The Chautauqua Girls At Home Part 18

Only, remember you are to try to prove from the Bible that it has left _us_ to decide this matter for ourselves."

"I shall take every side that I find," Flossy said. "What I want to know is, the truth about things."

"Without regard as to whether the truth is so fortunate as to agree with your opinion or not?" said Marion. "You will, probably, be quite as likely to find the truth as any of us. Well, I like the plan; there is work in it, and it will amount to something. When shall it be?"

"Next Friday," said Flossy.

"No," said Ruth; "Friday is the night of Mrs. Garland's lawn party."

"A dancing party," said Eurie. "Good! Let us come together on Thursday evening. If there is a dancing party just ahead, it will make us all the more zealous to prove our sides; I shall be, at least, for I want to go to Mrs. Garland's."

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CHAPTER XIII.

LOOKING FOR WORK.

DR. DENNIS had just gone into his study to make ready for the evening prayer-meeting, when he heard his door-bell ring. He remembered with a shade of anxiety that his daughter was not yet out of school, and that his sister and housekeeper was not at home. It was more than likely that he would be interrupted.

"What is it, Hannah?" he asked, as that person appeared at his door.

"It is Miss Erskine, sir. I told her that Miss Dennis was out of town, and Miss Grace was at school, and she said it was of no consequence, she wanted to see the minister himself. Will I tell her that you are engaged?"

"No," said Dr. Dennis, promptly. The sensation was still very new, this desire on the part of any of the name of Erskine to see him. His preparation could afford to wait.

Two minutes more and Ruth was in the study. It was a place in which she felt as nearly embarra.s.sed as she ever approached to that feeling. She had a specific purpose in calling, and words arranged wherewith to commence her topic; but they fled from her as if she had been a school girl instead of a finished young lady in society; and she answered the Doctor's kind enquiries as to the health of her father and herself in an absent and constrained manner. At last this good man concluded to help her.

"Is there any thing special that I can do for you to-day?" he asked, with a kindly interest in his tone, that suggested the feeling that he was interested in her plans, whatever they were, and would be glad to help.

"Yes," she said, surprised into frankness by his straightforward way of doing things; "or, at least, I hope you can. Dr. Dennis, ought not every Christian to be at work?"

"Our great Example said; 'I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day.'"

"I know it; that very verse set me to thinking about it. That is what I want help about. There is no work for me to do; at least, I can't find any. I am doing just nothing at all, and I don't in the least know which way to turn. I am not satisfied with this state of things; I can't settle back to my books and my music as I did before I went away; I don't enjoy them as I used to; I mean, they don't absorb me; they seem to be of no earthly use to anyone but myself, and I don't feel absolutely certain that they are of any use to me; anyway, they are not Christian work."

"As to that, you are not to be too certain about it. Wonderful things can be done with music; and when one is given a marked talent for it, as I hear has been the case with you, it is not to be hidden in a napkin."

"I don't know what I can do with music, I am sure," Ruth said, skeptically. "I suppose I must have a good deal of talent in that direction; I have been told so ever since I can remember; but beyond entertaining my friends, I see no other special use for it."

"Do you remember telling me about the songs which Mr. Bliss sang at Chautauqua, and the effect on the audience?"

"Yes," said Ruth, speaking heartily, and her cheeks glowing at the recollection "but he was wonderful!"

"The same work can be done in a smaller way," Dr. Dennis said, smiling.

"I hope to show you something of what you may do to help in that way before another winter pa.s.ses; but, in the meantime, mere entertainment of friends is not a bad motive for keeping up one's music. Then there is the uncertain future ever before us. What if you should be called upon to teach music some day?"

A vision of herself toiling wearily from house to house in all weathers, and at all hours of the day, as she had seen music teachers do, hovered over Ruth Erskine's brain, and so utterly improbable and absurd did the picture seem, when she imagined it as having any reference to her, that she laughed outright.

"I don't believe I shall ever teach music," she said, positively.

"Perhaps not; and yet stranger things than that _have_ happened in this changeful life."

"But, Dr. Dennis," she said, with sudden energy, and showing a touch of annoyance at the turn which the talk was taking, "my trouble is not an inability to employ my time; I do not belong to the cla.s.s of young ladies who are afflicted with _ennui_." And a sarcastic curve of her handsome lip made Ruth look very like the Miss Erskine that Dr. Dennis had always known. She despised people who had no resources within themselves. "I can find plenty to do, and I enjoy doing it; but the point is, I seem to be living only for myself, and that doesn't seem right. I want Christian work."

To tell the truth Dr. Dennis was puzzled. There was so much work to do, his hands and heart were always so full and running over, that it seemed strange to him for anyone to come looking for Christian work; the world was teeming with it.

On the other hand he confessed to himself that he was utterly unaccustomed to hearing people ask for work; or, if the facts be told, to having any one do any work.

Years ago he had tried to set the people of the First Church to work; but they had stared at him and misunderstood him, and he confessed to himself that he had given over trying to get work out of most of them.

While this experience was refreshing, it was new, and left him for the moment bewildered.

"I understand you," he said, rallying. "There is plenty of Christian work. Do you want to take a cla.s.s in the Sunday-school? There is a vacancy."

Ruth shook her head with decision.

"That is not at all my _forte_. I have no faculty for teaching children; I am entirely unused to them, and have no special interest in them, and no sort of idea how they are to be managed. Some people are specially fitted for such work; I know I am not."

"Often we find our work much nearer home than we had planned," Dr.

Dennis said, regarding her with a thoughtful air. "How is it with your father, Miss Erskine?"

"My father?" she repeated; and she could hardly have looked more bewildered if her pastor had asked after the welfare of the man in the moon.

"Are you trying to win him over to the Lord's side?"

Utter silence and surprise on Miss Erskine's part. At last she said:

"I hardly ever see my father; we are never alone except when we are on our way to dinner, or to pay formal calls on very formal people. Then we are always in a hurry. I cannot reach my father, Dr. Dennis; he is immersed in business, and has no time nor heart for such matters. I should not in the least know how to approach him if I had a chance; and, indeed, I am sure I could do no good, for he would esteem it an impertinence to be questioned by his daughter as to his thoughts on these matters."

"Yet you have an earnest desire to see him a Christian?"

"Yes," she said, speaking slowly and hesitatingly; "of course I have that. To be very frank, Dr. Dennis, it is a hopeless sort of desire; I don't expect it in the least; my father is peculiarly unapproachable; I know he considers himself sufficient unto himself, if you will allow the expression. In thinking of him, I have felt that a great many years from now, when he is old, and when business cares and responsibilities have in a measure fallen off, and given him time to think of himself, he might then feel his need of a Friend and be won; but I don't even hope for it before that time."

"My dear friend, you have really no right to set a different time from the one that your Master has set," her pastor said, earnestly. "Don't you know that his time is always _now_? How can you be sure that he will choose to give your father a long life, and leisure in old age to help him to think? Isn't that a terrible risk?"

Ruth Erskine shook her decided head.

"I feel sure that my work is not in that direction," she said. "I could not do it; you do not know my father as well as I do; he would never allow me to approach him. The most I can hope to do will be to hold what he calls my new views so far into the background that he will not positively forbid them to me. He is the only person I think of whom I stand absolutely in awe. Then I couldn't talk with him. His life is a pure, spotless one, convincing by its very morality; so he thinks that there is no need of a Saviour. I do pray for him; I mean to as long as he and I live; but I know I can do nothing else; at least not for many a year."

How was Dr. Dennis to set to work a lady who knew so much that she could not work? This was the thought that puzzled him. But he knew how difficult it was for people to work in channels marked out by others. So he said, encouragingly:

"I can conceive of some of your difficulties in that direction. But you have other friends who are not Christians?"

This being said inquiringly, Ruth, after a moment of hesitation, answered it: