Dick and Brownie Part 15

"As we sow, we reap," thought Aunt Martha; the truth of the words had come home to her many times, since she had taken in the two friendless waifs. d.i.c.k and Huldah would have loved this woman too, if she had allowed them to. She grew a little impatient of the long complainings. "We don't get love back, if we don't give any," she said at last.

"Who'd I got? Who'd want me to love them?" she demanded, peevishly.

"Why, the child, for one, and d.i.c.k, and that poor old horse, not to speak of your husband."

Emma Smith was silent. It had never before entered her head that to be loved one must love, that the way to win it is to think of others first, and self last. She ceased her complaining, as she realised for the first time that others besides herself had something to complain of. She had always been one of those who are so full of pity for themselves that they never have time to feel pity for others.

By the time the meal was finished Huldah's mind was made up.

She must talk to Miss Rose about things. The matter seemed so puzzling, so complicated, she could not sort out the right and the wrong of it at all. It was all beyond her. Aunt Martha fell in with the plan at once.

"Mrs. Smith can stay here with me till you come back," she said, hospitably; and the visitor agreed eagerly.

The storm was over by that time, but the air was oppressive, and the heat great. Huldah walked along very soberly, for there was a sense of depression weighing on her, a foreboding that an end was coming to her happy, peaceful life. There was always trouble when any part of her old life cropped up again.

She was ashamed, too, to be troubling Miss Rose again about her affairs; she felt she had done little but bring trouble to them all ever since she had walked into their lives that summer's night a year ago. She who longed to bring them nothing but pleasure!

Just then she came to the top of the little hill up which Rob had crawled that winter morning, and once again the words Miss Rose had sung came back to her, as though they still lingered on the air there,

"Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene,--one step enough for me."

Huldah sang them aloud as she descended the slope, and the load of care slipped off her heart, leaving her with a brave determination to face courageously whatever might have to be faced.

CHAPTER XI.

HULDAH'S NEW HOME.

And there was very much to be faced, she found as the days came and went, for within a week of that afternoon when Emma Smith crossed her path again, much had been discussed and arranged, and another change was to come into Huldah's life.

The doctor, the vicar's own doctor, had seen and examined Emma Smith, and had given her but another year to live. He had not told her that, but he had warned her very gravely that she was in a very bad state of health, and that he would not answer for the consequences, if she did not obey him; and something in his voice or manner had stopped her peevish complainings, and set her thinking seriously.

The doctor strongly urged that she should go to the workhouse infirmary. "She will be well nursed and looked after there," he said, "and she will be provided with all she requires," but she herself showed such violent opposition that at last, in fear for her health, they ceased to press it. Had they done so, she would surely have run away. At the same time she had no other home, no means, and what powers she had had of earning any were fast failing her.

"I thought you'd be able to help me, now you'm getting on so well,"

she said to Huldah. "We fed and clothed and did everything for you, and now's your chance of returning some of it." Then her mood changed, and she wept and moaned, and clung to the girl pa.s.sionately.

"Don't you leave me!" she pleaded, hysterically; "don't you go and turn your back on me, too. You was mine before you was hers,"

nodding her head towards Mrs. Perry.

Her clinging to Huldah was more than a pa.s.sing fancy, as they found, when they tried to get her to go into a home where she could have had rest and change and food and nursing. She sobbed and pleaded, then flatly refused to go, unless Huldah went too.

"She's the only one in the world I know," she cried. "Don't send me away with strangers, they'll all look down on me, and--and I--no, I couldn't bear it. I won't go, I won't, I won't! I'll go off on the tramp again, where none of you will ever find me, and I won't ever bother any of you any more."

At last Huldah went with tears in her eyes to Miss Carew. "I'll have to go with her, miss," she said, piteously. "She can't go away on the tramp all by herself. I can keep us both pretty well. I must go with her, Miss Rose, wherever she goes; she hasn't got anybody else."

This of course they could not allow. They could never send such a child as Huldah out into the world, with only a dying woman as companion and protector, to live where and how she could, in n.o.body knew what dreadful haunts. So it was decided between them that Emma Smith was to settle down amongst them, and Huldah must leave Mrs.

Perry and go to live with her. No lodgings could be found for her, for in that village the houses were not big enough to hold in comfort even the families that lived in them, and there was certainly no room for a lodger. And houses were as scarce as lodgings.

At last a brilliant idea came to Miss Carew, and with her father's permission she hurried off with the good news.

"You shall have the two rooms over our coach-house," she cried, delightedly, for it was a real relief to her to feel that Huldah would be so near her, and under her own eye. "They are a good size, and dry and airy; and we must all pull together to get what furniture we can."

Huldah's face grew brighter and brighter with every word Miss Rose uttered, for she had begun to fear that they would have to go elsewhere.

To be near Miss Rose, too, would help to make up for the pain of leaving Aunt Martha and d.i.c.k and the cottage, a parting which had been weighing on her more heavily than she would have liked anyone to know. d.i.c.k, it was decided, was to remain with Mrs. Perry, for without him she declared she could not live on in the cottage when Huldah was gone.

As soon as the rooms had been cleaned and papered, the furnishing began, and that was really rather fun. No one was rich, and no one could give much, but what they gave they gave with a will.

Miss Rose turned out some sheets and pillow-cases, a table and a chair, the vicar ordered in half a ton of coal, the doctor's wife gave them a bed, some pieces of carpet, curtains, a kettle and an old basket chair. Mrs. Perry gave a teapot, cups and saucers, and a rag-rug of her own making. The doctor sent in some pots and pans, and meat and other food to put in them, and the folks in the village, who had come to know Huldah's story, turned out something, and sent, a jug, a brush, a sack of firewood, a bar of soap, and all manner of odds and ends, every one of which came in usefully. Huldah's own little bed and looking-gla.s.s and odds and ends came from her bedroom in the cottage, and all together helped to make the two bare rooms look home-like and comfortable.

The furniture was scanty and shabby, but to anyone accustomed to rough it as Emma Smith had done, the place was beautiful, and full of comfort and rest.

When it was ready, and she was first taken into it, she dropped into the basket chair by the fire, and burst into grateful tears.

It was the first time she had shown any grat.i.tude or pleasure in what was being done for her.

"It's like 'ome," she sobbed, weakly, "and I've never had one since I got married, till now,--and now--how I'm ever going to thank everybody, I don't know. I never seem able to do any good to anybody, I don't. 'Tis all take, with me, and no give, and I'm ashamed of it."

Huldah felt some of the load slip off her spirits as she looked about her. Here really was a home for Aunt Emma,--and now it rested with herself to make it as neat and comfortable and happy as a home could be. She would keep it as clean as a new pin, and as pretty as lay in her power. She tried to conquer her sadness by hard work, to put away her sorrow at leaving Aunt Martha and d.i.c.k and their happy life together.

"Brownies always go where there's most to be done, Miss Rose says, not where they'll be most comfortable," she said to herself, bravely, but her poor little face was very wistful. A few days later, though, when, after a long day's work, she sat down and looked about her, she remarked cheerfully, "I don't think anybody can go on feeling very miserable when they've lots to do and somebody to take care of."

A glow of pride warmed her heart, as she sat there drying her water-soaked hands, and glanced from the gleaming stove and fire-irons to the speckless window, and well-scrubbed table.

On the table stood a jar full of autumn flowers, and on the window-sill a box full of brown earth and little roots, double daisies, primulas, wallflowers. This last was Huldah's special joy and pride.

"We'll have a proper little garden there, when the spring comes," she remarked proudly to Aunt Emma.

Aunt Emma shook her head in melancholy fashion. "I shan't be here to see it."

"Oh yes you will. You'll be helping me with the spring cleaning,"

said Huldah, trying to keep cheerful,--one of the hardest of her daily tasks, for Aunt Emma's melancholy seldom left her. She never saw the bright side of anything, poor soul, nor the best, nor did she try to; and the depressingness of it told on the child's spirits more than anyone knew.

She worked very hard indeed at this time. The vicar had given them the rooms rent-free; but Huldah's basket-making had to supply almost everything else--food, clothing, lights, and many an extra--needed for Aunt Emma. Their rooms were few, and there was not much in them, but all that had to be done fell to Huldah to do. Emma Smith never put her hand to anything, not even to wash a dish, cook a meal, or make her own bed. She needed a great deal of waiting on, too, and was very fretful. She did not like to be left alone, even while Huldah went out to do the errands; and on the days when the poor child had to go to Belmouth to deliver her work, or get more raffia, Aunt Emma had always a very bad turn, and an attack of melancholy.

It was quite pathetic to see the way she clung to the little waif she had treated so cruelly when she had her in her power. She wanted no one but Huldah now, and she wanted her always. She loved her brightness and cheerfulness. When Huldah laughed and sang she was quite content, but the moment she was sad or quiet, Aunt Emma would grow peevish and uneasy.

"You'm fretting because you've got to stay here with me, I know.

You'm longing to be back with that Mrs. Perry. I know it's 'ard to 'ave to live with a poor miserable creature like me, and I wonder you can bear it as well as you do."

Then she would burst into tears. It never occurred to her that she might try to make it less miserable for Huldah, by trying to be cheerful herself sometimes.

"I'm not fretting. I love taking care of you," pleaded poor Huldah.

"I was only trying to think how to make a new-shaped basket that people might take a fancy to. Shall I read to you, Aunt Emma?"

Emma Smith loved being read to, and hour after hour Huldah spent over a book when she knew she ought to be at her basket-making. To try to make up the time, she got up at four or five in the morning, but in the winter that meant burning oil, and they could not afford that.

Then one day it occurred to her to sing instead of reading, and after that she found things easier, for she could sing while she worked.

It was a strange medley of songs that echoed through the rooms in the thin child-like voice. "Home, sweet Home," "Father, dear Father, come Home," "G.o.d save the King," "The Old Folks at Home," were some of their favourites, and if the words and air were not always correct, they never failed to bring pleasure to both performer and audience.

Of hymns Huldah had a greater store in her brain, and by degrees these ousted the songs as favourites.