The Other Girls Part 43

"There was the room," she said; "and there was the furniture. Now, would Bel Bree let the things to her, just as they stood, if she,--well, if Mr. Sparrow,--for she didn't mind telling Bel that she and Mr. Sparrow had made up their minds to look after each other's comfort as well as they could the rest of their lives, seeing how liable we all were to need comfort and company, at fires and things;--if Mr. Sparrow hired the room of Mrs. Pimminy? And as to Bartholomew, Mr. Sparrow wouldn't mind him, and she didn't think Bartholomew would object to Mr. Sparrow. Cats rather took to him, he thought. They would make the creature welcome, and make much of him; and not expect it to be considered at all."

Bel concluded the arrangement. She thought it would be a comfort to know that Aunt Blin's little place was not all broken up, but that somebody was happy there; that Bartholomew had his old corner of the rug, and his airings on the sunny window-sill; and Miss Smalley--Mrs. Sparrow that was to be--would pay her fifteen dollars a year for the things, and make them last.

"That carpet?" she had said; "why, it hadn't begun to pocket yet; and there hadn't been any breadths changed; and the mats saved the hearth-front and the doorway, and she could lay down more. And it would turn, when it came to that, and last on--as long as ever.

There was six years in that carpet, without darning, if there was a single day; and Mr. Sparrow always took off his boots and put on his slippers, the minute ever he got in."

Desire's library was full on Wednesday evenings, now. The girls came for instruction, for social companionship, for comfort. On the table in the dining-room were almost always little parcels waiting, ready done up for one and another; little things Desire and Hazel "thought of" beforehand, as what they "might like and find convenient; and what they"--Desire and Hazel--"happened to have." Sometimes it was a paper of nice prunes for a delicate appet.i.te that was kept too much to dry, economical food. Perhaps it was a jar of "Liebig's Extract"

for Emma Hollen, that she might make beef-tea for herself; or a remnant of flannel that "would just do for a couple of undervests."

It was sure to be something just right; something with a real thought in it.

And out here in the dining-room, as they took their little parcels,--or lingering in the hall aside from the others, or stopping in a corner of the library,--they would have their "words"

with Desire and Hazel and Sylvie; always some confidence, or some question, or some telling of how this or that had gone on or turned out.

In these days after the Great Fire, no wonder that the dozen or fifteen became twenty, or even thirty; the very pigeons and sparrows tell each other where the people are who love and feed them; no wonder that all the chairs had to be brought in, and that the room was full; that the room in heart and brain, for sympathy and plan and counsel, was crowded also, or would have been, if heart and brain were not made to grow as fast as they take in tendernesses and thoughts. If, too, one need did not fit right in and help another; and if being "right in the midst of the work" did not continually give light and suggestion and opportunity.

Bel Bree came among them now, with her heart full.

"I know it better than ever," she said to Miss Desire. "I _know_ that what ever so many of these girls want, most of all, is _home_.

A place to work in where they can rest between whiles, if it is only for s.n.a.t.c.hes; not to be out, and on their feet, and just _driving_, with the minutes at their heels, all day long. Girls want to work under cover; they can favor themselves then, and not slight the work either. And especially, they want to _belong_ somewhere. They can't fling themselves about, separate, anywhere, without a great many getting spoiled, or lost. They want some signs of care over them; and I believe there are places where they could have it. If they can put twenty tucks into a white petticoat for a cent a piece, and work half a day at it, and find their own fire and bread and tea, why can't they do it for half a cent a tuck, even, in people's houses, where they can have fire and lodging and meals, and a name, at any rate, of being seen to?"

"Say so to them, Bel. Tell them yourself, what you mean to do, and find out who will do it with you. If this movement could come from the girls themselves,--if two or three would join together and begin,--I believe the leaven would work. I believe it is the next thing, and that somebody is to lead the way. Why not you?"

That night, the Read-and-Talk left off the reading. Miss Ledwith told them that there was so much to say,--so much she wanted a word from them about,--that they would give up the books for one evening.

They would think about home, instead of far-off places; about themselves,--each other,--and things that were laid out for them to do, instead of people who had taken their turn at the world's work hundreds of years ago. They would try and talk it out,--this hard question of work, and place, and living; and see, if they could, what way was provided,--as in the nature of things there must be some way,--for everybody to be busy, and everybody to be better satisfied. She thought Bel Bree had got a notion of one way, that was open, or might be, to a good many, a way that it remained, perhaps, for themselves to open rightly.

"Now, Bel, just tell us all how you feel about it. There isn't any of us whom you wouldn't say it to alone; and every one of us is only listening separately. When you have finished, somebody else may have a word to answer."

"I don't know as I _could_ finish," said Bel Bree, "except by going and living it out. And that is just what I think we have got to do.

I've said it before; the girls know I have; but I'm surer than ever of it now. Why, where does all the work come from, but out of the homes? I know some kinds may always have to be done in the lump; but there's ever so much that might be done where it is wanted, and everybody be better off. We want homes; and we want real people to work for; those two things. I _know_ we do. A lot of _stuff_, and miles of st.i.tches, ain't _work_; it don't make real human beings, I think. It makes business, I suppose, and money; I don't know what it all comes round to, though, for anybody; more spending, perhaps, and more having, but not half so much being. At any rate, it don't come round in that to us; and we've got to look out for ourselves. If we get right, who knows but other folks may get righter in consequence?

What I think is, that wherever there's a family,--a father and a mother and little children,--there's work to do, and a home to do it in; and we girls who haven't homes and little children, and perhaps sha'n't ever have,--ain't much likely to have as things are now,--could be happier and safer, and more used to what we ought to be used to in case we should,"--(Bel's sentences were getting to be very rambling and involved, but her thoughts urged her on, and everybody's in the room followed her),--"if we went right in where the things were wanted, and did them. The sewing,--and the cooking,--and the sweeping, too; everything; I mean, whatever we could; any of it. You call it 'living out,' and say you won't do it, but what you do _now_ is the living out! We could _afford_ to go and say to people who are worrying about poor help and awful wages,--'We'll come and do well by you for half the money. We know what homes are worth.' And wouldn't some of them think the millennium was come? _I_ am going to try it."

Bel stopped. She did not think of such a thing as having made a speech; she had only said a little--just as it came--of what she was full of.

"You'll get packed in with a lot of dirty servants. You won't have the home. You'll only have the work of it."

"No, Kate Sencerbox. I sha'n't do that; because I'm going to persuade you to go with me. And we'll make the home, if they give us ever so little a corner of it. And as soon as they find out what we are, they'll treat us accordingly."

Kate Sencerbox shrugged her shoulders.

"The world isn't going to be made all over in a day,--nor Boston either; not if it _is_ all burnt up to begin with."

"That is true, Kate," said Desire Ledwith. "You will have difficulties. But you have difficulties now. And wouldn't it be worth while to change these that are growing worse, for such as might grow better? Wouldn't it be grand to begin to make even a little piece of the world over?"

"We could start with new people," said Bel. "Young people. They are the very ones that have the hardest time with the old sort of servants. We could go out of town, where the old sort won't stay.

You see it's _homes_ we're after; real ones; and to help make them; and it's homes they hate!"

"Where did you find it all out, Bel?"

"I don't know. Talk; and newspapers. And it's in the air."

Bel was her old, quick, bright, earnest self, taking hold of this thing that she so truly meant. She turned round to it eagerly, escaping from the thoughts which she resolutely flung out of her mind. There was perhaps a slight impetus of this hurry of escape in her eagerness. But Bel was strong; strong in her purity; in her real poet-nature, that reached for and demanded the real soul of living; in her incapacity to care for the shadow or pretense,--far more the _sullied_ sham,--of anything. Contempt of the evil had come swiftly to cure the sting of the evil. Satan would fain have had her, to sift her like wheat; but she had been prayed for; and now that she was saved, she was inspired to strengthen her sisters.

"I don't think I could do anything but sewing," said Emma Hollen, plaintively. "I'm not strong enough. And ladies won't see to their own sewing, now, in their houses. It's so much easier to go right into Feede & Treddle's, and buy ready-made, that we've done the st.i.tching for at forty cents a day, hard work, and find ourselves!"

"I don't say that every girl in Boston can walk right into a nice good home, and be given something to do there. But I say there's no danger of too many trying it yet awhile; and by the time they do, maybe we'll have changed things a little for them. I'm willing to be the thin edge of the wedge," said Bel Bree.

"Right things have the power. G.o.d sees to that," said Desire. "The right cannot stop working. The life is in it."

"The thing I think of," said Elise Mokey, decidedly, "is suller kitchens. I ain't ready to be put underground,--not yet awhile. Not even by way of going to heaven, every night; or as near as four flights can carry me."

"In the country they don't have cellar kitchens. And anyway, there's always a window, and a fire; and with things clean and cheerful, and some green thing growing for Cheeps to sing to, I'll do," said Bel.

"You've got to begin with what there is, as the Pilgrim Fathers did."

Ray Ingraham could have told them, if she had been there this Wednesday evening, how Dot had begun. Miss Ledwith said nothing about it, because she felt that it was an exceptional case. She would not put a falsely flattering precedent before these girls, to win them to an experiment which with them might prove a hard and disappointing one. Desire Ledwith was absolutely fair-minded in everything she did. The feeling on their part that she was so, was what gave them their trust in her. To bring a subject to her consideration and judgment, was to bring it into clear sunlight.

Dot had gone up to Z----, to live with the Kincaids, at the Horse Shoe.

Drops of quicksilver, if they are put anywise near together, will run into each other. And that is the law of the kingdom of good.

Circ.u.mstances are far more fluid to the blessed magnetism than we think. The whole tendency of the right, neighborly life is to reach forth and draw together; to bring into one circle of communication people and plans of one spirit and purpose. Then, before we know how it is, we find them linking and fitting here and there, helping wonderfully to make a beautiful organism of result that we could not have planned or foreseen beforehand, any more than we could have planned our own bodies. It is the growing up into one body in Christ.

Hazel Ripwinkley said it all came of "knowing the m.u.f.fin Man:" and so it did. The Bread-Giver; the Provider. It is queer they should have made such an unconscious parable in that nonsense-play. But you can't help making parables, do what you will.

Rosamond Kincaid had her hands full now, she had her little Stephen.

He came like a little angel of delight, in one way; the real, heart way; but another,--the practical way of day's doing and ordering,--he came like a little Hun, overrunning and devastating everything.

While Rosamond had been up-stairs, and Mrs. Waters had been nursing her, and Miss Arabel coming in and out to see that all was straight below, it had been lovely; it was the peace of heaven.

But when Mrs. Waters--who was one of those born nurses whom everybody who has any sort of claim sends for in all emergency of sickness--had to pack up her valise and go to Portland, where her niece's son was taken with rheumatic fever, and her niece had another bleeding at the lungs; when the days grew short, and the nights long, and the baby _would_ not settle his relations with the solar system, but having begun his earthly career in the night-time, kept a dead reckoning accordingly, and continued to make the midnight hours his hours of demand and enterprise,--the nice little systematic calculations by which the household had been regulated fell into hopeless uncertainties.

Dorris had so many music scholars now, that she was obliged to leave home at nine in the morning; and at night she was very tired.

It was indispensable for her and for Kenneth that dinner should be punctual. Rosamond could not let Miss Arabel's labors of love grow into matter-of-course service.

And then there were all the sewing and mending to do; which had not been anything to think of when there had been plenty of time; but which, now that the baby devoured all the minutes, and made a houseful of work beside, began to grow threatening with inevitable procrastinations.

[Barbara Goldthwaite, who was at home at West Hill with _her_ baby, averred that _these_ were the angels who came to declare that time should be no longer.]

Rosamond would not have a nursery maid; she "would not give up her baby to anybody;" neither would she let a "kitchen girl" into her paradisiacal realm of shining tins, and top-over cups, and white, hemmed dishcloths.

"Let's have a companion!" said Dorris. "Let's afford her together."

When their "Christian Register" came, that very week, there was Dot Ingraham's advertis.e.m.e.nt.

Mr. Kincaid went into the city, and round to Pilgrim Street, and found her; and now, in this November when every machine girl in Boston was thrown back upon her savings, or her friends, or the public contribution, she was tucking up little short dresses for Stephen, whom Rosamond, according to the family tradition, called resolutely by his name, and whom she would, at five months old, put into the freedom of frocks, "in which he could begin to feel himself a little human being, and not a tadpole."

Dot helped in the kitchen, too; but this was a home kitchen. She became one of themselves, for whatever there was to be done.

Especially she took triumphant care of Rosamond's stand of plants, which, under her quickly recognized touch and tending, rushed tumultuously into a green splendor, and even at this early winter time, showed eager little buds of bloom, of all that could bloom.

They had books and loud reading over their work. Everything got done, and there were leisure hours again. Dot earned four dollars a week, and once a fortnight went home and spent a Sunday with her mother.