Ester Ried Part 7

"How provoking this is!" Mr. Newton exclaimed, re-echoing her thoughts as he bustled in, red with haste and heat, and stood penitently before her. "I hadn't the least idea it would take so long to go to the post-office. I am very sorry!"

"Well," he continued, recovering his good humor, notwithstanding Ester's provoking silence, "what can't be cured must be endured, Miss Ester; and it isn't as bad as it might be, either. We've only to wait an hour and a quarter. I've some errands to do, and I'll show you the city with pleasure; or would you prefer sitting here and looking around you?"

"I should decidedly prefer not running the chance of missing the next train," Ester answered very shortly. "So I think it will be wiser to stay where I am."

In truth Mr. Newton endured the results of his own carelessness with too much complacency to suit Ester's state of mind; but he took no notice of her broadly-given hint further than to a.s.sure her that she need give herself no uneasiness on that score; he should certainly be on time. Then he went off, looking immensely relieved; for Mr. Newton frankly confessed to himself that he did not know how to take care of a lady. "If she were a parcel of goods now that one could get stored or checked, and knew that she would come on all right, why--but a lady. I'm not used to it. How easily I could have caught that train, if I hadn't been obliged to run back after her; but, bless me, I wouldn't have her know that for the world." This he said meditatively as he walked down South Street.

The New York train had carried away the greater portion of the throng at the depot, so that Ester and the dozen or twenty people who occupied the great sitting-room with her, had comparative quiet. The wearer of the condemned brown silk and blue ribbons was still there, and awoke Ester's vexation still further by seeming utterly unable to keep herself quiet; she fluttered from seat to seat, and from window to window, like an uneasy bird in a cage. Presently she addressed Ester in a bright little tone: "Doesn't it bore you dreadfully to wait in a depot?"

"Yes," said Ester, briefly and truthfully, notwithstanding the fact that she was having her first experience in that boredom.

"Are you going to New York?"

"I hope so," she answered, with energy. "I expected to have been almost there by this time; but the gentleman who is supposed to be taking care of me, had to rush off and stay just long enough to miss the train."

"How annoying!" answered the blue ribbons with a soft laugh. "I missed it, too, in such a silly way. I just ran around the corner to get some chocolate drops, and a little matter detained me a few moments; and when I came back, the train had gone. I was so sorry, for I'm in such a hurry to get home. Do you live in New York?"

Ester shook her head, and thought within herself: "That is just as much sense as I should suppose you to have--risk the chance of missing a train for the sake of a paper of candy."

Of course Ester could not be expected to know that the chocolate drops were for the wee sister at home, whose heart would be nearly broken if sister f.a.n.n.y came home, after an absence of twenty-four hours, without bringing her any thing; and the "little matter" which detained her a few moments, was joining the search after a twenty-five-cent bill which the ruthless wind had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hand of a barefooted, bareheaded, and almost forlorn little girl, who cried as violently as though her last hope in life had been blown away with it; nor how, failing in finding the treasure, the gold-clasped purse had been opened, and a crisp, new bill had been taken out to fill its place; neither am I at all certain as to whether it would have made any difference at all in Ester's verdict, if she had known all the circ.u.mstances.

The side door opened quietly just at this point and a middle-aged man came in, carrying in one hand a tool-box, and in the other a two-story tin pail. Both girls watched him curiously as he set these down on the floor, and, taking tacks from his pocket and a hammer from his box, he proceeded to tack a piece of paper to the wall. Ester, from where she sat, could see that the paper was small, and that something was printed on it in close, fine type. It didn't look in the least like a handbill, or indeed like a notice of any sort. Her desire to know what it could be grew strong; two tiny tacks held it firmly in its place.

Then the man turned and eyed the inmates of the room, who were by this time giving undivided attention to him and his bit of paper Presently he spoke, in a quiet, respectful tone:

"I've tacked up a nice little tract. I thought maybe while you was waiting you might like something to read. If one of you would read it aloud, all the rest could hear it." So saying, the man stooped and took up his tool-box and his tin pail, and went away, leaving the influences connected with those two or three strokes of his hammer to work for him through all time, and meet him at the judgment. But if a bomb-sh.e.l.l had suddenly come down and laid itself in ruins it their feet, it could not have made a much more startled company than the tract-tacker left behind him. A tract!--actually tacked up on the wall, and waiting for some human voice to give it utterance! A tract in a railroad depot! How queer! how singular! how almost improper!

Why? Oh, Ester didn't know; it was so unusual. Yes; but then that didn't make it improper. No; but--then, she--it--Well, it was fanatical. Oh yes, that was it. She knew it was improper in some way.

It was strange that that very convenient word should have escaped her for a little. This talk Ester held hurriedly with her conscience. It was asleep, you know; but just then it nestled as in a dream, and gave her a little p.r.i.c.k; but that industrious, important word, "fanatical,"

lulled it back to its rest. Meantime there hung the tract, and fluttered a little in the summer air, as the door opened and closed.

Was no one to give it voice? "I'd like dreadful well to hear it," an old lady said, nodding her gray head toward the little leaf on the wall; "but I've packed up my specs, and might just as well have no eyes at all, as far as readin' goes, when I haven't got my specs on. There's some young eyes round here though, one would think." she added, looking inquiringly around. "You won't need gla.s.ses, I should say now, for a spell of years!"

This remark, or hint, or inquiry, was directed squarely at Ester, and received no other answer than a shrug of the shoulder and an impatient tapping of her heels on the bare floor. Under her breath Ester muttered, "Disagreeable old woman!"

The brown silk rustled, and the blue ribbons fluttered restlessly for a minute; then their owner's clear voice suddenly broke the silence: "I'll read it for you, ma'am, if you really would like to hear it."

The wrinkled, homely, happy old face broke into a beaming smile, as she turned toward the pink-cheeked, blue-eyed maiden. "That I would,"

she answered, heartily, "dreadful well. I ain't heard nothing good, 'pears to me, since I started; and I've come two hundred miles. It seems as if it might kind of lift me up, and rest me like, to hear something real good again."

With the flush on her face a little hightened, the young girl promptly crossed to where the tract hung; and a strange stillness settled over the listeners as her clear voice sounded distinctly down the long room. This was what she read.

SOLEMN QUESTIONS.

"Dear Friend: Are you a Christian? What have you done to-day for Christ? Are the friends with whom you have been talking traveling toward the New Jerusalem? Did you compare notes with them as to how you were all prospering on the way? Is that stranger by your side a fellow-pilgrim? Did you ask him if he _would_ be? Have you been careful to recommend the religion of Jesus Christ by your words, by your acts, by your looks, this day? If danger comes to you, have you this day asked Christ to be your helper? If death comes to you this night, are you prepared to give up your account? What would your record of this last day be? A blank? What! Have you done _nothing_ for the Master? Then what have you done against Him? Nothing? Nay, verily!

Is not the Bible doctrine, 'He that is not for me is against me?'

"Remember that every neglected opportunity, every idle word, every wrong thought of yours has been written down this day. You can not take back the thoughts or words; you can not recall the opportunity.

This day, with all its mistakes, and blots, and mars, you can never live over again. It must go up to the judgment just as it is. Have you begged the blood of Jesus to be spread over it all? Have you resolved that no other day shall witness a repeatal of the same mistakes? Have you resolved in your own strength or in His?"

During the reading of the tract, a young man had entered, paused a moment in surprise at the unwonted scene, then moved with very quiet tread across the room and took the vacant seat near Ester. As the reader came back to her former seat, with the pink on her cheek deepened into warm crimson, the new comer greeted her with--

"Good-evening, Miss Fannie. Have you been finding work to do for the Master?"

"Only a very little thing," she answered, with a voice in which there was a slight tremble.

"I don't know about that, my dear." This was the old woman's voice.

"I'm sure I thank you a great deal. They're kind of startling questions like; enough to most scare a body, unless you was trying pretty hard, now ain't they?"

"Very solemn questions, indeed," answered the gentleman to whom this question seemed to be addressed. "I wonder, if we were each obliged to write truthful answers to each one of them, how many we should be ashamed to have each other see?"

"How many would be ashamed to have _Him_ see?" The old woman spoke with an emphatic shake of her gray head, and a reverent touch of he p.r.o.noun.

"That is the vital point," he said. "Yet how much more ashamed we often seem to be of man's judgment than of G.o.d's."

Then he turned suddenly to Ester, and spoke in a quiet, respectful tone:

"Is the stranger by my side a fellow-pilgrim?"

Ester was startled and confused. The whole scene had been a very strange one to her. She tried to think the blue-ribboned girl was dreadfully out of her sphere; but the questions following each other in such quick succession, were so very solemn, and personal, and searching--and now this one. She hesitated, and stammered, and flushed like a school-girl, as at last she faltered: "I--I think--I believe--I am."

"Then I trust you are wide-awake, and a faithful worker in the vineyard," he said, earnestly. "These are times when the Master needs true and faithful workmen."

"He's a minister," said Ester, positively, to herself, when she had recovered from her confusion sufficiently to observe him closely, as he carefully folded the old woman's shawl for her, took her box and basket in his care, and courteously offered his hand to a.s.sist her into the cars for the New York train thundered in at last, and Mr.

Newton presented himself; and they rushed and jostled each other out of the depot and into the train. And the little tract hung quietly in its corner; and the carpenter who had left it there, hammered, and sawed, and planed--yes, and prayed that G.o.d would use it, and knew not then, nor afterward, that it had already awakened thoughts that would tell for eternity.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE JOURNEY'S END.

"Yes, he's a minister," Ester repeated, even more decidedly, as, being seated in the swift-moving train, directly behind the old lady and the young gentleman who had become the subject of her thoughts, she found leisure to observe him more closely. Mr. Newton was absorbed in the _Tribune_; so she gave her undivided attention to the two, and could hear s.n.a.t.c.hes of the conversation which pa.s.sed between them, as well as note the courteous care with which he brought her a cup of water and attended to all her simple wants. During the stopping of the train at a station, their talk became distinct.

"And I haven't seen my boy, don't you think, in ten years," the old lady was saying. "Won't he be glad though, to see his mother once more? And he's got children--two of them; one is named after me, Sabrina. It's an awful homely name, I think, don't you? But then, you see, it was grandma's."

"And that makes all the difference in the world," her companion answered. "So the old home is broken up, and you are going to make a new one."

"Yes; and I'll show you every _thing_ I've got to remember my old garden by."

With eager, trembling fingers, she untied the string which held down the cover of her basket, and, rummaging within, brought to light a withered bouquet of the very commonest and, perhaps, the very homeliest flowers that grew, if there _are_ any homely flowers.

"There," she said, holding it tenderly, and speaking with quivering lip and trembling voice. "I picked 'em the very last thing I did, out in my own little garden patch by the backdoor. Oh, times and times I've sat and weeded and dug around them, with him sitting on the stoop and reading out loud to me. I thought all about just how it was while I was picking these. I didn't stay no longer, and I didn't go back to the house after that. I couldn't; I just pulled my sun-bonnet over my eyes, and went across lots to where I was going to get my breakfast"

Ester felt very sorry for the poor homeless, friendless old woman--felt as though she would have been willing to do a good deal just then to make her comfortable; yet it must be confessed that that awkward bunch of faded flowers, arranged without the slightest regard to colors, looked rather ridiculous; and she felt surprised, and not a little puzzled, to see actual tears standing in the eyes of her companion as he handled the bouquet with gentle care.

"Well," he said, after a moment of quiet, "you are not leaving your best friend after all. Does it comfort your heart very much to remember that, in all your partings and trials, you are never called upon to bid Jesus good-by?"