A Daily Rate (27 page)

And they were to take a real wedding trip, too, like all the girls in the stories Mamie had read, in the days when she used to fancy Mr. Harold Adams held the key for her of all such delights. They were going to Atlantic City to a hotel for a whole delightful week, and then they were going to see Mamie’s mother, and all her little brothers and sisters, and her gruff, hard-working father. After that Bob Yates would take his bride to visit his married brother and sister out in Indiana—the far West, Mamie called it—and then they would come back to their little house and their new furniture, and their dear church and their respective Sunday-school classes. It was all very beautiful, and Mamie felt very happy and all the boarders felt happy for her. She went back in memory to the time when Mrs. Morris was there, and felt, rather than thought, how different her life was now, and in fact how different everything was, and thanked God for the change. She thought of Carrie Simmons with a pang, and wished that she could have done something for her. Perhaps, if Miss Grant bad come sooner Carrie might have been saved. Mamie had so far forgotten her old pride that she actually felt a little glad that Carrie could not look in from all her own sorrow and misfortune and shame and misery, in which she had heard she dwelt, and see her own joy and happy surroundings.

Miss Grant had gone down to the kitchen to watch things while Molly Poppleton got on her best gown for the ceremony, and everything was progressing toward the last exciting minute, when the door-bell rang. The second girl who was setting chairs in the dining-room in the best possible way to economize room, went quietly to the door, her neat blue and white striped gingham and white waitress-apron and cap making a decided contrast to the slattenly Maggie who used to answer the door in Mrs. Morris’ time.

The large oldish-looking woman, and the tall, grizzled man, unmistakably a farmer, who stood together on the step stared at the girl when the door was opened, in undisguised amazement.

“Why!” said the woman at last, looking up at the number over the door as if mistaken in her whereabouts, “isn’t this,—at least—isn’t this a boarding-house?”

“Yes, it is,” responded the maid, “won’t you walk in? Miss Grant is busy just now, that is she will be in a minute, but I guess she can see you first. Did you want to get board?”

She had ushered them into the bedecked parlor, which happened at the moment to be entirely uninhabited, as the boarders were all in their rooms donning their gala attire.

But she saw that they had evidently not heard her question, so telling them to be seated, she went for Miss Grant.

The strangers, however, did not sit down. Instead, they stood staring around.

“For the land sake!” ejaculated the woman at last, looking around her more and more bewildered.

“Wal, it’s pretty nice, ’pon honor, M’ria, I wonder now you ever give it up for an ole fellow like me,” and he looked at her quizzically.

But the look was lost this time. She was taking in the familiar pattern of the carpet, which somehow looked strangely bright, and noting all things new and old about the room.

Then came Miss Grant with her soft grey cashmere, made more lovely by the cloud of white tulle she wore about her neck, which seemed to blend so tenderly with the creamy white of her hair.

She stood a moment looking doubtfully at the visitors, seeing something familiar about the woman’s face, but for an instant not recognizing her.

“Miss Grant, don’t you know me? I’m Mrs. Morris leastways that used to be me name. I’m Mrs. Sparks now. I married out there in Ohio, and I’m real comfortably fixed. He”—nodding her head toward the man—”has a farm and a nice house, and owns several houses in the town besides. But I couldn’t rest comfortably noways, a-thinkin’ of you an’ the hole I left you in, an’ at last me husband found out what was the matter, an’ he just brought me on to see how you was gettin’ along, and to say he’d help you out of it, if you got badly stuck and pay some of the bills I left behind me, but when we got here everything looked so kind of different, somehow I couldn’t think ‘twas me own house. You don’t look as if you was hard up. What’s the meanin’ of it all ennyway, an’ what’s goin’ on? Are you expectin’ company?”

Miss Grant’s face shone with welcome and her greeting was cordial, even in the midst of this busy time.

“We’re going to have a wedding in half an hour,” she said, “and you’re just in time. They will both be delighted to have you here for they are two of your old boarders. And you can relieve your mind about me, for I’m not in any hole at all, and coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me in some ways. I’m grateful to you for giving me a full-fledged boarding-house. I find every month that I am getting on a little more financially. It isn’t great riches, but it is sure.”

“A wedding! For the land sake!” said Mrs. Morris- Sparks, sententiously.

After Miss Grant had excused herself in haste, to answer a call from Molly, the guest called after her.

“It must be that nice niece of yours, Miss Murray, but I didn’t never think she’d take Bob Yates, she used to be so awful stiff with him, but land alive, you never can tell!”

Miss Grant smiled to herself as she hurried down the hall. She would not explain now, as the visitor would soon see for herself.

That evening, after all the guests were gone, and the bridal pair had departed, Miss Grant took Mrs. Morris- Sparks, and slipping out the front door, let her in by a latchkey to the adjoining house which had for months been closed, with a “For Rent” sign in the window. This however had disappeared. She carefully locked the door behind her, and turning up the gas, pointed out the place where wide double doors had been roughly drafted on the wall between the two houses. She also enlarged upon some other improvements, among them a wide bay window to be added in both first and second stories of the front of the house. Then she took her upstairs, and showed a suite of rooms beautifully furnished, and told the story of how the minister had bought this house and furnished these rooms for himself and Celia, and that the houses were to be connected, and the remainder of the room used to enlarge the boarding-house, in which scheme their hearts were deeply interested. She told her, too, how with careful looking to the little details she had been enabled not only to make both ends meet, but to have a trifle over, and how she hoped in the coming year with the enlargements and her present experience actually to make it a paying business.

And Mrs. Morris-Sparks looked and listened, and shook her head, but all she could say was, “For the land sake! Who would ‘a’ thought it!”

HIRAM and Nettie Bartlett had been talking a good deal lately about running down to Philadelphia to see aunt Hannah and Celia. Hiram was feeling that a little ready money in his business would enable him to get through a hard time which he saw ahead. Nettie was missing aunt Hannah dreadfully, as the hot days grew longer. They had decided that it would be a good thing to forget and forgive, and open their home and as much of their hearts as was necessary to their relatives. Aunt Hannah would manage the kitchen, and Celia would manage the children, and Hiram would manage Celia’s money. Having decided matters thus, and made some changes in the arrangements of the rooms, to suit the new order of things, they began to feel very sure that it was to be. Of course aunt Hannah and Celia were thoroughly tired of living in a boarding-house by this time, and would welcome the change, and they had but to speak the word and they would fly back to Cloverdale. But before they came, it would be a pleasant change to take the children to Philadelphia for a visit.

No sooner had they decided this than Nettie wrote to aunt Hannah.

The letter reached Philadelphia in the midst of plans for Celia’s wedding. They read it together, Celia and aunt Hannah, and looked at one another in dismay. Somehow, in the joy of the life they were living, they had forgotten to write Nettie anything about Celia’s proposed marriage. Perhaps it was but natural, as Nettie very seldom answered aunt Hannah’s long letters, which had been written at regular intervals at first, until she began to feel that they were not desired. But now they both felt that Nettie must be invited.

Celia summoned all the cousinly feeling she had ever possessed for Nettie, and wrote her a nice letter, putting into it a little touch of her sweet girlish joy over the happiness that had come to her. She finished with a cordial invitation to them all to come on, though the addition to the family at this time would be extremely inconvenient.

Celia did fret a little over their coming. Hiram would be disagreeable and Nettie would want to manage everything, and the children would be always about when they were not wanted.

She was sitting one evening thinking about it, with brow knit in troubled thought, when Mr. Stafford came in. He watched her a moment, and then taking both his hands he placed them over her ruffled brow and smoothed the wrinkles out. Then he bent and kissed her forehead fondly.

“What is the matter dearest?” he said. “I mean to make it my business always to keep that troubled look away from your dear face.”

“Oh, Horace! How can I help it? I have tried and tried, but I do not seem to be able to conquer the habit. Indeed, I am ashamed of it. Can you not tell me how I can conquer it?”

“Only by casting all your care upon him, who careth for you. Listen Celia, have you ever heard this?

“Wherefore should we do ourselves this wrong, 

Or others, that we are not always strong; 

That we are ever overborne with care,

That we should ever weak or heartless be, 

Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer,

And joy and strength and courage are with thee?”

Then Celia opened her heart to him and told him the story of her winter, beginning with her birthday and the little bookmark aunt Hannah had sent.

“And I thought then, Horace,” she went on, “after that money came to me, my ‘daily rate’ for ‘all the days of my life’ that I would never doubt anymore because I had money, and with that I would be able to relieve most of the other anxieties. But I found it wasn’t so. I began to fret about other things, and then after I got money, I wanted love, and now I have that, I find I’m still fretting.”

“It’s because you don’t remember that it’s Tor every day,’ dear, and that means for every need of every day. You trust for one set of things, but you think you have to worry along and look out for another set. Here is a quaint old poem I came across the other day that I cut out and put in my pocketbook to read to you some time. It fits in right here, let me read it.

“I have a never-failing bank,

My more than golden store; 

No earthly bank is half so rich,

How, then, can I be poor?

“Tis when my stock is spent and gone, 

And I not worth a groat;

I’m glad to hasten to my bank,

And beg a little note.

“Sometimes my banker smiling says

Why don’t you oftener come? 

And when you draw a little note,

Why not a larger sum?

“Why live so niggardly and poor, 

My bank contains a plenty;

Why come and take a one-pound note, 

When you can have a twenty?

“Nay, twenty thousand ten times told 

Is but a trifling sum,

To what my Father has laid up 

For me in God the Son.

“Since, then, my banker is so rich,

I have no need to borrow, 

But live upon my notes to-day,

And draw again to-morrow.”

Nettie Bartlett settled herself for the homeward trip from Philadelphia with a discontented look. She slapped Johnnie when he went to get a drink—which he did the first fifteen minutes of the journey—because he stepped on her toes. She jerked the baby up who was endeavoring to pick a piece of orange peel out of a pool of tobacco juice on the floor, and then settled into her discontented Silence again. She was thinking about the fall sewing and house cleaning, and the endless darning and baking and cleaning, with no aunt Hannah to fall back upon. Occasionally, she reflected upon the bride’s pretty dress, or had visions of Celia in her cloud-like veil looking up with happy eyes into her husband’s face, and a half jealous feeling shot through her heart. She knew how Celia felt, or thought she did. She had felt so herself, but of course all such nonsense was passed. She looked gloomily across at Hiram, who was staring stolidly out of the window, with his inevitable newspaper lying across his knees. Then she curled her lip and told herself that Celia would soon have the sentiment taken out of her by the prose of everyday life.

“You made a great mistake by not cultivating that minister-cousin-in-law, Nettie,” remarked Hiram, snappily. “I talked to him every chance I got, but it takes women and compliments and that sort of thing to work on men, and especially ministers, I guess. You ought to have invited them to our house for part of their wedding trip. I’m dead certain he’s rich. Did you see all that furniture he’s fixed out for Celia? He’ll spoil her the first thing off.”

“You made a great mistake yourself, when you let aunt Hannah, and Celia, too, go away from our house, and you can’t ever undo it. Yes, I saw the furniture, but his mother sent it, for Celia said so. We might have had a few blessings, and our children would have been brought up right, if aunt Hannah had been with us. She always brings a blessing wherever she goes, and we’ve had nothing but ill-luck since she left us,” and Nettie put her handkerchief to her eyes and wept while the train sped rapidly through the darkness.

Some weeks later, Celia seated in the pleasant study of the suite of rooms which were her new home, and yet her old home, engaged in the delightful task of classifying and placing in a cabinet the various clippings which her minister husband had gathered about him during his bachelor years, came upon this poem. She paused to read it and smiled with a little echo of the peace it spoke in her heart, and bent her head to thank her Father it was true.

The child leans on its parent’s breast, 

Leaves there its cares and is at rest; 

The bird sits singing by his nest,