The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted Part 22

"What is it?" she asked, yawning.

"My cheek. Can't you see? Toothache. It's all swollen up, and it hurts."

Hannah roused herself a little more, then shut her eyes quickly. She didn't want to laugh at Catherine.

"Can't you do anything for it?"

"I suppose so, but it won't go down in time for Sunday-school, and who will take my cla.s.s?"

Hannah groaned. "Who would ever get up in the middle of the night and worry about a Sunday-school cla.s.s, when they had a toothache? It's unnormal! Go back to bed, unless there is something I can do for you.

Can't I call your mother?"

"No, there's no use bothering her. I know what to do well enough, but I am so worried about the cla.s.s."

"O, go along to sleep. I'll take your old cla.s.s."

Hannah was asleep herself before Catherine had finished sighing with grateful relief and returned to her own room.

An hour later, Hannah woke with a start to the consciousness that something unpleasant had happened. Almost immediately that vagueness gave way to irritating clearness. She got up and peeped into Catherine's room. She was sleeping, but the swollen cheek left no room for hope that the whole episode was a nightmare. Hannah dressed quietly, frowning the while at her unconsidered offer of the early morning.

"I do think this town would be twice as nice if there weren't any children in it. They spoil everything. I never taught anybody anything in all my life. And I never went to Sunday-school either, except in Germany. She will just have to get some one else," she fussed. "A promise like that doesn't count. I was so sleepy I didn't know what I was saying."

With unwelcome plainness she recalled the facts that Dorcas and Polly had cla.s.ses of their own, Bertha and Agnes were out of town, and Dot and Win and Bess belonged to another denomination.

"Why couldn't she have waited till Alice came? She's always ready for things like that. O, dear. I suppose I'll have to try. Catherine would keep a promise herself, if she made it in delirium tremens!"

She stole down stairs before any one was stirring, save Inga in the kitchen, found a Bible and took it over to the window-seat, where she opened it gingerly.

"I wonder where they begin," she thought. "Might as well look Genesis over first, to refresh my memory." She spread the thin pages open, and began to read. Outside the open window the birds were noisily celebrating the sunny morning. Inga ground the coffee. A bell rang for early service somewhere. Hannah's eyes wandered from the page.

"'And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.' It sounds just like poetry," she thought. "But what could I tell youngsters about it? They would be sure to want to know just how the waters were kept off the firmaments. I hope--no, I know, Elsmere _is_ in that cla.s.s!" In silent horror, Hannah sat staring out of the window. Memories of Catherine's Sunday dinner talk swarmed back into her mind. She had thought the stories amusing: how Elsmere had chewed gum and put it into the collection envelope; how Perdita Osgood had described in vivid detail her seasickness of a summer before; how the little Hamilton girl had asked personal and embarra.s.sing questions of Catherine herself. It had sounded funny, when Catherine told the tales in her quiet way,--but to be alone with them for an hour! Hannah's heart failed her entirely.

She shut the Bible and marched up to Catherine's room. Catherine was dressing, as far away from the mirror as possible.

"Hannah, dear," she called, seeing the brown hair and blue eyes through a crack in the door. "Do come in. You don't know what a dear you were to take that cla.s.s. I went straight to sleep, and didn't mind the pain nearly so much after that. It worried me so. You see, the Sunday-school is so small and I had been over and over it in my mind, and couldn't think of any one who would do. It's the last cla.s.s any one is ever willing to take."

"Why?" asked Hannah, her prepared refusal suspended.

"O, because it's so big, and there are all ages of little people in it.

But you'll do beautifully. Children always love you. Do you know what the lesson is?"

Hannah hesitated. Then a glance at Catherine's distorted face made her ashamed of herself, and she answered bravely:

"No. What is it? I'll have to study up a lot."

"You'll find plenty of material in those leaflets and books in the pile there on the table by my Bible. It's about the Good Shepherd. And if you're going down, will you ask mother to come in before breakfast? I don't believe I've been doing the right things."

So Hannah, laden with Helps and Hints, went slowly down stairs again, and after having sent Dr. Helen up to see her afflicted daughter, resumed her place in the window-seat and put her mind resolutely on the subject of the lesson.

"'Bring in the 23rd Psalm,'" she read in one suggestion. "That's good. I know that much and I can make them repeat it the whole hour, if nothing else comes into my head. How is she, Dr. Helen?"

Dr. Helen smiled ruefully. "She will be all right after a while, but it is a pity, isn't it? You were a good girl to relieve her mind about that cla.s.s. She cares so much about it. Good morning, Frieda! _Hast du gut geschlafen?_"

The Three Gables household was a church-going one. Hannah, in her white gown with sweet-peas scattered over it, met the doctors in the hall.

"Is Frieda late?" she asked, putting on her gloves. "It isn't like her."

"No, but she begged so hard to stay with Catherine whose state seems to waken deeps of pity in her, that I couldn't refuse. She said she would do anything for her, even to reading poetry!"

They all laughed, for Frieda's English reading was distinctly lacking in smoothness, and her rendering of poetry would doubtless be harrowing.

"That would hurt Catherine more than the toothache," said Hannah, "but they will find something better to do," and she walked sedately down the path between the doctors, her Bible and Quarterly in her hands, wondering if martyrs on the way to the stake chatted on indifferent topics, and noticed birds and bees and gra.s.shoppers.

Meanwhile Catherine and Frieda up stairs were surprising themselves and each other. The first glimpse of Catherine's swollen cheek had roused Frieda's sense of mirth, but compa.s.sion for physical pain followed quickly.

"_Ach weh! Weh! Schade! Schade!_" she had murmured in a deep sympathetic tone, which Catherine found unexpectedly soothing.

Accustomed as she had always been to brisk remedial measures, and beyond those, to wordless pity and a deliberate ignoring of the evil, she was interested and touched by this demonstration. She had felt shy with Frieda from the first, wishing so earnestly to know her well and win her love that she could not be perfectly simple and natural with her. This shyness had combined with the little aloofness, which every one felt in Catherine, to shut Frieda's heart. But this morning the barriers were down. Catherine, instead of being perfect, exquisite, was nothing short of hideous. The agent had proved that she could look absurd. Here she was shown mortal to the point of needing help from Frieda. What made Hannah feel awkward and useless, caused Frieda to come to the front, competent and tender. She made Catherine cozy with pillows, and sat beside her, speaking, in tones which carried healing and comfort, of all sorts of interesting and delightful things and places. She told stories of her school in Germany, of her home and Hannah's visit, of her little friend who had been to a birthday party at the palace, of the strange "church social" to which Hannah had taken her in Berlin, of her rides with Herr Karl in the Tiergarten, rapturous descriptions of the Tiergarten itself, dropping unconsciously into German phrases, her eyes shining and her cheeks taking on an unwontedly charming color, while Catherine lay and listened, entranced, as though she were in a world where pain had no power.

It was not so pleasant at the little gray church. Hannah, all through the sermon, wrestled mentally with the parable. It seemed to her it was a very slippery parable! She would no sooner highly resolve to hold it till she had wrenched its moral from it, and reduced that moral to terms which the youngest babe could surely comprehend, than she would find that the elusive subject had slipped from her grasp, and her whole mind would be fixed upon the problem of how long it would take a fly to crawl all the way across the expansive back of Mrs. Graham, who sat in the pew in front.

She went through the service like a well-constructed automaton, rising, sitting, singing even, with no notion of what she was doing or why she was doing it. She bowed her head with the others for the benediction, and then the soft stirring and cheerful tones of greeting about her, told her that her hour was come.

The superintendent directed her to "Miss Smith's cla.s.s." To her final dismay, she found that that meant a seat on the platform in full view of the congregation. The little church was barely more than a chapel, and the chorus choir had two pews upon the platform. Here, it seemed, for purposes of segregation, Catherine held her flock during the interminable opening exercises, after which she led them to their own room in the bas.e.m.e.nt. As one in a dream, Hannah went to the seat pointed out to her. Margaret Kittredge and Peter and Perdita were already present. The little Hamilton girl came in with two unknown others. Then more and more. The little girls settled themselves fussily, getting up frequently to crush their stiff starchy skirts into place. Their wide-brimmed hats interfered when they moved and they were never still.

The little boys huddled together, and punched each other without motive, crowding each other off the seat, and showing the pennies they held in their moist little palms.

The superintendent tapped his bell. The noisy groups of the Sunday-school at large lapsed into an approach to order, the teachers staring consciously ahead with an excess of propriety, and the children alertly refraining from anything more riotous than fumbling with hymn-books. Hannah's own charges felt the change in the atmosphere, and quietness fell upon them. She welcomed it gratefully, aware that it was in no wise due to her own effort, and spreading a hymn-book open for the first song, stooped to allow the small boy next her to look on, then lent her voice as freely as she could to the chirping chorus. As the exercises continued, she became rather more accustomed to her prominent seat, and, inspired by Dorcas Morehouse's austere countenance in the front row below her, she even turned once and looked down the squirming row beside her, shaking her head gravely at Perdita, who was showing signs of uprising. Peter caught the look of reproach and pa.s.sed it on to his twin with interest, hauling her into her place with a tug which resulted in a loud parting of gathers. The Bible reading over, "birthdays" were called for, and the little Hamilton girl trotted importantly forward to the superintendent's table, where she let seven pennies drop from her fat fingers into a yawning frog, receiving in exchange a printed text. Acknowledging this courtesy with a jerky bow, she switched her way back to the pew she had left, and crumpled herself into a s.p.a.ce not half wide enough to hold her. The minister rose to lead in prayer. Hannah bowed her head devoutly, trusting in the power of example. She was conscious of the heavy breathing of Margaret beside her, due to the unwonted strain of pressing her chin close to her chest.

The minister's voice droned on and on, but Hannah was sending up a fervent pet.i.tion of her own, and for a brief s.p.a.ce heard nothing.

Then--Bang! "I want to sit by Her." There was a thud of falling bodies, and Elsmere, late but ardent, plumped himself into the place at Hannah's right, from which he had forcibly removed a little boy with fat red legs, which were now waving in the air. Hannah felt herself as red as the evicted legs, and as the prayer came to an abrupt stop, would have given worlds to be able to flee and hide her mortified face.

At a tap from the bell in the superintendent's hand, the cla.s.s slipped to the floor, shook out its skirts and grasped its caps. The organ started up wheezily, and every one burst into song: "See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on!" as Hannah, heading the wiggling line of wandering-eyed children, got somehow off the platform and into a little bas.e.m.e.nt room which had been equipped for primary work with chairs of varying heights, a great colored chart and a mission map.

There she breathed more freely. Whatever the next half-hour had in store for her, she would at least be alone with it. These fifteen wigglers had become part of her. She must blush for them as for herself, but they were not onlookers, anyhow. The mere absence of Dorcas' gaze was refreshment.

There was a brief period of settling into chairs, some mild squabbling over two desirable blue ones, a little dispute as to the privilege of pa.s.sing the envelope, and at last Hannah found that something definite was expected of her. The chart showed a brightly-colored shepherd holding in his arms a weak lamb.

"Say, won't that lamb kick him? They're awful leggy," suggested an interested youth in the first row.

"I seen a lamb onct," announced his neighbor, rocking perilously on the two back legs of her chair. "It was a ram lamb and it b.u.t.ted me in my stomach, it did. Hurt. Hurt awful."

"Huh!" grunted Perdita. "I don't believe it hurt as much as when my mother sewed my finger in the sewing-machine. Did your stomach bleed?"

"Children," said Hannah desperately. "Don't talk, please. No, Peter, not another word from anybody. Now who can tell the Golden Text?"

Dead silence.

"Doesn't any one know the Golden Text?"

"Miss Smith doesn't do that way," suggested some one. "She always says: 'Peter, you may tell us the Golden Text.'"