Part 31 (1/2)
She gathered her lean figure up from the hillock, and took up her pail.
As for the girl Winifred, a terrible feeling of fear had come over her.
All the bright world of sun and flowers seemed suddenly overshadowed by the lowering cloud of an awful possibility. She would no more have allowed herself to be left alone in that sunny corner of the glad spring morning than she would have remained alone where visible danger beset her. Her face bathed in the sudden tears that came so easily to her girlish eyes, she sprang like a fawn after her companion and grasped her skirt as she followed.
”How you take on!” sighed the woman, turning. ”Do you mean to say you ain't, glad?”
”I'm frightened,” gasped the girl.
”And you been confirmed this spring! What did it mean to you if you ain't glad there's ever such a little chance of perhaps seeing Him before the year's out.”
They both climbed the fence, handing over the milk-pail between them.
When they had got on to the road and must part, the housekeeper spoke.
”I tell you what it is, Winifred Rexford; we've not one of us much to bring Him in the way of service. If there's one thing more than another I'm fond of it's to have my kitchen places to myself, but I've often thought I ought to ask yer ma to send one of you over every day to learn from me how a house ought to be kept and dinner cooked. Ye'd learn more watching me in a month, you know, than ye'd learn with yer ma a fussin'
round in six years. Don't tell yer ma it's a trial to me, but just ask her if she'll send you over for an hour or two every morning.”
”Thank you,” said Winifred, reluctantly. ”Do you think I _ought_ to come?”
”Well, I'd want to be a bit more use to my ma if I was you.”
”It's very kind of you,” acknowledged Winifred; ”but--but--Mrs. Martha, if it was true about this--_this August,_ you know--what would be the use of learning?”
”Child,” said the woman, and if her voice was sad it was also vehement, ”them as are mad in religion are them as thinks doing the duty of each day for _His_ sake ain't enough without seeing where's the _use_ of doing what He puts to our hand.”
”Mrs. Martha,” besought Winifred, timidly, ”I--don't like cooking; but do you think if I did this I should perhaps get to be glad to think--be glad to think our Saviour might be coming again so soon?”
”To love Him is of His grace, and you must get it direct from Him; but it's wonderful how doing the best we can puts heart into our prayers.”
The scarlet tanager rose and flew from tree to tree like a darting flame, but Winifred had forgotten him.
CHAPTER XIII.
Midsummer came with its culmination of heat and verdure; and a great epoch it was in the Ch.e.l.laston year, for it brought the annual influx of fas.h.i.+onable life from Quebec and Montreal. To tell the plain truth, this influx only consisted of one or two families who had chosen this as a place in which to build summer residences, and some hundred other people who, singly or in parties, took rooms in the hotel for the hot season; but it made a vast difference in the appearance of the quiet place to have several smart phaetons, and one carriage and pair, parading its roads, and to have its main street enlivened by the sight of the gay crowd on the hotel verandahs.
”Now,” said Miss Bennett, calling upon Miss Rexford, ”there will be a few people to talk to, and we shall see a little life. These people are really a very good sort; you'll begin to have some enjoyment.”
The Rexfords had indeed been advertised more than once of the advantage that would accrue to them from the coming of the town-folks, and this chiefly by Trenholme himself.
”The place will seem far different,” he had said, ”when you have pa.s.sed one of our summers. We really have some delightful pleasure parties here in summer.” And another time he had said, ”When Mrs. Brown and her daughters come to their house on the hill I want you to know them. They are such true-hearted people. All our visitors are genuine Canadians, not immigrants as we and our neighbours are; and yet, do you know, they are so nice you would _hardly_ know them from English people. Oh, they add to our social life very much when they come!”
He had said so many things of this sort, ostensibly to Mrs. Rexford, really to Sophia, who was usually a party to his calls on her mother, that he had inspired in them some of his own pleasurable antic.i.p.ation.
It was not until the summer visitors were come that they realised how great was the contrast between their own bare manner of living and the easy-going expenditure of these people, who were supposed to be such choice acquaintances for them. Everything is relative. They had not been mortified by any comparison of their own circ.u.mstances and those of Ch.e.l.laston families, because, on one account and another, there had always appeared to be something to equalise the difference. Either their neighbours, if better off, had not long ago begun as meagrely, or else they lacked those advantages of culture or social standing which the Rexfords could boast. Such are the half conscious refuges of our egotism. But with the introduction of this new element it was different.
Not that they drew any definite comparison between themselves and their new neighbours--for things that are different cannot be compared, and the difference on all points was great; but part of Trenholme's prophecy took place; the life in that pleasant land did appear more and more desirable as they witnessed the keen enjoyment that these people, who were not workers, took in it--only (Trenholme and Miss Bennett seemed to have overlooked this) the leisure and means for such enjoyment were not theirs.
”Oh, mamma,” said Blue and Red, ”we saw the Miss Browns driving on the road, and they had such pretty silver-grey frocks, with feathers in their hats to match. We wish we could have feathers to match our frocks.”