Читать книгу Mildred Keith - Complete 7 Book Collection - Finley Martha - Страница 17

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"Zeal and duty are not slow:

But on occasion's forelock watchful wait."

—Milton.

"The impudent thing!" exclaimed Mildred to her mother with a flushed and angry face; "putting us and our maid of all work on the same level! Visit her? Not I, indeed, and I do hope, mother, that neither you nor Aunt Wealthy will ever cross their threshold."

"My dear, she probably did not mean it," said Mrs. Keith.

"And now let us go on with our story. You have all waited quietly and politely like good children."

"Gotobed Lightcap! Lightcap! Gotobed Nightcap!" sang Cyril, tumbling about on the carpet. "O Don, don't you wish you had such a pretty name?"

"No, I wouldna; I just be Don."

"There, dears, don't talk now; sister's going to read," said their mother. "If you don't want to be still and listen you may run out and play in the yard."

"Somebody else tumin'," whispered Fan, pulling at her mother's skirts.

Mildred closed again the book she had just resumed, rose and inviting the new comer to enter, handed her a chair.

She was a tall, gaunt, sallow-complexioned woman of uncertain age, with yellow hair, pale watery blue eyes, and a sanctimonious expression of countenance.

Her dress was almost austere in its simplicity; a dove-colored calico, cotton gloves of a little darker shade, a white muslin handkerchief crossed on her bosom, a close straw bonnet with no trimming but a skirt of plain, white ribbon and a piece of the same put straight across the top, brought down over the ears and tied under the chin.

"My name is Drybread," she announced with a slight, stiff courtesy; then seating herself bolt upright on Mildred's offered chair, waited to be addressed.

"Mrs. or Miss?" queried Mrs. Keith pleasantly.

"Miss. And yours?"

"Mrs. Keith. Allow me to introduce my aunt, Miss Stanhope, and my daughter Mildred. These little people too belong to me."

"Gueth we do so?" said Don, showing a double row of pearly teeth, "cauth you're our own mamma. Ain't she, Cyril?"

"Do you go to school, my little man?" asked the visitor, unbending slightly in the stiffness of her manner.

"Ain't your man! don't like dwy bwead, 'cept when I'se vewy hungwy."

"Neither do I," chimed in Cyril. "And we don't go to school. Papa says we're not big enough."

"Don! Cyril! my little boys must not be rude," reproved the mamma. "Run away now to your plays."

"They're pretty children," remarked the caller as the twain disappeared.

"Very frank in the expression of their sentiments and wishes," the mother responded smiling.

"Extremely so, I should say;" added Mildred dryly.

"Is it not a mother's duty to curb and restrain?" queried the visitor, fixing her cold blue eyes upon Mrs. Keith's face.

"Certainly; where she deems it needful."

Mrs. Keith's tones were perfectly sweet-tempered; Mildred's not quite so, as she added with emphasis, "And no one so capable of judging when it is needful as my mother."

"Quite natural and proper sentiments for her daughter, no doubt. How do you like Pleasant Plains?"

The question was addressed more particularly to Miss Stanhope, and it was she who replied.

"We are quite disposed to like the place Miss Stalebread; the streets are widely pleasant and would be quite beautiful if the forest trees had been left."

"My name is Drybread! a good honest name; if not quite so aristocratic and fine sounding as Keith."

"Excuse me!" said Miss Stanhope. "I have an unfortunate kind of memory for names and had no intention of miscalling yours."

"Oh! then it's all right.

"Mrs. Keith, I'm a teacher; take young boys and girls of all ages. Perhaps you might feel like entrusting me with some of yours. I see you have quite a flock."

"I will take it into consideration," Mrs. Keith answered; "What branches do you teach?"

"Reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and English grammar."

"I've heard of teachers boarding round," remarked Mildred, assailed by a secret apprehension; "is that the way you do?"

"No; I live at home, at my father's."

Miss Drybread was scarcely out of earshot when Ada burst out vehemently.

"I don't want to be distrusted to her! she doesn't look distrusty, does she, Zillah? Mother please don't consider it!"

"But just say yes at once?" asked mother playfully, pressing a kiss upon the little flushed, anxious face.

"Oh no, no, no! please, mamma dear;" cried the child returning the caress and putting her arms lovingly about her mother's neck. "You didn't like her, did you?"

Mrs. Keith acknowledged laughingly that she had not been very favorably impressed, and Zillah joining in Ada's entreaties, presently promised that she would try to hear their lessons at home. A decision which was received with delight and a profusion of thanks and caresses.

Mildred was glad to find herself alone with her mother that evening for a short time, after the younger ones were in bed; for she had a plan to unfold.

It was that she should act as governess to her sisters, and the little boys, if they were considered old enough now to begin the ascent of the hill of science.

"My dear child!" the mother said with a look of proud affection into the glowing animated face, "I fully appreciate the love and self-devotion to me and the children that have prompted this plan of yours; but I am by no means willing to lay such heavy burdens on your young shoulders."

"But mother—"

"Wait a little, dearie, till I have said my say. Your own studies must be taken up again. Your father is greatly pleased with an arrangement he has just made for you and Rupert and Zillah to recite to Mr. Lord.

"The English branches, Latin, Greek and the higher mathematics, are what he is willing to undertake to teach."

Mildred's eyes sparkled. "O mother, how glad I am! Will he open a school?"

"No; only hear recitations for a couple of hours every week-day except Saturdays, which he says he must have unbroken for his pulpit preparations.

"Your father thinks he is very glad of the opportunity to add a little to his salary; which, of course, is quite small."

"Then we study at home? I shall like that. But he won't take little ones?"

"No; none that are too young to learn Latin. Your father wants Zillah to begin that now; and he hopes that a few others will join the class—some of the Chetwoods, perhaps."

Mildred's face was all aglow with delight; for she had a great thirst for knowledge, and there had seemed small hope of satisfying it in this little frontier town where the means for acquiring a liberal education were so scant and poor.

"So you see, daughter, you will have no lack of employment," Mrs. Keith went on; "especially as with such inefficient help in the kitchen and with general housework, I shall often be compelled to call upon you; or rather," she added, with a slight caress, "to accept the assistance you are only too ready to give."

"It is too bad!" cried the girl, indignantly; "that Viny doesn't earn her salt! I wonder how you can have patience with her, mother, if I were her mistress I'd have sent her off at a moment's warning long before this."

"Let us try to imitate God's patience with us, which is infinite;" Mrs. Keith answered low and reverently; "let us bear with her a little longer. But indeed, I do not know that we could fill her place with any one who would be more competent or satisfactory in any way."

"I'm afraid that is quite true; but it does seem too hard that such a woman as my gifted, intellectual, accomplished mother should have to spend her life in the drudgery of housework, cooking, mending and taking care of babies."

"No, dear; you are taking a wrong view of it. God appoints our lot; he chooses all our changes for us; Jesus, the God-man, dignified manual labor by making it his own employment during a great part of his life on earth; and 'it is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord.'

"Besides, what sweeter work can a mother have than the care and training of her own offspring?"

"But then the cooking, mother, and all the rest of it!"

"Well, dear, the health, and consequently the happiness and usefulness of my husband and children, depend very largely upon the proper preparation of their food; so that is no mean task."

"Ah, mother, you are determined to make out a good case and not to believe yourself hardly used," said Mildred, smiling, yet speaking in a half petulant tone.

"No, I am not hardly used; my life is crowned with mercies, of the very least of which I am utterly unworthy," her mother answered, gently.

"And, my child, I find that any work is sweet when done 'heartily as to the Lord and not unto men!' What sweeter than a service of love! 'Be ye followers of God as dear children.'"

"Yes," said Aunt Wealthy, coming in at the moment; "'as dear children,' not as servants or slaves, but doing the will of God from the heart; not that we may be saved, but because we are saved; our obedience not the ground of our acceptance; but the proof of our love to Him, our faith in Him who freely gives us the redemption purchased for us by His own blood. Oh what a blessed religion it is! how sweet to belong to Jesus and to owe everything to him!"

"I feel it so," Mrs. Keith said, with an undertone of deep joy in her sweet voice.

"And I," whispered Mildred, laying her head in her mother's lap as she knelt at her side, as had been her wont in childish days.

They were all silent after that for many minutes, sitting there in the gloaming; Mrs. Keith's hand passing softly, caressingly over her daughter's hair and cheeks; then Mildred spoke.

"Let me try it, mother dear; teaching the children, I mean. You know there is nothing helps one more to be thorough; and I want to fit myself for teaching if ever I should have my own living to earn."

"Well, well, my child, you may try."

"That's my own dear mother!" exclaimed the girl joyfully, starting up to catch and kiss the hand that had been caressing her. "Now, I must arrange my plans. I shall have to be very systematic in order to do all I wish."

"Yes," said Miss Stanhope, "one can accomplish very little without system, but often a great deal with it."

Mildred set to work with cheerfulness and a great deal of energy and determination, and showed herself not easily conquered by difficulties; the rest of that week was given to planning and preparing for her work, and on the following Monday her long neglected studies were resumed and her duties as family governess entered upon.

These took up the morning from nine to twelve, but by early rising and diligence she was able to do a good deal about the house before the hour for lessons to begin.

Her mother insisted that she must have an hour for recreation every afternoon, taking a walk when the weather permitted; then another for study, and the two with Mr. Lord left but a small margin for anything else; the sewing and reading with mother and sisters usually filled out the remainder of the day.

Sometimes her plans worked well and she was able to go through the round of self-imposed duties with satisfaction to herself and to that of her mother and aunt, who looked on with great interest and were ever on the watch to lend a helping hand and keep hindrances out of her way.

But these last would come now and again, in the shape of callers, accidents, mischievous pranks on the part of the little ones or delinquencies on that of the maid of all work, till at times Mildred's patience and determination were sorely tried.

She would grow discouraged, be nearly ready to give up, then summon all her energies to the task, battle with her difficulties and for a time rise superior to them.

But a new foe appeared upon the field and vanquished her. It was the ague, attacking now one, and now another of the family; soon they were seldom all well and it was no uncommon thing for two or three to be down with it at once. Viny took it and left, and they hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry.

Governessing had to be given up, nursing and housework substituted for that and for sewing and reading, while still for some weeks longer the lessons with Mr. Lord were kept up; but at length they also had to be dropped, for Mildred herself succumbed to the malaria and grew too weak, ill and depressed for study.