The Second Chance Part 27

"Look at that now, John!" Mr. Perkins cried, nudging Mr. Watson gaily. "Isn't that a woman for you all over, young and all as she is?

They never think how the money comes, the lovely critturs."

"Money isn't everything, Mr. Perkins," said Pearl earnestly.

"Well, my little dear, most of us think it is pretty nearly everything."

"G.o.d doesn't care very much about money," she answered. "Look at the sort of people he gives it to."

Mr. Perkins looked at her in surprise. "Upon my word, that's true,"

he said. "Say, Pearlie, you'll be taking away the preachers' job from them when you get a little bigger, if they're not careful."

Pearl laughed good-humouredly and went on with her potato-digging.

Thomas Perkins went home soon after, and even to him the quiet glory of the autumn evening came with a sense of beauty and of G.o.d's overshadowing care. "I kinda wish now," he said to himself, "that I had gone and cleared up the boy's name at first. I can hardly do it now. They would think I hadn't had the nerve to do it at first. Say, what that kid said is pretty near right. Money ain't everything." He was looking at the bars of amethyst cloud that streaked the west, and at the lemon-coloured sky below them. Prairie chickens whirred through the air on their way to a straw pile near by. From the Souris valley behind him came the strident whistle of the evening train as it thundered over the long wooden bridge. A sudden love of his home and family came to Thomas Perkins as he looked over at his comfortable buildings and his broad fields. "If Bud were only over there," he thought, "how good it would be! Poor Bud, wandering to-night without a home, and through no fault of his own."

Just for the moment Mr. Perkins was honestly repentant; then the other side of his nature came back. "I do hope that boy will think to grease' his boots--they'll go like paper if he doesn't," he said.

CHAPTER XXIII

PEARL'S PHILOSOPHY

For the love of G.o.d is broader Than the measure of man's mind, And the heart of the Eternal Is most wonderfully kind.

_----F. W. Faber._

IT WAS a dreamy day in late October, when not only the Tiger Hills were veiled in mist, but every object on the prairie had a gentle draping of amber gray. "Prairie fires ragin' in the hills," said Aunt Kate, who always sought for an explanation of natural phenomena, but Pearlie Watson knew better. She knew that it was a dream curtain that G.o.d puts around the world in the autumn, when the gra.s.s is faded and the trees bare and leafless. She explained it to the other children coming home that night.

"You see, kids," said Pearl, "in the summer everything is so well fixed up that there's no need to hide anything, and so the sun just shines and shines, and the days are long and bright to let every one have a good look at things. There's the orange-lilies pepperin' the gra.s.s, and there's cowslips and ladies' slippers, if it's yellows you like, and there's wild roses and morning-glories, and pink ladies'

slippers, if you know whereto look for them, and the hills are all so green and velvety, and there's the little ponds full of water with the wind crinklin' the top of it, and strings of wild ducks sailin'

kind o' sideways across them. Oh, it's a great sight, and it would be a pity to put a mist on it. But now the colour has faded and the ponds have dried up, and the gra.s.s is dead and full of dust, and it's far nicer to have this gray veil drawn in close around. It helps you to make a pretty picture for yourself. Now, look over there, near Tom Simpson's old house--that ain't a train track at all, but a deep blue sea, where boats sail day and night, and 'Spanish sailors with bearded lips' walk up and down clankin' their swords and whisperin'

about hidden treasures."

Pearl's voice had fallen almost to a whisper.

"To-night when the moon rises the tallest one, the one with the deep scar on his cheek, will lead the way to the cave in the rock; the door flies open if you say the pa.s.sword 'Magooslem,' and there the golden guineas lie strewn upon the stone floors. And look back there at Lib Cavers's house--do you see how dreamy like and sleepin' it is, not takin' a bit of notice of anything? It don't look like a house where there's ever dirty dishes or anybody feelin' sad or lonely, and I don't believe that's Cavers's house at all," went on Pearl, making a bold appeal to the imagination of her audience--"that's just a dream house, where there is a big family of children, and they're goin' to have pancakes for supper--pancakes and maple syrup!"

At this a.s.sociation of ideas Bugsey made a quick move for the dinner-pail, in which he had a distinct interest. Bugsey was what his parents called a "quare lad" (his brothers often called him worse than that), and one way he had of showing his "quareness" was that he did not even eat like other people. On this particular day the Watson children had for dinner, among other plainer things, a piece of wild cranberry pie, with the pits left in, for each child. Patsy's piece had gone at the first recess; Danny's did not get past the fireguard around the school; Tammy's disappeared before he had gone a hundred yards from the house (Tommy was carrying the dinner-pail); but Bugsey, the "quare lad," did not eat his in school at all, but left it to eat on the way home.

Now cranberry pie with the pits in is a perishable article, and should not be left unguarded in this present evil world, where human nature has its frailties. When Bugsey looked into the pail, he raised a wail of bereavement, and at the same moment Tommy set out for home at high speed accelerated no doubt by the proddings of conscience.

Bugsey followed, breathing out slaughter, and even made the murderous threat of "takin' it out of his hide," which no doubt was only intended figuratively.

"Come back here, Bugsey Watson!" cried Pearl authoritatively. "What do yez mane by it? S'posin' he did ate yer pie? It ain't as bad as if he knocked an eye out of yer. You shouldn't have left it in the pail to tempt him anyway. If you'd et it when you should ye'd had it and, anyway, don't be ye wasting yer temper fightin' for things like pie, that's here to-day and away to-morrow. It's a long way worse for him that has the mean feelin' than it is for you, so it is." In her excitement Pearl went back to her Irish brogue. Tommy by this time was a long way down the road, still making his small legs fly, thinking that the avenging Bugsey was in pursuit.

So intent were the children on the pie dispute that they did not hear the approach of a buggy behind them, until Sandy Braden with his pacing horse drove by. When he saw Pearl he reined in with a sudden impulse.

"Will you come and ride with me? I'll drive you home," he said, addressing her. "Bring that little chap with you," he added, noticing the shortness of Danny's fat legs.

Pearl a.s.sented to this, and she and Danny climbed into the rubber-tired buggy.

They drove for a short distance in silence, and then, pulling his pacer to a walk, Mr. Braden said: "I have always wanted to tell you, Pearl, that I did not break my word that day. I left word with the bartender not to give Bill Cavers any liquor, but he did give it to him, and I have been sorry ever since about it, and I wanted you to know."

"I am glad you told me," Pearl answered quickly, "for I've often been sorry for you, thinkin' what sad thoughts you must be havin'."

"My thoughts are sad enough," he said gloomily, "for it was my whiskey that killed him, even if I didn't hand it out to him myself."

Pearl did not contradict him.

"Isn't it queer how things happen?" she said at last thoughtfully.

"G.o.d does His level best for everybody! He tries to take them easy at first, to see if they'll take telling, and if they do, all right; but if they won't take telling, He has to jolt them good and plenty. But He always knows what He's doin'."

"I'm afraid I have not such unbounded faith in the Ruler of the Universe as you have," he said at last "Bill Cavers didn't get exactly a fair deal."

"Oh, don't worry about Bill Cavers now," said Pearl quickly. "Bill's still in G.o.d's hands, and G.o.d has a better chance at him now than He ever had. G.o.d never intended Bill to be a drunkard,--or you to be handing liquor out to people; you can bank on that. And he never intended Mrs. Cavers to be all sad and discouraged. G.o.d would do good things for people if they would only let Him, but He has to have a free hand on them. When you see people goin' wrong or cuttin' up dog, you may be sure that G.o.d didn't put it down that way in the writin's.

Some one has jiggled His elbow, that's all. And it's great how He makes it up to people, too. Now, you'd be surprised to see how cheerful Mrs. Cavers is. When I went over after our threshin' to take her the money--"

"What money?" he interrupted.

Pearl hesitated. "Well, you know we took their farm when they left it, and there was some cleared on it, and the house is better than none, and so we gave her a little to help her and Libby Anne to get ready to go back to her folks down East."

"How much did you give her?" he asked.

"Two hundred dollars. She didn't want to take it, but really was glad of it, and Pa and Ma and all of us have been feeling better ever since. But I was goin' to tell you how cheerful she is, and Libby Anne is happier than she used to be. Poor little Lib, she's so thin and pale, she's never had a good time like other children."

Sandy Braden winced at her words, for an illuminated conscience showed him what had cheated Libby Anne out of her childhood.

"Poor little kid!" he said.

"I knew," said Pearl, after a pause, "that day that Jimmy and I went in with the onions that you didn't really know what a mean business you were in, or you wouldn't do it. You did not look to me like a man that would hit a woman."

"That's the part of it I can't forget," he said bitterly. "I can't forget the look of that thin little wisp of a woman, and Lord! how she glared at me! She could have killed me that day. I don't go much on religion, Pearl. I don't see much in religion, but I certainly would not hit a woman if I knew it."

"Where did you learn that?" Pearl asked quickly. "You wouldn't know that if it wasn't for religion. Mr. Burrell was telling us last Sunday that there's no religion teaches that only ours. You say you don't go much on religion, and still it's religion that has put any good in you that there is, and don't you forget it."

"That's not saying much for it, either," he said gloomily.

"Well, now, I think it is,"--said Pearl. "In lots of countries you'd pa.s.s for an awful good man. It's on'y when you stood up beside Christ, who was so good and kind and straight, that you can see you're not what you ought to be. If it wasn't for the Bible and Christ we wouldn't know how good a man should be."

"I haven't read the Bible for a goad many years," he said slowly. "I don't believe I ever read much of it."

Pearl looked straight into his face, and said without a minute's hesitation: "Well, I'll bet you a dollar some one read it for you and pa.s.sed it on to you."

Sandy Braden looked straight ahead of him, down the deeply tinted prairie road, at the hazy outlines of the sand-hills, with their scattered spruce trees, blurred now into indistinctness--that is, his eyes were turned toward them, but what he really saw in one of those sudden flashes of memory which makes us think that nothing is ever entirely forgotten, was a cheerful old-fashioned room, with a rag-carpet on the floor and pictures in round frames on the wall. The sun came in through the eastern windows, and the whole place felt like Sunday. He saw his mother sitting in a rocking-chair, with a big Bible on her knee, and by her side was a little boy whom he knew to be himself. He saw again on her finger the thin silver ring, worn almost to a thread, and felt the clasp of her hand on his as she guided his finger over the words she was teaching him; and back through the long years they came to him: "Love one another as I have loved you." He remembered, too, and smelled again the sweet-mary leaves that were always kept in his mother's Bible, and saw again the cards with big coloured birds on them that he had got at Sunday-school for regular attendance, and which were always kept between its pages; and while he mused on these things with sudden tenderness, there came back again the same numb feeling of sorrow that he had had when he came home, a heartbroken boy, from his mother's funeral that day so many years ago, and buried his face in the sweet-mary leaves in the old Bible, and blotted its pages with his tears; for it seemed more like her than anything else in the house. He remembered that the undertaker's black mat with its ghastly white border was still in the front window, where the coffin had rested, and that the room smelled of camphor.

Pearl saw that memory was busy with him, and said not a word.