Chapter XIX

Old Mrs. Belden was made comfortable at last. It appeared that she had worked too hard for the last three weeks, sitting up far into the night to finish an order. She was a knitter of fancy hoods, sacques, socks and mittens. Miss Hannah, while she ministered to her, heard a feeble account of the poor soul’s life. Her husband and her children were all dead, except one boy who was a sailor, and who, perhaps, might be dead, too, for she had not heard from him for over four years. She resorted to the only thing she knew how to do to earn her living, and it had been pretty hard work sometimes, though, perhaps, no harder than many another woman had to do. She was very thankful for the good food which had come in with the advent of Miss Grant. She murmured her gratitude in an apologetic way for everything that was done for her, and said she did not see why they made so much trouble, they might just as well have let her slip quietly away, if it had been the Lord’s will. Her life wasn’t worth much anyway, and she was only making a lot of trouble that would all have to be done over again pretty soon, maybe. Miss Hannah and Celia had looked about the room and resolved that there should be more comforts there before another night, and when she was at last ready for sleep, and they felt sure that all she needed to restore her to her usual health was a good rest, they left her, with a promise from Molly Poppleton, whose room was next to Mrs. Belden’s, that she would sleep with one ear open and step in occasionally to see that she was all right and give her anything she needed.

Celia sat down on the bed and rested her forehead on the footboard, after she and her aunt had gone to their room for the night.

“Aunt Hannah,” she said, “I’m just discouraged. There are so many things to worry about in the world I don’t see how I can keep from it.”

“Celia! Celia!” said aunt Hannah, laying her hand on the brown head bent on the footboard, “is my little girl questioning the wisdom of God? You sound like a little child, to-night, who thinks his parents cruel that they will not give him fire to play with. Remember that God knows all, and that he does all for good. It may be that old lady needs just the kind of thing she is going through now to fit her for heaven. I do not know whether she is getting ready for heaven or not. Maybe God had to call her to himself by taking all her dear ones first, or maybe she is set to be a help to some one else,—perhaps you. Does my little girl doubt him because she cannot see and understand? Oh, Celia! You will grieve him.”

“Well, auntie, I did not quite mean all that, of course, only I am so tired and disheartened. I meant to try to plan a grill work for the parlor to-night, and I couldn’t find Harry at all. I am afraid he has gone out again with those dreadful fellows. What is the use in trying to do anything with setbacks all the time?”

“But your heavenly Father had another plan for you to-night, and the parlor can wait, you know. As for Harry, I think he is safe in his room by this time. He went out with the minister, and while you were up with Mrs. Belden they came in with a lot of boards and screws and a saw and hammer and a pot of varnish, and they went to work in good earnest. The other young men went down and helped, and in the morning I think you will find something new in the parlor. Didn’t you smell new varnish? They asked for you before they began, but I told them how you were occupied and said I was sure you would want them to go ahead and not wait for you.”

Celia sat up and smiled through her tears.

“Did they really, auntie? How nice! What did they make? A bookcase? I am sure it must have been that, for Mr. Stafford spoke of it, and asked me if I did not like the low kind running around the room. I am so glad. And Harry stayed in! I was afraid he was with those awful young men again.”

She brushed away the tears and began to take down her hair, when she remembered another discouragement.

“Oh, aunt Hannah,” she said, “but you don’t know what an utter failure my three-cent enterprise was,” and she gave a detailed account of her interview with Mamie Williams.

Miss Grant listened intently, sometimes laughing with Celia, and sometimes looking grave over possibilities of danger for the girl, which perhaps the younger woman hardly understood. When she had finished, Miss Grant’s face was very serious.

“Celia, dear, you have made a good beginning. Your first trial was by no means a failure, and I do not believe you half understand in what great need of help that young girl stands. She has revealed volumes in her few frank sentences. Be careful that you keep her confidence, and ask to be guided in what you shall say, that you may be both wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove. That is one of the greatest gifts God gives to his workers, and it needs to be carefully watched and tended daily to keep it fit for work,—that mixture of wisdom and gentleness.”

“But, auntie,” said Celia, doubtfully, “do you believe I can ever accomplish anything? What is the good of getting such a girl to read a verse every day in the Bible? As likely as not, she will choose one among the minor prophets, which won’t mean anything to her, and as for praying, she said she did not know how. What good will it do her to pray, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’ for instance, every night, not meaning a word of it, nor scarcely knowing what she is saying?”

“Remember, Celia, it is his work. You have not to do with the end of it, nor are any results in your hand. Don’t you know he says, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but _I_ have chosen _you_, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should _remain_: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.’ After I read that verse I always feel comforted to do the work without seeing the results, knowing that God has planned all that out from the beginning, and all I have to do is to execute the little part of the plan which he has entrusted to my hand. As for saying that such a girl will not get any good out of the Bible, you talk as if you did not believe in the Holy Spirit, Celia. Will he not guide her to the right words that will help her? And do you not remember that the Bible says about itself, that it is written so plainly that ‘he who runs may read’ and that the way of life is made so plain that the ‘wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein’? Then even if her heart and her lips do not know how to pray, if she truly tries to kneel and present herself every day before her Maker, don’t you believe he can find ways and means to speak to her heart and teach her lips the right phrases? It is a great thing to have a habit of prayer, even though your heart is not always in it, for you at least bring your body to the trysting-place with God, and give him a little chance to call to the inattentive heart. Don’t you know how Daniel had a habit three times a day of praying with his face toward Jerusalem?”

“Oh yes, aunt Hannah, I see it all. You always have a Bible verse ready for every one of my doubts and murmurs. I wish I had the Bible all labeled and put away in the cabinets of my brain the way you have, ready to put my hand on the verse I need at the right time,” interrupted Celia, laughing, and putting her arms around aunt Hannah’s neck to kiss her. “Come now, it’s late and you look tired. I’ll be good and go to bed without fretting any more, and to-morrow I’ll try to think up more ways of helping that feather-headed girl.”

Meantime, up in the third story room of the “three-cent” girls, quiet and darkness reigned. Miss Simmons had come in a few moments before, tired and cross. Her mind was wrought up by a play she had just witnessed, and she had been quarreling with her escort about something which she did not deign to explain to her roommate, so they had gone to bed at last without the usual giggling confidences, and Mamie lay there in the darkness thinking over her evening and the advice given her, and wondering what the adorable Mr. Harold Adams would think of the changes in her when she had been fully made over to suit her new guide. Suddenly she sat straight up in bed with a jerk, which threw the clothes off Miss Simmons’ shoulders, and exclaimed:

“My land alive! If I didn’t forget the very first night,” and with that she flung herself out of bed, and striking a match, relit the gas.

“What in the world is the matter with you, Mame?” said Miss Simmons, pulling the bed clothes up angrily. “I was fast asleep and you woke me up! Turn that gas out and come back to bed! Come! We won’t be fit to get up in the morning, if you keep rampaging round all night.”

But Mamie imperturbably proceeded with what she was doing. She tumbled two great piles of paper-covered books over in the closet, searched among a motley collection of boxes, old hats and odds and ends on the closet shelf, and then began hunting in the bottom of her trunk. It was some minutes before she succeeded in finding what she wanted, and by that time Miss Simmons was asleep. Mamie drew forth from an entanglement of soiled ribbons and worn-out garments a small, fine-print red Bible with an old-fashioned gilt clasp. It was stained on one side and blistered as if a tumbler of water had been left standing wet upon it. Mamie remained seated on the floor beside her trunk while she turned over the leaves rapidly, intent upon keeping the letter of her promise in as short a time as possible, for the furnace fire was low for the night and she was beginning to feel cold. She opened near the beginning of the book and chanced upon a list of long, hard names which she could not pronounce. Perhaps her conscience would have been eased as well by a verse there as anywhere, but it was too much trouble for her unaccustomed mind to pronounce the words to herself, so she opened again at random toward the end, and letting her eye run down the page in search of something attractive and brief, she was caught by this verse:

“And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.”

“Well now, ain’t that funny!” she said to herself, as she paused to read it over before she turned out the gas again. “That seems kind of like her talk. Dressed in fine linen! It would be kind of nice and pretty, and real stylish, too, if it was tailor-made. I saw a girl on Chestnut street last summer in a tailor-made white linen that was awful pretty. It sort of rustled as if there was silk underneath, and her hair was all gold and fluffy under a big white hat with chiffon on it. She looked real elegant. It would take an awful lot of washing though, to keep her in fine linen ‘clean and white.’”

She glanced at the verse again with her hand outstretched to turn out the gas, and read it over once more, and then got into bed. “For the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints! Well, it does seem a sort o’ saint-like dress, now that’s so, and come to think of it, Miss Murray, she’s got a sort of a saint face. I knew it was something kind o’ strikin’, and I couldn’t think what, ’cause you wouldn’t exactly call her pretty, and yet she ain’t the other thing, and some folks—most folks maybe—would like it better than to have her pretty. Maybe it’s because she’s got the righteousness this talks about. She does look like a saint, that’s certain. Anyway, she will when she’s as old as Miss Grant. Miss Grant, now, she’s a saint sure! And she would look nice in a fine linen dress all white, too. I wish she’d put one on some time, so I could see. How funny it is to have the Bible talk about dress. I supposed the Bible thought clo’es was wicked. I’m sure the Sunday-school teachers always say you mustn’t think about ’em. Well, that’s a pretty verse anyhow. I wonder who it was that had that fine linen dress granted to her, and if she wore it all the time, that is, clean ones every day, all fresh and crisp! My! I wish ’twas me! Wouldn’t I be happy though! I guess this reading’s going to be real interesting, maybe. I never thought there could be any verse in it like that. Most things I’ve read before was about sinning and dying and heaven, and scarey things like that. Anyhow, I’ve kept my promise. Why, no I haven’t, either!” she exclaimed aloud, and suddenly bounced out of bed again, to the detriment of her bed-fellow’s temper.

She knelt down beside the bed, and her thoughts paused a brief moment, while she tried to put her mind in praying frame. She tried to think how to pray aright. She wanted to feel the satisfaction of having performed this duty that she had felt in her Bible reading. She must ask for something. She was conscious of a vague wish in her heart that she were good enough and had friends great enough that this that she had read of might be granted to her, to be arrayed in spotless, neat apparel, beautiful, and given by the love of some one who cared for her above others. How to put such a thought into fitting phrase, or even if this were done, whether it would be a proper wish to express in prayer she did not know. At last she whispered, “Oh God—” and paused, and waited and tried to collect some better words, and then murmured again, “Oh God—” and then—“Amen.”

When she lay down to rest again, it was with a sense of awe upon her which would not let her sleep for some time. She had been near to the great God, and touched as it were the hem of his garment, with curious perfunctory fingers, like a child who had been dared to do a certain thing, and coming, curious, unthinking, heedless, had touched and suddenly felt the power and greatness and beauty of that which he had touched, and had stolen away ashamed.

Altogether Mamie Williams was not as satisfied with her first effort at prayer as she had been with her Bible reading. But yet in heaven it was recorded, “Behold, she prayeth!”