Sowing and Sewing Part 10

And when the garden gate was opened, there was a further shock. More people were in the house! Miss Manners, who had come home the night before, had come to inquire for little Edwin, and there was a buzz of voices, as she and Mrs. Cuthbert had most joyfully greeted one another.

Miss Manners was delighted to see the young missionary, and the only drawback was that poor little Edwin was evidently so much worse. He had been gradually growing worse and weaker for the last ten days or a fortnight, Polly and Mrs. Rowe said, and his mother had sad nights with him; but the parish doctor had said it was only feverishness caused by the heat, when he saw the boy last week, and did not seem to think it of consequence. The family depended on the mother's work, and in hay-making time she could not stay at home. Mr. Somers was gone from home, so was Miss Manners, and no one had thought much about the poor child; but he had become so much worse in the course of the morning, that it was plain that his mother and the doctor must both be sent for without loss of time.

Miss Manners came out into the garden with Mrs. Cuthbert, and as the aunt and niece came up, said she would find the messenger.

"Had not you thought him so well, Amy?" she asked.

"Oh, ma'am!" exclaimed Aunt Rose, always an outspoken person, "that's the worst trouble of all! Who would have thought this sly deceitful child could have made as if she was sitting all the time with that poor boy, while she was just walking all the time with that good-for-nothing groom up at the Arms. How I shall tell her poor father, I don't know. It will be enough to break his heart!"

"It was all Florence Cray!" sobbed Amy.

"Well," said Miss Manners, "of course her father must know about it; but since Amy the elder is only to be here three or four hours, don't you think it would be better not to spoil her visit for him? You can have it out in the evening, you know; but it would be a great pity to give him such a shock at once. Don't you think so, Amy?"

"Indeed I do, ma'am," said Mrs. Cuthbert; "I am afraid the poor girl may have been to blame, but it will not be the worse for her to wait a little while, and my brother would be so much taken up with the matter, that I am afraid my Ambrose would never know his uncle as I should like."

"I'm sure it will all be spoilt to me, any way," said poor Aunt Rose, half choked.

"But you will bear the burthen alone, for your brother's sake and Charlotte's," said Miss Manners, cheerfully; "besides, you have your own dear old Amy to help you to bear it, and that is like old times."

This comforted Rose a good deal. Miss Dora--as she and her sister Amy still called her--said she would not say good-bye, she would look in before the Cuthberts went, and say how the child was.

The younger Amy was glad at first of the respite, but altogether it was the most dreadful day she ever spent. There was her father in his Sunday best coming out to meet them, wondering what had made them stay so long.

Mrs. Cuthbert answered, to save Aunt Rose, that they had found the child much worse, and that Miss Manners had come in. This satisfied him, and they went in to the meal Aunt Charlotte had prepared--a very late luncheon, or early and solid tea, whichever it might be called--in the parlour, with the best china, and everything as nice as possible.

Really Amy felt as if it would have been less dreadful to have been locked up in her room, or sitting sewing with Jessie in the workroom, than sitting up in the parlour with the rest, and hearing her father show his pride in her, making her fetch her prize for the religious examination, and talking of her almost as if he wanted to compare her with Aunt Amy's missionary son.

And then when Ambrose Cuthbert was questioned about his plans, and told in a very modest quiet way where he was to go, and the work he was to do under a missionary to the Red Indians, Amy saw more and more how foolish she had been. What was that conceited groom whose boast was of the horses he had ridden, and the bets laid on them, compared with this young man? Which was the gentleman of the two? And this was her own first cousin, and she had forfeited the respect and esteem which he might have carried out with him! He would only--in those far countries--think of his cousin, Amy Lee, as a giddy, deceitful, hypocritical girl, who had carried on a flirtation under cover of a good work.

Amy burnt to tell all the excuses she thought she had, and how she had been led on, and that it was not so bad as no doubt Aunt Rose thought; but she must keep all back. Only at last her father remarked that his darling was very silent--shy, he thought, with her grand scholarly cousin. He said he should like them to hear what a pretty voice she had, and told her to sing one of her hymns, such as "Abide with us;" but Amy could not do that. She put her face in her hands, choked, and began to cry.

"Ah!" said Aunt Charlotte; "poor dear, it has been a great shock to her, the poor little boy being taken so much worse."

It was a comfort to every one that at that moment Miss Manners came in through the shop, asking for Jessie Hollis.

"The poor little boy is very ill," she said. "The only thing that seems to soothe him is a bit of a verse that his sister Mary says her teacher taught her. That was you--is it not, Jessie? Mary can only say half, and we can't make it out; but she says, 'If teacher was but here.'"

Of course Miss Lee was ready to spare Jessie for such a reason, and she folded up her work while Miss Manners had a little talk with Mrs.

Cuthbert, on the mingled pain and sweetness of the giving up her only son to be one of those sent forth "to sow beside all waters."

"I am so glad he should have seen you, ma'am, before he leaves us," said his mother, the tears rising in her quiet eyes. "I only wish he could have seen Miss Edith--Mrs. Howard; for indeed, ma'am, I always feel that whatever good my children have learnt at home, was owing to the way I was brought up and the way Miss Edith used to talk to us."

"Nothing will make my sister so happy as to hear it, Amy," said Miss Manners. "Somehow it seems to chime in with what I had ventured to bring as a little remembrance of your old home for your son. I had prepared it to send the St. Augustine's scholar, before I knew I should see him."

She gave him a beautiful little _Christian Year_ and _Lyra Innocentium_ in a case together, and as the book-marker was the illuminated text--

"In the morning sow thy seed, And in the evening withhold not thine hand, For thou knowest not which shall prosper."

Ambrose Cuthbert thanked the lady in a very nice way, telling her that he should value her gift much, and that he hoped to make the poems his companions and often his guides in his work.

So with a warm pressure of the hands of both mother and son, Miss Manners walked away with Jessie.

"I think," she presently said, "some of your bread on the waters is coming back to you, Jessie. They say that little Mary Smithers has been such a comfort to her little brother, by repeating to him what she learns on Sundays, and that she has been so much more good and attentive to him of late."

"I am sure, ma'am," said Jessie, "I never thought Mary Smithers seemed to understand anything."

"We can never judge where the seed we sow will prosper," said Miss Dora, thinking within herself of the different results with Amy and Jessie.

The little boy had been carried up to the bedroom. Old Mrs. Rowe was there, and his mother, who was trying to help him to lie more easily, while he moved feebly, but restlessly, and still looked at little Polly, who was repeating over and over some verse in which "Shepherd"

was the only word that Miss Manners, well as she knew the children's tones, could make out. Jessie, however, knew it directly, and repeated--

"Gracious Saviour, gentle Shepherd, Little ones are dear to Thee, Gathered in Thine Arms and carried, In Thy Bosom may we be Sweetly, fondly, gently tended, From all want and danger free."

She could say the whole hymn, but the child grew restless as soon as she had pa.s.sed beyond the first verse. She returned to it, once, twice, and then Polly got back what she had partly forgotten and went on with it, which was evidently what quieted the boy best. He seemed too far gone to attend to anything else; the sense of other words did not reach his ears, but these evidently gave him pleasure. The doctor had said he was dying, and the women thought he would sleep himself away. There seemed no more to be done. Polly had her verse to say to him, and no help seemed needed; so Miss Manners and Jessie went down the stairs again, and out into the garden, Jessie shedding many tears, but very far from sad ones. When she could speak, she said that the young woman in the hospital to whom she owed so much knew the hymn, and had so often repeated it, that Jessie had learnt it. She had used the first verse one Sunday when teaching the children about the Good Shepherd, and, having a little more time than usual, had tried to teach it to them--little thinking how she should thus meet it--but using it because she had grown fond of it for the sake of her friend, and of the new and higher feelings that were linked with the first learning of it.

There was a great peace and thankfulness in her heart at having thus tasted a sort of first-fruits of her little attempt at sowing. It was soothing a death-bed! Might not she well rejoice that she had persevered, in spite of the temptation of gain, in not letting her head and heart be carried away with the fever of work, but giving the best part of herself to the task she had undertaken?

Not that Jessie saw or thought that this had been the case. Yet if she had let herself be swept away with Grace's vehement desire to engross all the needlework, she must have given up her preparation; she would have been wearied, hurried, and very likely fretful and impatient. At any rate, there would not have been that kindness and earnestness which leads others to be good far more than the actual words of teaching.

CHAPTER X.

THE RECKONING.

"IT is a right punishment for our sinful pride in her," said Aunt Rose, as she had a few last words alone with her elder sister.

"Well, Rose," said Mrs. Cuthbert, "I would not be so very hard on the poor child. I've been watching her, and I think, though no doubt she has done very wrong, it was in a childish sort of way, and that you won't find there's been any real love-making or nonsense of that sort."

"I'm sure, now I find the child could deceive us so, and act such a part, there's nothing I could not believe," said poor Aunt Rose.

"That is sad enough, but I think you'll find it the worst, and that she was led into it by others."

"That Florence Cray!" exclaimed Rose; "and what to do about her? How hinder her from spoiling our child, when she's bound apprentice to me? I wish I'd never listened to her father!"

Here came Amy herself, sent up to say that the trap was ready, and her aunt must not be late for the train. She felt as if the last protection was gone when she saw her aunt and cousin driven away in the conveyance they had hired at Ellerby.

Girls bred up like Florence Cray would have thought it all a great fuss about nothing. First and last Florence had seen nothing but fun in Amy's cheating her strait-laced aunts and getting a little diversion, while they wanted to shut her up with a cross child; but Amy had been bred up to a very different way of looking at things, and the whole afternoon had only been setting more fully before her how she had fallen from what she had imagined of herself last Lent!

After all, the delay had made it better for her. Aunt Rose did not tell the story quite so hotly and violently as it would have come out in the first shock of wrath, but it was dreadful enough to hear her father say--

"Amy, child, what is this? I never thought you would go for to do such a thing."

"You that we had trusted from a baby," added Aunt Rose.

Aunt Charlotte said nothing, but her looks were the worst of all to bear, they were so gentle and so sorrowful. And when Amy had sobbed out her story they told her that she had been so sly that they did not know how to believe her word.

"Oh, father! you may believe me. I never told a story--no, I never did!"