Chapter VIII: Conclusion

"FATHER, we're going to have a second apprentice at our shop; a boy to learn the printing, and do odd jobs about the office; and in consideration of this help, he will be taken without a premium."

Mr. Wright looked up from his paper.

"How is this?" he said. "I paid a pretty stiff premium with you, Tom, and Mr. Mortimer assured me he would not take a lad without a premium."

"Yes! That's just it, father, and that's why I thought I'd mention it to you as soon as I heard it spoken of. We want another boy, that's a fact, and I think if you went in and spoke to Mr. Mortimer, you might secure this place for Frank Morris. Look here, father, I served him a shabby trick a little while ago, and I'd like to square things up a bit if I could, to say nothing of doing 'em a kindness in return for their finding Lilla for us."

"But it was Rhoda that helped us to get Lilla back."

"Yes! But it's all one with them, I know; and Frank wants a place awfully bad."

"Well! I think I will step in and speak to Mr. Mortimer about it. I don't mind you associating with Frank Morris, but I might object to some others I could name. And I shall remind Mr. Mortimer of our contract."

Going back to work, Tom overtook Frank on his way to school.

"How would you like to learn printing, old fellow?" he said, linking his arm in Frank's as he spoke.

The boys had grown intimate lately, and often walked to and from the town together, but neither of them had ever referred to what was often uppermost in their minds.

But now Frank said, with a slight cough, "They wouldn't have me as errand boy, so they're not likely to give me a chance at printing."

"I don't know so much about that; my father will have a say in the matter, I fancy, and the thing is, would you like to learn the trade?"

"Why, you know I should, Tom," said Frank, "but it seems altogether too good for me after—after—"

"There, shut up, and don't let us hear any more about that other affair, and don't send the bellman round with the news until you hear from me again. But I expect dad will go in and see the governor to-night, and I'll try and let you know what he says to-morrow."

Frank was waiting for Tom at the corner of the street the next morning with a letter in his hand. But he had forgotten the letter in his eagerness to hear what Tom had to tell him.

Tom threw his cap up in the air by way of greeting, and shouted, "It's all right, old fellow!"

The colour went and came in Frank's eager face. "Do you really mean it?" he said with a sort of gasping sob.

Tom looked at him curiously. "Do you feel as glad as all that?" he said in some astonishment.

"I couldn't sleep for thinking of it after the other affair," replied the boy.

"Well! It's all right this time, old chappie, and the governor wants to see you this morning. But he'll give you a trial, any way."

"Well, I'm going in the shop to buy a bigger envelope, to send this letter on to Rhoda; the postman—"

But Tom had caught sight of the handwriting on the letter, and snatched it from Frank's hand. He still stood staring at it with widely opened eyes as he gasped, "Do you know who this comes from?"

"No; mother wondered who could be writing to Rhoda, and—"

"It's my sister Esther!" said Tom with a gasp.

"Then let's go back to mother, and ask her to open it," said Frank promptly; "she was indoors when I came out."

Both boys rushed back at the top of their speed, and met Mrs. Morris on her way to Mrs. Wright's.

"Mother, Tom says this letter for Rhoda is from Esther Wright," panted Frank.

"From Esther?" Mrs. Morris took the letter and instantly tore it open.

"It is," she said in a tone of wondering amazement, for she caught sight of the signature before she read the letter. She had seen the address at the top, "Ward 20, Newberry Workhouse," and hastily folded the letter before the boys could see it. "Tom, go and see if your father has gone, and if he has, run and fetch him back," said Mrs. Morris; "but mind you don't say a word to your mother, or the sudden news might kill her."

How Tom kept the excitement out of his face long enough to go back and ask quietly for his father he did not know. But his mother, supposing it was about the situation at Mortimer's that Mrs. Morris wanted to see her husband about, told Tom to make haste back to his work. But he beckoned his father to follow him at once, and as soon as the door was closed, he said, "Mrs. Morris has got a letter from Esther, father."

For a moment the strong man staggered back against the door, just as though he had been struck.

"From Esther? Where is she?" he gasped. And then he hurried on up the street to where Mrs. Morris was standing with the letter in her hand. "Where is she?" he asked anxiously.

"Not far off. How are we to tell her mother?"

Mr. Wright took the letter and read it. "Thank God, she is safe! But she has been very ill, and we must both go to her at once," he said, as he refolded the letter and put it into his pocket. "How had we better break the news to her?" he said. "You remember how she was upset about Lilla."

"Where is she?" asked Tom.

But he only got the same evasive answer, "Not far off."

They all went back together. And then it was decided that Mrs. Morris should go in first, and break the news as gently as she could to the sorrowing mother, and Mr. Wright should follow with the letter.

Tom sadly wanted to see the letter too, but his father would not let him, thinking to spare Esther the pain of having it known where she had been staying. So he went off to work without further delay, only stopping to tell everybody he knew on the way that news had come of his sister at last.

Gently as Mrs. Morris tried to open the subject, nothing could prevent it being terribly exciting to the anxious mother. But when at last she held Esther's letter in her hand, and had well-nigh covered it with joyful tears, she seemed better.

"Let us go at once and fetch her home. My poor girl! My poor Esther!" said Mrs. Wright, trying to choke back her tears.

One might have thought she had no other child than Esther, to see her eagerness as she went upstairs and with trembling haste put on her bonnet and cloak.

"Thank God for me, my dear friend!" she said, kissing Mrs. Morris, who had followed her, and was now helping her to get ready.

Bobbie and Lilla crept up too, and stared in wondering amazement at mother's tears, and mother's bonnet being put on so early in the day.

"Be good, children, and mother will bring Esther back," said Mrs. Wright, kissing them.

Her husband was scarcely less impatient than she was. "You'll mind the house and the children until we come back, Mrs. Morris," he said, but looking very much as though the house might be left to mind itself if she said "No."

They took a cab from the station where Esther had alighted, and were soon set down at the workhouse gates. The meeting between mother and daughter can well be imagined. But when the first outburst of joyful recognition was over, and Esther had time to look at her mother and father, she was struck with the terrible alteration in them both.

So white and thin her mother looked, with streaks of grey hair among her brown, and so careworn and bowed was her father, that forgetting all else, Esther fell on her knees beside them and sobbed, "Oh, forgive me, forgive me!"

"My dear child, my dear Esther, we do forgive you," said both at once.

And Mrs. Wright lifted her from her knees and drew her head down upon her shoulder and kissed and soothed her. But Esther's tears still fell fast.

"I shall never forgive myself!" she sobbed, stroking the white hair. "Oh, mother, how could I ever doubt your love?"

"'Doubt my love!'" repeated Mrs. Wright. "But how could you do that, my child?" asked her mother in amazement.

Esther sighed.

"It was a foolish mistake to make, mother, I can see now. But I did think you cared only for the little ones, and got tired of me."

"And was that why you went off as you did?" asked her father, in still greater wonder.

"Yes, father. Mary Coppinger told me mother said I wasn't to go home again until I found Lilla, and we both agreed that big girls weren't cared for, and only the little ones thought of."

Mr. Wright looked as though he could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses. Was it possible that a girl could make such a mistake? At one moment he felt inclined to laugh, and the next to shake her, and denounce her as the most unfeeling girl he had ever heard of. But the longer he looked at Esther, the more convinced he became that she had suffered quite enough for her folly. First he had wondered whether this girl in the workhouse gown and close-cropped hair could be his daughter. Whatever the change might be that grief and anxiety had wrought in him and her mother, sickness and sorrow had changed Esther even more, and no one would recognise the pale, gaunt, sad-looking girl before him as the merry Esther Wright, who was the top girl in her class, and ready for any fun and frolic that came in her way.

Of course the workhouse authorities, and especially the young doctor, were surprised to hear that the girl they had supposed to be a tramp was the daughter of respectable people. The only one not surprised was the old lady who had persuaded her to write the letter, and whose tender love for her own daughter had first led Esther to think she might have made a mistake.

They all gathered round her bed to thank and bless her for the share she had had in the happy reunion.

"Ah, it seems wonderful that a girl could make such a mistake about her mother and father," said the old woman, grasping Esther's hand; "but not more wonderful than the mistake so many of us make about the love of the Heavenly Father for us, His poor ignorant, mistaken children. Nothing less than the gift of His dear Son, the love that was made manifest in His death, could ever bring us back to Him."

"I do believe He has forgiven me now!" whispered Esther. "I can believe that the blood of Jesus Christ will wash away all my sins."

"Yes, my child, and that blood, that life, the Christ life growing in you, must conquer and overcome the pride and the self-love that has led to all this trouble. This is what the apostle means when he says,—

"'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.'

"It is that the Christ life may live and grow in us, and not a mere empty belief and repeating of creeds and singing of hymns, but the overcoming our besetting sins, the rooting out of all selfishness."

"Thank you for teaching my Esther what you have," said Mrs. Wright earnestly. "I too have begun to learn that religion is something more than a mere profession. And it may be that, after all, these troubles may be made a blessing to both of us."

At this moment, the nurse appeared with Esther's own clothes, which had been locked up since they were washed. A sorry figure she looked in them now. The neat, nice-looking school frock had been so mud-bedraggled that it was all sorts of colours. It was too large in the body now, Esther had got so thin, and too short in the skirt, and her mother wished she had brought some other things for her to go home in. But, as Mr. Wright reminded them, Esther was too weak to walk far. They must in any case have a cab most of the way; it did not matter much, as no one would see her.

The poor girl was even weaker than they imagined. And by the time they got home, she was so exhausted that her father carried her straight upstairs, and laid her in her own bed.

"My own room! My own dear little room once more!" said Esther, thankfully, as she laid her head on the pillow.

Tom came in soon afterwards, but he was only allowed to go up and kiss her, and come down again. And so the news he was bursting to tell her had to be kept until the evening.

Then she was allowed to sit up a little while, and Tom came up to tell her how he had managed to make things right for Frank Morris.

"It was an awful shame, you know, Esther, that he didn't get the place that time in the front shop, and I felt mad enough about it, when I found out what a nice chap he was. But it's all right now, for he'll learn the trade as good as I shall. He came this afternoon, and the foreman set him to work among the type fonts, and he's as handy as possible at it, and likes it too, first-rate. Won't Rhoda be pleased?"

"Where is Rhoda?" asked Esther, languidly.

"Don't you know? She's at Rilchester, at aunt's. If she hadn't been there, we should never have got Lilla back."

"Got Lilla back?" exclaimed Esther. "But she came back with Mary Coppinger that night."

"Who told you that?" asked Tom.

"I saw her in High Street."

Tom laughed. "Well, of course you went loony or moony that night, Esther, so there's no telling what you did or didn't see. But I can tell you this, we never got Lilla back until a fortnight ago. And we should not have found her then if it hadn't been for that 'vulgar girl,' Rhoda Morris. I tell you, that girl has been no end of use to us in our trouble, and it's my opinion, if it hadn't been for her and her mother—our mother,—'our' mother would have been in her grave."

Esther's tears were silently falling now.

"Oh, Tom, I am so sorry!" she said.

"Now, Tom, I won't have her teased and upset," said Mrs. Wright, coming in at this moment.

"He isn't teasing me," said Esther; "he is only telling me some things I ought to have known before. But I can't understand about Lilla, mother; I thought I saw Mary carrying her up High Street that night, or I should never have gone away."

"And I tell her there was no accounting for a good many things she did that day," put in the incorrigible Tom.

"Go downstairs, Tom; Esther is not strong enough to quarrel with you yet," said his mother.

"I'm not going to quarrel, mother; and Tom's right in what he says. I think I must have been crazy that day, and a good many other days besides," said Esther. "But I mean to turn over a new leaf," she added. "I don't think I shall forget what I learned in the workhouse."

"In the workhouse!" repeated Tom, who still lingered near the door. "Oh, I say! The high and mighty Esther Wright, top girl and pattern scholar, in the workhouse!"

"Tom!" expostulated his mother.

But Tom was gone now; he rushed downstairs to question his father, while Mrs. Wright helped Esther into bed again.

"I didn't mean to let Tom know you were in the workhouse," she said, "for I am afraid he will bring it up every time you offend him."

"But I don't mean to offend him as I used," said Esther. "I know I was always putting on airs, and saying things to make him angry and everything disagreeable, but you know what old Mrs. Nitson said just before I came home. Mother, I do mean to try—and God will help me, I know—to be good from the inside, through and through, and not at school only, or just in class. You'll let me go and see her too, sometimes, won't you? Mrs. Nitson, I mean, for she is such a wise old woman, and knows just what I want."

"Yes, my dear, you shall go," said Mrs. Wright. And she thought if her stay in the workhouse had indeed wrought such a change in her as her words indicated, the sorrow and suffering they had all endured would not have been in vain.

As Esther grew stronger, and was able to come downstairs and take her place in the family circle once more, her principles were often put to the test, and she did not always conquer herself when Tom was more than usually aggravating. Sometimes she felt very disheartened about this, but all who knew her in the family circle before, and saw her now, felt that there was a great change in Esther. It was here that the battle had to be fought and the victory won, for it was here that little temptations to selfishness and peevishness, and wilfulness and arrogance were constantly arising, and Tom "was" a trial sometimes.

But even Tom was conquered at last, for what was the good of teasing, if Esther joined good-temperedly in the laugh against herself? Indeed, Tom soon began to find that his sister was actually companionable, and was ready to enter into his interests in a manner that quite surprised him.

When Rhoda came home for two or three days' holiday, as she did in the early summer, Tom told her Esther was so much improved she was nearly as good as "that vulgar girl." This was said aloud, and in Esther's presence, but it made Rhoda very angry.

"For shame, Tom!" she exclaimed. "You ought to know better."

"I beg your pardon, Rhoda," said Esther; "it's just as well to clear up the old misunderstanding. I did call you a vulgar girl, and despise you, because you used to say, 'Oh! My gracious,' so often, but I've learned many lessons since then."

"And I have learned to break myself off a bad habit," laughed Rhoda. "To tell you the truth, I might never have formed it, only you and Mary used to look so shocked whenever I broke into any exclamation of astonishment, that I often said 'Good gracious me,' on purpose to see you and Mary Coppinger elevate your eyebrows, and look at each other as though you thought me incorrigible. But your aunt has broken me of it, Esther, so you won't have it again," added Rhoda.

This holiday was a happy reunion for Frank and his sister, and they could talk over their plans for the future, and look forward to the time when Frank would be able to earn money enough for his sister to come home.

"It would be no use if you could earn it now, for I couldn't leave my little Ralph and the baby for long, until their mother is better," said Rhoda.

Mrs. Morris, seeing her daughter so happy and so much improved, was quite reconciled to her absence now. And all agreed that circumstances had indeed worked together for their good, and that Rhoda's trust in God that He was doing the very best for them that they would let Him, had indeed been verified in their experience of what had been a time of bitter trial to so many.

THE END.

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Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.