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Chapter 2

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Celia read the words over mechanically. She was not thinking so much of what they said, as she was of what her aunt had written, or rather of what she had not written, and what could be read between the lines, by means of her knowledge of that aunt and her surroundings. In other words Celia Murray was doing exactly what the words on the white ribbon told her not to do. She was charging herself “with the weight of a year.” She had picked up the cross of the coming months and was bending under it already.

Her trouble was aunt Hannah. Oh, if she could but do something for her. She knew very well that that little sentence about being a burden on Nettie meant more than aunt Hannah would have her know. She knew that aunt Hannah would never feel herself a burden on her niece Nettie,—for whom she had slaved half her life, and was still slaving, unless something had been said or done to make her feel so; and Celia, who never had liked her cousin-in-law, Hiram, at any time, for more reasons than mere prejudice, knew pretty well who it was that had made good, faithful, untiring aunt Hannah feel that she was a burden.

Celia’s eyes flashed, and she caught her hands in each other in a quick convulsive grasp. “Oh, ill could but do something to get aunt Hannah out of that and have her with me!” she exclaimed aloud. “But here am I with six dollars and a half a week; paying out four and a quarter for this miserable hole they call a home; my clothes wearing out just as fast as they can, and a possibility hanging over me that I may not suit and may be discharged at any time. How can I ever get ahead enough to do anything!”

She sat there thinking over her life and aunt Hannah’s. Her own mother and Nettie’s mother had died within a year of each other. They were both aunt Hannah’s sisters. Mr. Murray did not long survive his wife, and Celia had gone to live with her cousins who were being mothered by aunt Hannah, then a young, strong, sweet woman. Her uncle, Mr. Harmon, had been a hardworking, silent man who supplied the wants of his family as well as he could, but that had not always been luxuriously, for he had never been a successful man. The children had grown fast and required many things. There were five of his own and Celia, who had shared with the rest,—though never really getting her share, because of her readiness to give up and the others’ readiness to take what she gave up. Somehow the Harmon children had a streak of selfishness in them, and they always seemed willing that aunt Hannah and Celia should take a back seat whenever anyone had to do so, which was nearly all the time. Celia never resented this for herself, even in her heart; but for aunt Hannah she often did so. That faithful woman spent the best years of her life, doing for her sister’s children as if they had been her own, and yet without the honor of being their mother, and feeling that the home was her own. She had never married, she was simply aunt Hannah, an excellent housekeeper, and the best substitute for a mother one could imagine. As the children grew up they brought all their burdens to aunt Hannah to bear, and when there were more than she could conveniently carry, they would broadly hint that it was Celia’s place to help her, for Celia was the outsider, the dependent, the moneyless one. It had fallen to her lot to tend the babies till they grew from being tended into boys, and then to follow after and pick up the things they left in disorder in their wake. It was she who altered the girls’ dresses to suit the style, and fashioned dainty hats from odds and ends, turning and pressing them over to make them as good as new for some special occasion. And then when it came her turn, it was she who had to stay at home, because she had nothing to wear, and no time to make it over, and nothing left to make over, because she had given it all to the others.

Then had come the day—not so many weeks ago: Celia remembered it as vividly as though it had happened but yesterday; she had gone over the details so many times they were burned upon her brain. And yet, how long the time really had been and how many changes had conic! The boy came up from the office with a scared face to say that something had happened to Mr. Harmon, and then they had brought him home and the family all too soon learned that there was no use in trying to resuscitate him,—all hope had been over before he was taken from the office. Heart failure, they said! And instantly following upon this had come that other phrase, “financial failure,” and soon the orphans found they were penniless. This was not so bad for the orphans, for they were fully grown and the girls were both married. The three boys all had good positions and could support themselves. But what of aunt Hannah and Celia? Nettie and Hiram had taken aunt Hannah into their family, ill-disguising the fact that she was asked because of the help she could give in bringing up and caring for the children, but Celia had understood from the first that there was no place for her.

She had been given a good education with the others, that is, a common school course followed by a couple of years in the High School. She had her two hands and her brights wits and nothing else. A neighbor had offered to use her influence with a friend of a friend of a partner in a city store, and the result was her position. She had learned since she came that it was a good one as such things went. She had regular hours for meals and occasional holidays, and her work was not heavy. She felt that she ought to be thankful. She had accepted it, of course, there was nothing else to be done, but she had looked at aunt Hannah with a heavy heart and she knew aunt Hannah felt it as keenly. They had been very close to each other, these two, who had been separated from the others, in a sense, and had burdens to bear. Perhaps their sense of loneliness in the world had made them cling the more to each other. Celia would have liked to be able to say “Aunt Hannah, come with me. I can take care of you now. You have cared for me all my life, now I will give you a home and rest.” Ah! if that could have been! Celia drew her breath quickly, and the tears came between the closed lids. She knew if she once allowed the tears full sway, they would not stay till they had swept all before them, and left her in no fit state to appear before those dreadful, inquisitive boarders, or perhaps even to sell ribbons in Dobson and Co.’s on Monday. No, she must not give way. She would read that other letter and take her mind from these things, for certain it was that she could do nothing more now than she had done, except to write aunt Hannah a cheering letter, which she could not do unless she grew cheerful herself.

So she opened the other letter.

It was from Rawley and Brown, a firm of lawyers on Fifth Street, desiring to know if she was Celia Murray, daughter of Henry Dean Murray of so forth and so on, and if she was, would she please either write or call upon them at her earliest possible convenience, producing such evidences of her identity as she possessed.

The girl laughed as she read it over again. “The idea!” she said, talking aloud to herself again as she had grown into the habit of doing since she was alone, just to feel as

if she were talking to someone. “If they want to identify me, let them do so. I’m not asking anything of them. If I’m I, prove it! How very funny! What for, I wonder? There can’t be a fortune, I know, for father didn’t have a cent. I’m sure I’ve had that drummed into my head enough by Nettie, and even uncle Joseph took pains to tell me that occasionally. Well, it is mysterious.”

She got up and began to walk about the room singing to herself the old nursery rhyme:

“If it be me, as I suppose it be,

I’ve a little dog at home and he’ll know me;

If it be I, he’ll wag his little tail,

And if it be not I, he’ll bark, and he’ll wail.”

“Dear me!” said Celia, “I’m worse off than the poor old woman who fell asleep on the king’s highway. I haven’t even a little dog at home who’ll know me.” She sighed and sat down, picking up the white ribbon that had fallen to the floor. Then she read it over again carefully.

“How like aunt Hannah that sounds!” she said to herself, as she read the poem slowly over, ‘Child of the Master, faithful and dear.’ I can hear aunt Hannah saying that to me. She was always one to hunt out beautiful things and say them to me as if they had been written all for my poor self. If aunt Hannah had ever had time, I believe she would have been a poet. She has it in her. How entirely I have been doing just exactly what this poem says I must not do: choosing my cross for the coming week. Yes, and bending my arm for to-morrow’s load. I have been thinking what a dreary Sunday I should have, and wondering how I could endure it all day long in this ugly, cold room. And I won’t stay down in that mean parlor and listen to their horrible singing. It wouldn’t be right anyway, for they have not the slightest idea of Sabbath keeping. Last Sunday was one hurrah all day long. I wonder what that verse at the top is—‘His allowance was a continual allowance.’ I declare I don’t remember to have ever read it before. But trust aunt Hannah to ferret out the unusual verses. I must look it up. Second Kings: who was it about, anyway? The twenty-fifth chapter. Oh! here it is!” She read:

“And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evil-merodach king of Babylon in the year that he began to reign did lift up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison;

And he spake kindly to him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon;

And changed his prison garments: and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his lip.

And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.”

Celia paused and read the verses over again.

She began to see why her aunt had sent it to her, and more than that why her heavenly Father had sent it to her. It was the same thought that was in the bit of a poem. God was taking care of her. He was a king and he was able to lift her head up out of prison, if this was a prison, and set her even on a throne, and change her prison garments, and more than that give her an allowance of grace to meet all the daily needs of her life. A continual allowance: she need never worry lest it should give out. It was “all the days of her life.” And aunt Hannah was his also. He would care for her in the same way. There was nothing to be done but to trust and do what he gave her to do. Perhaps it was unusually hard for her to do that. She had always been so accustomed to looking ahead and bearing burdens for others and planning for them. She recognized her fault and resolved to think more about it. Meantime, obviously the next duty for her to perform, and one by no means a cross, was for her to write a long cheery letter to aunt Hannah, who she could easily see was homesick for her already, though it was but a week since they had been separated. She gathered together her writing materials, drew her chair a little nearer the poor light, put on her heavy outdoor coat, for the room was chilly, though it was only the latter part of October, and began to write; thinking meanwhile that she could perhaps make a pleasant Sabbath afternoon for herself out of the study of Jehoiachin, who was so much a stranger to her that she had hardly remembered there was such a person spoken of in the Bible.

The letter she wrote was long and cheerful. It abounded in pen pictures of the places and things she had seen, and it contained descriptions in detail of the different boarders. She tried not to tell the disagreeable things, for she knew aunt Hannah would be quick to understand how hard it all was for her to bear, and she would not lay a feather’s burden upon those dear hard-worked shoulders. So she detailed merry conversations, and made light of the poor fare, saying she had a very good and a very cheap place they all told her and she guessed they were’ right.

She also drew upon her imagination and described the dear little home she was going to make for aunt Hannah to come and rest in and spend her later years, and she told her she was going to begin right away to save up for it. She made it all so real that the tears came to her eyes for very longing for it, and one dropped down on the paper and blotted a word. She hastily wiped it out, and then took a fresh page, for aunt Hannah’s eyes were keen. She would be quick to know what made that blot. She paused a minute with her pen in air ere she closed the letter. Should she, or should she not tell aunt Hannah of that letter from the lawyers? No, she would not until she saw whether it came to anything, and if so, what. It might only worry her aunt. There were worries enough at Hiram’s without her putting any more in the way. So she finished her letter, sealed and addressed it, and then ran down to put it in the box.

As she returned from her errand into the misty outdoor world, and closed the door behind her shivering, glad she did not have to go out any more, she met the tall, lanky cook in untidy work dress and unkempt hair. Celia noticed instantly that it was curly hair and black, like the one she found in the stew the night she came. She was passing on upstairs but the cook put out her hand and stopped her.

“Say,” she said in familiar tones, “I wish you’d jes’ step into Mis’ Morris’ room and stay a spell. She’s took dreadful sick this evenin’, and I’ve been with her off an’on most all the time, an’ I’ve got pies yet to bake for tomorrow, an’ I can’t spend no more time up there now. She ought to have someone, an’ the rest seems all to be gone out ’cept that or lady up there, an’ she’s gone to bed by this time, I reckon.” Celia could do nothing but consent to go, of course, though the task looked anything but a pleasant one. Mrs. Morris had never struck her pleasantly. She enquired as to the sickness. The woman didn’t exactly know what was the matter. No, there had not been any physician sent for. “There wasn’t no one to go in the first place, and, secondly, doctors is expensive things, take ‘em anyway you will, medicine and all. Mrs. Morris can’t afford no doctors. She’s most killed with debt now.”

Celia turned on the stairs, and followed the woman’s direction to find Mrs. Morris’ room.

Over in her mind came those words she had read a little while ago.

"Daily, only, he says to thee,

“Take up thy cross and follow me.”

She smiled, and thought how soon the cross had come to her after she had laid down the wrong one of a week ahead, and tapped softly on Mrs. Morris’ door, lifting up her heart in a prayer that she might be shown how to do or say the right thing if action were required of her. Then she heard a strained voice, as of one in pain, call “Come in,” and she opened the door.

A Daily Rate

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