Chapter XII: Some Use for Moll

Flat on your face, and a raging bull coming after you! That is a terrible position! It is never wise to run races with a bull, or a horse, or a greyhound, or anything else that has four legs--except, perhaps, a very fat prize pig, or the kitchen table. What can you, with two legs, do against four legs?

Besides, poor Bryda felt that there was no one to help her; there was only Moll Dawson near, of whom she was nearly as much afraid as she was of the bull; and poor little helpless Beppo, whose eyes grew, like those of the dog in the fairy tale, as big as saucers with terror, as he stood, panting but safe, on the right side of the gate.

Stay! there was one Friend, to whom Bryda had long ago learned at her mother's knee to look for help. She had, indeed, never been in any such danger before, but mother had, and many a time she had told Bryda of the time of peril when the ship was said to be about to go down on the broad Atlantic, and no help was near--no human help, at least. And the chaplain gathered together all who could or would come, and cried to Him Who holds the seas in the hollow of His hand.

"In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succor, but of Thee, O Lord? ... Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not Thy merciful ears unto our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour!"

So the chaplain prayed, and the sea went down, as once did the waves of Galilee when the Lord of winds and waves willed it, and mother and all the shipload were saved. And so Bryda cried to the loving Saviour as she fell, and to her, too, came help in the way she least expected. For as the bull with angry red eyes and dreadful sharp horns had nearly reached her, when all hope seemed gone, and she had not strength to try and rise, a shawl deftly thrown fell right over the furious animal's head, making him stop and then turn round, bellowing frantically, as if he meant to ask who dared to interfere in this way with his great will and pleasure, which was to toss an insignificant child. There were plenty of children in the world, pray why should he not toss one if he so pleased? he seemed to ask.

While his majesty was expressing something of this sort very noisily, a strong hand rather roughly seized the fallen Bryda, picked her up, and dragged her over or through--she never knew which--the great, strong, five-barred gate, where Beppo stood already, and watched, white with terror, having had time to take breath.

Bryda was not white, she was red-hot and breathless, and it was several seconds before she could collect her scattered wits enough to see the bull tearing the shawl to pieces, with a strong wall and gate between himself and her, and also to see that her preserver was no other than that great object of her terror, Moll Dawson.

"Now then," said Moll roughly, as she tried to pinch Bryda's hat into shape again. "You're a foolish one, you are. Why didn't you stop when you heard me screechin'?"

"Because--I--because--" stammered Bryda, who felt she could not tell Moll that the "screechin'" had made her run as fast as possible in the other direction from that Moll intended.

The girl burst into a loud laugh. "You're a softy, upon my word! So you thought I'd eat yer blackberries and yer blessed selves arter them! But it was out of the fryin'-pan into the fire this time, and no mistake. Oh, I see ye blushing! Tell Moll Dawson no stories; she's too 'cute for the likes o' you."

"I don't want to tell stories," said poor Bryda, with tears in her eyes. "Indeed, indeed I am grateful. That bull would have torn me to pieces, as he is tearing your shawl."

And Bryda turned quite sick at the sight of the great brute stamping on fragments of the shawl, then, tearing them afresh with his horns, bellowing all the time as if it was quite an amusement to destroy something.

"I shall ask grannie to give me a new shawl for you, Moll," said Bryda.

"Don't trouble your head, child; it's only a old rag, bless you. So soon as I can earn a bit o' money I'll have a jacket wi' beads all over, like a young lady. Not as that they'll take me for a lady--not even the boys at the factory. Give me that pretty blue silk handkerchief on your neck," went on Moll, with a sudden change of tone. This was a command rather than a request, to judge by the tone in which it was spoken; but Bryda hesitated--mother had given it to her just before she went away.

The girl, seeing she hesitated, laughed again loud and bitterly--a laugh without merriment.

"Oh! keep your things to yourself! I want none of them! Silk handkerchiefs are not for the likes of me, nor nothin' else that's good--only sharp words and crooked looks." Here Moll threw herself down on the nearest bank, and tore some white queen-daisies to bits.

"Here, take it, Moll!" said Bryda, as she snatched off her handkerchief. "I am sure you are welcome to it, and anything else I have;" and with a gentle coaxing way she tied the scarf round Moll Dawson's neck. The rough girl looked more gracious; she bent her neck to try and catch a glimpse of this bit of finery, then looked up at Bryda again.

"You've got a gran, too! I've seen her. Does she beat you very often?" was her next remark.

Bryda and Beppo both stared open-mouthed at this question. Grandmother would as soon think of----

"Never!" said Bryda at last, very decidedly.

"I suppose she's kind, then?"

Bryda nodded expressively,

"Well, my gran ain't," pursued poor Moll. "Beats us with the poker, for all she pretended to be so ill and weak when you brought soup o' Sunday, missy. We're a bad lot, we are, all but father; he'd be good if he could, I know."

"Oh, Moll!" said Bryda, answering the girl's miserable tone as much as her words, "why don't you try and be good?"

"I suppose you're good?" said the girl; "it is not hard for such as you to keep straight."

"Indeed, I am not good," cried truthful Bryda, remembering a great many faults at once. "I'm so often in mischief or some trouble that Uncle Jack says I live in a jar of mixed pickles. But I do want to be good for all that."

"So you will some day, when you're a fine lady. And, I warrant, you're not real bad now. And you'd not be frightened of me any more?" added Moll sadly, looking up at her.

"No, indeed; we'd be fond of you--wouldn't we, Beppo?" said Bryda eagerly.

Beppo nodded and said, "Yes, yes." He was proud of his knowledge of English, such as it was.

"No one's fond of me," said Moll, still more sadly. "Jim used to be in a fashion, but he wouldn't give his little finger to save me from drowning. An' I'm too wicked for father to love me--or any one else either."

Bryda's eyes filled with tears. "God loves you, Moll," she whispered gently.

But Moll shook her head. "No, He don't. God Almighty may care for the gentlefolks--seems like it. But He don't care for such as us."

"Indeed, He does," said Bryda earnestly, quite sure this time that there was no doubt of what she said being true. "See how he has cared for Beppo and his mother!"

"Did He tell the old carpenter to be good to them?" asked Moll thoughtfully. "Well, it's not much a poor man like him can do."

"Oh! he's not a poor man," burst out Bryda. "He's a prince really; he told me so. And his Father's a very great King, and will take him to live in a palace some day soon."

"And he have gold, much gold, hid safe from de tieves," added Beppo in his broken English. He and Bryda were sitting on the bank now beside Moll Dawson.

"Eh!" said Moll; "whoever would have thought it."

"It's quite true," said Bryda, and went on to tell all about Roger's inheritance. She was just going on to tell all about his cat, and the funny story of all the cats with excellent "characters," when Uncle Jack's voice was heard in the blackberry field calling her.

At this sound Moll Dawson sprang up, nodded a hasty farewell, and scrambled through a small breach in the hedge behind, vanishing in a moment, in spite of Bryda's entreaties to her to stay, and let Uncle Jack hear how she had saved them.

Uncle Jack's cheerful brown face grew very white when he heard the story.

"Say nothing to the grannies, Bryda," he said. "Not because it is right to have secrets, little maid; but because grandmother is too old and weak to hear about anything that would frighten her. But you and I will see what we can do for Moll Dawson, and we will ask Cousin Salome's advice, eh?"

Poor Moll Dawson! She had done one good deed that day. It was a pity that in the afternoon she should do, though not intentionally, some sad harm.

Her brother Jim worked as garden-boy with Mr. Seymour (that was the name of Bryda's grandfather). Moll, roaming idly about, met him as he came from work in the evening, and in her careless, gossiping way began to tell him all that Bryda had said about old Roger's store of treasure, which Moll said was money he had hidden away somewhere in his poor little cottage, like a miser.

For Bryda did not yet understand, what is perhaps plain to any one reading this, that the old man, accustomed as he was to live alone, thought so much of the heavenly country where he hoped to go, and of the many mansions in the Father's house, that he talked of them in a way that seemed to the child to mean things on earth. So the precious treasure of the love of Christ, and of the hope that is in Him, seemed to little Bryda to be perishing treasures of earth--money and jewels. And what Bryda had told Moll, Moll repeated, with improvements of her own, to her bad brother.

"Ah! ah!" said Jim; "he's a chicken worth plucking--eh, Moll? A knock on the old boy's head, if he objects, and then share and share alike for you and me."

"You leave him alone, Jim," she answered; for the longing to be better was working in the poor girl's darkened mind, even as the spirit of God rested on the earth when it was "without form and void." Christ, who died for poor Moll, was calling gently, and the hard heart softened a little.

"Boo," said Jim, with a hideous grimace "You're afraid o' being found out. Split on me and tell the police, will you? Yah, that's like a woman."

"I'll not have it, Jim," went on Moll steadily. "I'm not afraid, that you know right well: I'm a better thief than you by a long way, and never was caught yet; but I'll have naught to do with this--nor you either."

"We'll see," said Jim, and held his tongue.