for a few minutes.
Then Pearl said: "Let us go to bed now, ma, me eyes are shuttin'. I'll go back to-morrow and ask Camilla about the 'oliver.'"
Mary Barner had learned the lesson early that the only easing of her own pain was in helping others to bear theirs, and so it came about that there was perhaps no one in Millford more beloved than she. Perhaps it was the memory of her own lost childhood that caused her heart to go out in love and sympathy to every little boy and girl in the village.
Their joys were hers; their sorrows also. She took slivers from little fingers with great skill, beguiling the owners thereof with wonderful songs and stories. She piloted weary little plodders through pages of "homework." She mended torn "pinnies" so that even vigilant mothers never knew that their little girls had jumped the fence at all. She made dresses for concerts at short notice. She appeased angry parents, and many a time prevented the fall of correction's rod.
When Tommy Watson beguiled Ignatius McSorley, Jr., to leave his mother's door, and go swimming in the river, promising faithfully to "button up his back"—Ignatius being a wise child who knew his limitations—and when Tommy Watson forgot that promise and basely deserted Ignatius to catch on the back of a buggy that came along the river road, leaving his unhappy friend clad in one small shirt, vainly imploring him to return, Ignatius could not go home, for his mother would know that he had again yielded to the siren's voice; so it was to the Barner back door that he turned his guilty steps. Miss Barner was talking to a patient in the office when she heard a small voice at the kitchen door full of distress, whimpering:
"Please Miss Barner, I'm in a bad way. Tommy Watson said he'd help me and he never!"
Miss Barner went quickly, and there on the doorstep stood a tiny cupid in tears, tightly clasping his scanty wardrobe to his bosom.
"He said he'd help me and he never!" he repeated in a burst of rage as she drew him in hastily.
"Never mind, honey," she said, struggling to control her laughter. "Just wait till I catch Tommy Watson!"
Miss Barner was the assistant Band of Hope teacher. On Monday afternoon it was part of her duty to go around and help the busy mothers to get the children ready for the meeting. She also took her turn with Mrs. White in making taffy, for they had learned that when temperance sentiment waned, taffy, with nuts in it, had a wonderful power to bind and hold the wavering childish heart.
There was no human way of telling a taffy day—the only sure way was to go every time. The two little White girls always knew, but do you think they would tell? Not they. There was secrecy written all over their blond faces, and in every strand of their straw-coloured hair. Once they deliberately stood by and heard Minnie McSorley and Mary Watson plan to go down to the creamery for pussy-willows on Monday afternoon—there were four plates of taffy on their mother's pantry shelf at the time and yet they gave no sign—Minnie McSorley and Mary Watson went blindly on and reaped a harvest of regrets.
There was no use offering the White girls anything for the information. Glass alleys, paint cards or even popcorn rings were powerless to corrupt them. Once Jimmy Watson became the hero of an hour by circulating the report that he had smelled it cooking when he took the milk to Miss Barner's; but alas, for circumstantial evidence.
Every child went to Band of Hope that Monday afternoon eager and expectant; but it was only a hard lesson on the effect of alcohol on the lining of the stomach that they got, and when Mrs. White complimented them on their increased attendance and gave out the closing hymn,
Oh, what a happy band are we!
the Hogan twins sobbed.
When the meeting was over, Miss Barner exonerated Jimmy by saying it was icing for a cake he had smelled, and the drooping spirits of the Band were somewhat revived by her promise that next Monday would surely be Taffy Day.
On the last Monday of each month the Band of Hope had a programme instead of the regular lesson. Before the programme was given the children were allowed to tell stories or ask questions relating to temperance. The Hogan twins were always full of communications, and on this particular Monday it looked as if they would swamp the meeting.
William Henry Hogan (commonly known as Squirt) told to a dot how many pairs of shoes and bags of flour a man could buy by denying himself cigars for ten years. During William Henry's recital, John James Hogan, the other twin, showed unmistakable signs of impatience. He stood up and waved his hand so violently that he seemed to be in danger of throwing that useful member away forever. Mrs. White gave him permission to speak as soon as his brother had finished, and John James announced with a burst of importance:
"Please, teacher, my pa came home last night full as a billy-goat."
Miss Barner put her hand hastily over her eyes. Mrs. White gasped, and the Band of Hope held its breath.
Then Mrs. White hurriedly announced that Master James Watson would recite, and Jimmy went forward with great outward composure and recited:
As I was going to the lakeI met a little rattlesnake;I fed him with some jelly-cake,Which made his little—
But Mrs. White interrupted Jimmy just then by saying that she must insist on temperance selections at these programmes, whereat Pearlie Watson's hand waved appealingly, and Miss Barner gave her permission to speak.
"Please ma'am," Pearl said, addressing Mrs. White, "Jimmy and me thought anything about a rattlesnake would do for a temperance piece, and if you had only let Jimmy go on you would have seen what happened even a snake that et what he hadn't ought to, and please ma'am, Jimmy and me thought it might be a good lesson for all of us."
Miss Barner thought that Pearlie's point was well taken, and took Jimmy with her into the vestry from which he emerged a few minutes later, flushed and triumphant, and recited the same selection, with a possible change of text in one place:
As I was going to the lakeI met a little rattlesnake;I fed him on some jelly-cake,Which made his little stomach ache.
The musical committee then sang:
We're for home and mother,God and native land,Grown up friend and brother,Give us now your hand.
and won loud applause. Little Sissy Moore knew only the first verse, but it would never have been known that she was saying dum—dum—dum—dum—dum—dum—dum—dum dum-dum-dum, if Mary Simpson hadn't told.
Wilford Ducker, starched as stiff as boiled and raw starch could make him, recited "Perish, King Alcohol, we will grow up," but was accorded a very indifferent reception by the Band of Hopers. Wilford was allowed to go to Band of Hope only when Miss Barner went for him and escorted him home again. Mrs. Ducker had been very particular about Wilford from the first.
Then the White girls recited a strictly suitable piece. It was entitled "The World and the Conscience."
Lily represented a vain woman of the world bent upon pleasure with a tendency toward liquid refreshment. Her innocent china-blue eyes and flaxen braids were in strange contrast to the mad love of glittering wealth which was supposed to fill her heart:
Give to me the flowing bowl,And Pleasure's glittering crown;The path of Pride shall be my goal,And conscience's voice I'll drown!
Then Blanche sweetly admonished her:
Oh! lay aside your idle boasts,No Pleasure thus you'll find;The flowing bowl a serpent isTo poison Soul and Mind.
Oh, sign our pledge, while yet you can,Nor look upon the WineWhen it is red within the Cup,Let not its curse be thine!
Thereupon the frivolous creature repents of her waywardness, and the two little girls join hands and recite in unison:
We will destroy this giant King,And drive him from our land;And on the side of Temp-er-anceWe'll surely take our stand!
and the piece was over.
Robert Roblin Watson (otherwise known as Bugsey), who had that very day been installed as a member of the Band of Hope, after he had avowed his determination "never to touch, taste nor handle alcoholic stimulants in any form as a beverage and to discourage all traffic in the same," was the next gentleman on the programme. Pearlie was sure Bugsey's selection was suitable. She whispered to him the very last minute not to forget his bow, but he did forget it, and was off like a shot into his piece.
I belong to the Band of Hope,Never to drink and never to smoke;To love my parents and Uncle Sam,Keep Alcohol out of my diaphragm;To say my prayers when I go to bed,And not put the bedclothes over my head;Fill up my lungs with oxygen,And be kind to every living thing.
There! I guess there can't be no kick about that, Pearl thought to herself as Bugsey finished, and the applause rang out loud and louder.
Pearlie had forgotten to tell Bugsey to come down when he was done, and so he stood irresolute, as the applause grew more and more deafening. Pearl beckoned and waved and at last got him safely landed, and when Mrs. White announced that to-day was Taffy Day, owing to Miss Barner's kindness, Bugsey's cup of happiness was full. Miss Barner said she had an extra big piece for the youngest member, Master Danny Watson. Pearlie had not allowed any person to mention taffy to him because Danny could not bear to be disappointed.
But there were no disappointments that day. Taffy enough for every one, amber-coloured taffy slabs with nuts in it, cream taffy in luscious nuggets, curly twists of brown and yellow taffy. Oh look, there's another plateful! and it's coming this way. "Have some more, Danny. Oh, take a bigger piece, there's lots of it." Was it a dream?
When the last little Band of Hoper had left the vestry, Mary Barner sat alone with her thoughts, looking with unseeing eyes at the red and silver mottoes on the wall. Pledge cards which the children had signed were gaily strung together with ribbons across the wall behind her. She was thinking of the little people who had just gone—how would it be with them in the years to come?—they were so sweet and pure and lovely now. Unconsciously she bowed her head on her hands, and a cry quivered from her heart. The yellow sunlight made a ripple of golden water on the wall behind her and threw a wavering radiance on her soft brown hair.
It was at that moment that the Rev. Hugh Grantley, the new Presbyterian minister, opened the vestry door.
Close beside the Watson estate with its strangely shaped dwelling stood another small house, which was the earthly abode of one Mrs. McGuire, also of Irish extraction, who had been a widow for forty years. Mrs. McGuire was a tall, raw-boned, angular woman with piercing black eyes, and a firm forbidding jaw. One look at Mrs. McGuire usually made a book agent forget the name of his book. When she shut her mouth, no lips were visible; her upturned nose seemed seriously to contemplate running up under her sun bonnet to escape from this wicked world with all its troubling, and especially from John Watson, his wife and his family of nine.
One fruitful cause of dispute between Mrs. McGuire and the Watsons was the boundary line between the two estates. In the spring Mrs. Watson and the boys put up a fence of green poplar poles where they thought the fence should be, hoping that it might serve the double purpose of dividing the lots and be a social barrier between them and the relict of the late McGuire. The relict watched and waited and said not a word, but it was the ominous silence that comes before the hail.
Mrs. McGuire hated the Watson family collectively, but it was upon John Watson, the man of few words, that she lavished the whole wealth of her South of Ireland hatred, for John Watson had on more than one occasion got the better of her in a wordy encounter.
One time when the boundary dispute was at its height, she had burst upon John as he went to his work in the morning, with a storm of far-reaching and comprehensive epithets. She gave him the history of the Watson family, past, present, and future—especially the future; every Watson that ever left Ireland came in for a brief but pungent notice.
John stood thoughtfully rubbing his chin, and when she stopped, not from lack of words, but from lack of breath, he slowly remarked:
"Mistress McGuire, yer a lady."
"Yer a liar!" she snapped back, with a still more eloquent burst of invectives.
John lighted his pipe with great deliberation, and when it was drawing nicely he took it from his mouth and said, more to himself than to her:
"Stay where ye are, Pat McGuire. It may be hot where ye are, but it would be hotter for ye if ye were here, and ye'd jist have the throuble o' movin'. Stay where ye are, Pat, wherever ye are." He walked away leaving Mrs. McGuire with the uncomfortable feeling that he had some way got the best of her.
The Watsons had planted their potatoes beside the fence, and did not dream of evil. But one morning in the early autumn, the earliest little Watson who went out to get a basin of water out of the rain barrel, to wash the "sleeps" out of his eyes, dropped the basin in his astonishment, for the fence was gone—it was removed to Mrs. McGuire's woodpile, and the lady herself was industriously digging the potatoes.
Bugsey, for he was the early little bird, ran back into the house screaming:
"She's robbed us! She's robbed us! and tuk our fence."
The Watson family gathered as quickly as a fire brigade at the sound of the gong, but in the scramble for garments some were less fortunate than others. Wee Tommy, who was a little heavier sleeper than the others, could find nothing to put on but one overshoe and an old chest protector of his mother's, but he arrived at the front, nevertheless. Tommy was not the boy to desert his family for any minor consideration such as clothes.
Mrs. McGuire leaned on her hoe and nonchalantly regarded the gathering forces. She had often thought out the scene, and her air of indifference was somewhat overdone.
The fence was on her ground, so it was, and so were two rows of the potatoes. She could do what she liked with her own, so she could. She didn't ask them to plant potatoes on her ground. If they wanted to stand there gawkin' at her, they wur welcome. She always did like comp'ny; but she was afraid the childer would catch cowld, they were dressed so loight for so late in the season. She picked up the last pailful as she spoke, and retired into her own house, leaving the Watson family to do the same.
Mrs. Watson counselled peace. John ate his breakfast in silence; but the young Watsons, and even Pearlie, thirsted for revenge. Bugsey Watson forgot his Band of Hope teaching of returning good for evil, and standing on the disputed territory, he planted his little bare legs far apart and shouted, dancing up and down to the rhythm:
Chew tobacco, chew tobacco,Spit, spit, spit!Old McGuire, old McGuire,Nit, nit, nit!
Mrs. McGuire did occasionally draw comfort from an old clay pipe—but Bugsey's punishment was near.
A long shadow fell upon him, and turning around he found himself face to face with Mary Barner who stood spellbound, listening to her lately installed Band of Hoper!
Bugsey's downfall was complete! He turned and ran down the road and round behind an elevator, where half an hour later Pearl found him shedding penitential tears, not alas! because he had sinned, but because he had been found out.
The maternal instinct was strong in Pearlie. Bugsey in tears was in need of consolation; Bugsey was always in need of admonition. So she combined them:
"Don't cry, alannah. Maybe Miss Barner didn't hear yez at all at all. Ladies like her do be thinkin' great thoughts and never knowin' what's forninst them. Mrs. Francis never knows what ye'r sayin' to her at the toime; ye could say 'chew tobacco, chew tobacco' all ye liked before her; but what for did ye sass owld lady McGuire? Haven't I towld ye time out of mind that a soft answer turns away wrath, and forbye makes them madder than anything ye could say to them?"
Bugsey tearfully declared he would never go to Band of Hope again. Taffy or no taffy, he could not bear to face her.
"Go tell her, Bugsey man," Pearlie urged. "Tell her ye'r sorry. I w'uldn't mind tellin' Miss Barner anything. Even if I'd kilt a man and hid his corp, she's the very one I'd git to help me to give me a h'ist with him into the river, she's that good and swate."
The subject of this doubtful compliment had come down so early that morning believing that Mrs. McGuire was confined to her bed with rheumatism. Seeing the object of her solicitude up and about, she would have returned without knowing what had happened; but Bugsey's remarkable musical turn decided her that Mrs. McGuire was suffering from worse than a rheumatic knee. She went into the little house, and heard all about it.
When she went home a little later she found Robert Roblin Watson, with resolute heart but hanging head, waiting for her on the back step. What passed between them neither of them ever told, but in a very few minutes Robert Roblin ran gaily homeward, happy in heart, shriven of his sin, and with one little spot on his cheek which tingled with rapture. Better still, he went, like a man, and made his peace with Mrs. McGuire!
Mrs. Francis, in the sweetest of tea gowns, was intent upon Dr. Ernestus Parker's book on "Purposeful Motherhood." It was the chapter dealing with the "Musical Sense in Children" which engrossed Mrs. Francis's attention. She had just begun subdivision C in the chapter, "When and How the Musical Sense Is Developed," when she thought of Danny. She fished into the waste-paper basket for her little red note-book, and with her silver mounted pencil she made the following entry:
DANIEL WATSON,AGED 4.MUS. SENSE. DEVELOPED. IF SO, WHEN. IF NOT,HOW, AND AT ONCE.
She read on feverishly. She felt herself to be in the throes of a great idea.
Then she called Camilla. Camilla is always so practical, she thought.
To Camilla she elaborated the vital points of Dr. Parker's theory of the awakening of the musical sense, reading here and there from the book, rapidly and unintelligibly. She was so excited she was incoherent. Camilla listened patiently, although her thoughts were with her biscuits in the oven below.
"And now, Camilla," she said when she had gone all over the subject, "how can we awaken the musical sense in Daniel? You know I value your opinion so much."
Camilla was ready.
"Take him to hear Professor Welsman play," she said. "The professor will give his recital here on the 15th."
Mrs. Francis wrote rapidly. "I believe," she said looking up, "your suggestion is a good one. You shall have the credit of it in my notes."
Plan of awakening mus. sense suggested by C—.
Camilla smiled. "Thank you, Mrs. Francis. You are very kind."
When Camilla went back to the kitchen and took the biscuits from the oven, she laughed softly to herself.
"This is going to be a good time for some further suggestions. Pearl must go with Danny. What a treat it will be for poor little Pearl! Then we must have a new suit for Danny, new dress for Pearl, new cap for D., new hat for P., all suggested by C. There are a few suggestions which C. will certainly make."
On the evening of the professor's recital there were no two happier people in the audience than Pearlie Watson and her brother Daniel Mulcahey Watson; not because the great professor was about to interpret for them the music of the masters—that was not the cause of their happiness—but because of the good supper they had had and the good clothes they wore, their hearts were glad. They had spent the afternoon at Mrs. Francis's (suggested by C.). Danny's new coat had a velvet collar lovely to feel (suggested by C.). Pearl had a wonderful new dress—the kind she had often dreamed of—made out of one of Mrs. Francis's tea gowns. (Not only suggested but made by C.). It had real buttons on it, and there was not one pin needed. Pearl felt she was just as well dressed as the little girl on the starch box. Her only grief was that when she had on her coat—which was also new, and represented one-half month of Camilla's wages—the velvet on her dress did not show. But Camilla, anticipating this difficulty, laid back the fronts in stunning lapels, and to complete the arrangement, put one of her own lace collars around the neck of the coat, the ends coming down over the turned-back fronts. When Pearl looked in the glass she could not believe her eyes!
Mr. Francis did not attend piano recitals, nor the meetings of the Browning Club. Mrs. Francis was often deeply grieved with James for his indifference in regard to these matters. But the musical sense in James continued to slumber and sleep.
The piano recital by Professor Welsman was given under the auspices of the Ladies' Aid of the Methodist Church, the proceeds to be given toward defraying the cost of the repairs on the parsonage.
The professor was to be assisted by local talent, it said on the programmes. Pearl was a little bit disappointed about the programmes. She had told Danny that there would be a chairman who would say: "I see the first item on this here programme is remarks by the chair, but as yez all know I ain't no hand at makin' a speech we'll pass on to the next item." But there was not a sign of a chairman, not even a chair. The people just came up themselves, without anybody telling them, and did their piece and went back. It looked sort of bold to Pearl.
First the choir came in and sang: "Praise Waiteth for Thee, O Lord, in Zion." Pearl did not like the way they treated her friend Dr. Clay. Twice when he began to sing a little piece by himself, doing all right, too, two or three of them broke in on him and took the words right out of his mouth. Pearl had seen people get slapped faces for things like that. Pearl thought it just served them right when the doctor stopped singing and let them have it their own way.
When the professor came up the aisle everybody leaned forward to have a good look at him. "He is just like folks only for his hair," Pearl thought. Pearl lifted Danny on her knee and told him to look alive now. She knew what they were there for.
Then the professor began to play. Indifferently at first after the manner of his kind, clever gymnastics to limber up his fingers perhaps, and perhaps to show how limber they are; runs and trills, brilliant execution, one hand after the other in mad pursuit, crossing over, back again, up and down in the vain endeavour to come up with the other hand; crescendo, diminuendo, trills again!
Danny yawned widely.
"When's he goin' to begin?" he asked, sleepily.
Mrs. Francis watched Danny eagerly. The musical sense was liable to wake up any minute. But it would have to hurry, for Daniel Mulcahey was liable to go to sleep any minute.
Pearl was disgusted with the professor and her thoughts fell into vulgar baseball slang:
"Playin' to the grand stand, ain't ye? instead o' gettin' down to work. That'll do for ketch and toss. Play the game! Deliver the goods!"
Then the professor began the full arm chords with sudden fury, writhing upon the stool as he struck the angry notes from the piano. Pearl's indignation ran high.
"He's lost his head—he's up in the air!" she shouted, but the words were lost in the clang of musical discords.
But wait! Pearl sat still and listened. There was something doing. It was a Welsh rhapsodie that he was playing. It was all there—the mountains and the rivers, and the towering cliffs with glimpses of the sea where waves foam on the rocks, and sea-fowl wheel and scream in the wind, and then a bit of homely melody as the country folk drive home in the moonlight, singing as only the Welsh can sing, the songs of the heart; songs of love and home, songs of death and sorrowing, that stab with sudden sweetness. A child cries somewhere in the dark, cries for his mother who will come no more. Then a burst of patriotic fire, as the people fling defiance at the conquering foe, and hold the mountain passes till the last man falls. But the glory of the fight and the march of many feet trail off into a wailing chant—the death song of the brave men who have died. The widow mourns, and the little children weep comfortless in their mountain home, and the wind rushes through the forest, and the river foams furiously down the mountain, falling in billows of lace over the rocks, and the sun shines over all, cold and pitiless.
"Why, Pearlie Watson, what are you crying for?" Mrs. Francis whispered severely. Pearl's sobs had disturbed her. Danny lay asleep on Pearl's knees, and her tears fell fast on his tangled curls.
"I ain't cryin', I ain't cryin' a bit. You leave me alone," Pearl blubbered rudely, shaking off Mrs Francis's shapely hand.
Mrs. Francis was shocked. What in the world was making Pearl cry?
The next morning Mrs. Francis took out her little red book to enter the result of her experiment, and sat looking long and earnestly at its pages. Then she drew a writing pad toward her and wrote an illuminative article on "Late Hours a Frequent and Fruitful Cause of Irritability in Children."
Mr. Samuel Motherwell was a wealthy farmer who lived a few miles from Millford. Photographs of Mr. Motherwell's premises may be seen in the agricultural journals, machinery catalogues, advertisements for woven wire, etc.—"the home of one of Manitoba's prosperous farmers."
The farm buildings were in good repair; a large red barn with white trimmings surmounted by a creaking windmill; a long, low machine shed filled with binders, seeders, disc-harrows—everything that is needed for the seed-time and harvest and all that lies between; a large stone house, square and gray, lonely and bare, without a tree or a shrub around it. Mr. Motherwell did not like vines or trees around a house. They were apt to attract lightning and bring vermin.
Potatoes grew from the road to the house; and around the front door, as high as the veranda, weeds flourished in abundance, undisturbed and unnoticed.
Behind the cookhouse a bed of poppies flamed scarlet against the general sombreness, and gave a strange touch of colour to the common grayness. They seemed out of place in the busy farmyard. Everything else was there for use. Everybody hurried but the poppies; idlers of precious time, suggestive of slothful sleep, they held up their brazen faces in careless indifference.
Sam had not planted them—you may be sure of that. Mrs. Motherwell would tell you of an English girl she had had to work for her that summer who had brought the seed with her from England, and of how one day when she sent the girl to weed the onions, she had found her blubbering and crying over what looked to Mrs. Motherwell nothing more than weeds. The girl then told her she had brought the seed with her and planted it there. She was the craziest thing, this Polly Bragg. She went every night to see them because they were like a "bit of home," she said. Mrs. Motherwell would tell you just what a ridiculous creature she was!
"I never see the beat o' that girl," Mrs. Motherwell would say. "Them eyes of hers were always red with homesickness, and there was no reason for it in the world, her gettin' more wages than she ever got before, and more'n she was earnin', as I often told her. Land! the way that girl would sing when she had got a letter from home, the queerest songs ye ever heard:
Down by the biller there grew a green willer,Weeping all night with the bank for a piller.
Well, I had to stop her at last," Mrs. Motherwell would tell you with an apologetic swallow, which showed that even generous people have to be firm sometimes in the discharge of unpleasant duties.
"And, mind you," Mrs. Motherwell would go on, with a grieved air, "just as the busy time came on didn't she up and take the fever—you never can depend on them English girls—and when the doctor was outside there in the buggy waitin' for her—he took her to the hospital—I declare if we didn't find her blubberin' over them poppies, and not a flower on them no mor'n nothing."
Sam Motherwell and his wife were nominally Presbyterians. At the time that the Millford Presbyterian Church was built Sam had given twenty-five dollars toward it, the money having been secured in some strange way by the wiles of Purvis Thomas, the collector. Everybody was surprised at Sam's prodigality. The next year, a new collector—for Purvis Thomas had gone away—called on Mr. Motherwell.
The grain was just beginning to show a slight tinge of gold. It was one of those cloudless sunshiny days in the beginning of August, when a faint blue haze lies on the Tiger Hills, and the joy of being alive swells in the breast of every living thing. The creek, swollen with the July rain, ran full in its narrow channel, sparkling and swirling over its gravelly bed, and on the green meadow below the house a herd of shorthorns contentedly cropped the tender after-grass.
In the farmyard a gigantic turkey-gobbler marched majestically with arched neck and spreading wings, feeling himself very much the king of the castle; good-natured ducks puddled contentedly in a trough of dirty water; pigeons, white winged and graceful, circled and wheeled in the sunshine; querulous-voiced hens strutted and scratched, and gossiped openly of mysterious nests hidden away.
Sam stood leaning on a pitchfork in front of the barn door. He was a stout man of about fifty years of age, with an ox-like face. His countenance showed the sullen stolidity of a man who spoke little but listened always, of a man who indulged in suspicious thoughts. He knew everything about his neighbours, good and bad. He might forget the good, but never the evil. The tragedies, the sins, the misdeeds of thirty years ago were as fresh in his memory as the scandal of yesterday. No man had ever been tempted beyond his strength but Sam Motherwell knew the manner of his undoing. He extended no mercy to the fallen; he suggested no excuse for the erring.
The collector made known his errand. Sam became animated at once.
"What?" he cried angrily, "ain't that blamed thing paying yet? I've a good notion to pull my money out of it and be done with it. What do you take me for anyway?"
The collector ventured to call his attention to his prosperous surroundings, and evident wealth.
"That's like you town fellows," he said indignantly. "You never think of the hired help and twine bills, and what it costs to run a place like this. I pay every time I go, anyway. There ain't a time that I let the plate go by me, when I'm there. By gosh! you seem to think I've money to burn."
The collector departed empty-handed.
The next time Sam went to Millford he was considerably surprised to have the young minister, the Reverend Hugh Grantley, stop him on the street and hand him twenty-five dollars.
"I understand, sir, that you wish to withdraw the money that you invested in the Lord's work," he said as he handed the money to Sam, whose fingers mechanically closed over the bills as he stared at the young man.
The Rev. Hugh Grantley was a typical Scotchman, tall and broad shouldered, with an eye like cold steel. Not many people had contradicted the Rev. Hugh Grantley, at least to his face. His voice could be as sweet as the ripple of a mountain stream, or vibrate with the thunder of the surf that beats upon his own granite cliffs.
"The Lord sends you seed-time and harvest," he said, fixing his level gray eye on the other man, who somehow avoided his gaze, "has given you health of body and mind, sends you rain from heaven, makes his sun to shine upon you, increases your riches from year to year. You have given Him twenty-five dollars in return and you regret it. Is that so?"
"I don't know that I just said that," the other man stammered. "I don't see no need of these fine churches and paid preachers. It isn't them as goes to church most that is the best."
"Oh, I see," the young man said, "you would prefer to give your money for the relief of the poor, for hospitals or children's homes, or something like that. Is that so?"
"I don't know as there's any reason for me givin' up the money I work hard for." Sam was touched on a vital spot.
"Well, I'll tell you the reason," the minister said; his voice was no louder, but it fell with a sledge-hammer emphasis. He moved a step nearer his companion, and some way caught and held his wavering vision. "God owns one-tenth of all that stuff you call your own. You have cheated Him out of His part all these years, and He has carried you over from year to year, hoping that you will pay up without harsh proceedings. You are a rich man in this world's goods, but your soul is lean and hungry and naked. Selfishness and greed have blinded your eyes. If you could see what a contemptible, good-for-nothing creature you are in God's sight, you would call on the hills to fall on you. Why, man, I'd rather take my chances with the gambler, the felon, the drunkard, than with you. They may have fallen in a moment of strong temptation; but you are a respectable man merely because it costs money to be otherwise. The Lord can do without your money. Do not think for a minute that God's work will not go on. 'He shall have dominion from sea to sea,' but what of you? You shall lie down and die like the dog. You shall go out into outer darkness. The world will not be one bit better because you have passed through it."
Sam was incoherent with rage. "See here," he sputtered, "what do you know about it? I pay my debts. Everybody knows that."
"Hold on, hold on," the young man said gently, "you pay the debts that the law compels you to pay. You have to pay your hired help and your threshing bills, and all that, because you would be 'sued' if you didn't. There is one debt that is left to a man's honour, the debt he owes to God, and to the poor and the needy. Do you pay that debt?"
"Well, you'll never get a cent out of me anyway. You have a mighty poor way of asking for money—maybe if you had taken me the right way you might have got some."
"Excuse me, Mr. Motherwell," the young man replied with unaffected good humour, "I did not ask you for money at all. I gave you back what you did give. No member of our congregation will ask you for any, though there may come a time when you will ask us to take it."
Sam Motherwell broke into a scornful laugh, and, turning away, went angrily down the street. The fact that the minister had given him back his money was a severe shock to some of his deep-rooted opinions. He had always regarded churches as greedy institutions, looking and begging for money from everyone; ministers as parasites on society, living without honest labour, preying on the working man. Sam's favourite story was the old one about the woman whose child got a coin stuck in its throat. She did not send for the doctor, but for the minister! Sam had always seen considerable truth in this story and had told it to every minister he had met.
He told himself now that he was glad to get back the money, twenty-five dollars was not picked up every day. But he was not glad. The very touch of the bills was distasteful to him!
He did not tell his wife of the occurrence. Nor did he put the money in the black bag, where their money was always kept in the bureau drawer, safe under lock and key. He could not do that without telling his wife where it came from. So he shoved it carelessly into the pocket of the light overcoat that he was wearing. Sam Motherwell was not a careless man about money, but the possession of this particular twenty-five dollars gave him no pleasure.