A candid critic, and other stories for girls

Front matter

Chap.'^25f^opyright No.

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5 "

Contents

XVI. To Serve or to be Served, 149

XVII. A Happy Change, 158

XVIII. In Due Season, 167

II Alice Gannetts Vacation

I LIMB up, ^ May — hurry ! Now then! does it close yet, Kate?”

A shout of laughter, and Nell and May, red-faced and indignant, gazed at Kate with a silent demand for the reason of her untimely mirth. Kate grew sober presently, though there were still bright tears in her eyes from the excess of her enjoyment.

“ If you two could see how you look, perched on the top of that unhappy trunk, you’d come off and laugh too. Close? Not much. Not by four inches. And until you take out that paint box, and your precious botany, and four or five dresses, it isn’t going to close. Miss Nell, for all your positiveness about being able to pack a car-load or so of stuff into one unoffending trunk.”

Nell and May sat digging their dainty heels into the gray canvas cover of the abused trunk, declaring that if the paint box and botany had to come out, Kate herself should have the fun of carrying them to the station, and up the hill at Woodlawn.

Woodlawn ! There was magic in the name, and trunk and packing were forgotten as the three merry friends chattered over the prospect of six weeks spent in that delightful place.

“ Papa never made so happy an investment as that, girls,” said gleeful Nell. “A great big, cool house, orchards, vegetable gardens, horses, fresh air, flowers, vineyards, hammocks — oh, everything that is different from the stifling town ! Mamma has asked just as many friends as the house can accommodate, to spend the time there with us, and oh, I am so glad that you can both go.”

Kate, who sat in the broad, low window, suddenly exclaimed, “There goes Miss Gannett — she’s coming in ! ” and a click at the gate confirmed her statement.

“You needn’t ring,” called Nell. “Come across here into the cool, and I’ll be maid and attend to you.”

The face underneath the old gray turban smiled gratefully as Nell invited her in through the window.

“ Come in ; this is a new fashion, but you’ll find it cooler inside ; and here’s a fan.”

“ Thank you, I can’t stop ; I must hurry home in time for my afternoon pupils. I wanted to leave this ‘ Mission Journal ’ for your mother. Please tell her she will find the statistics she was hunting for in this number. How cool you look, girls. Thank you, no, I have not time, for Willie Douglas comes at one, and it must be nearly that now. Good-bye.”

For a few moments the girls silently watched the thin, gray figure hurrying off down the hot street.

“Giving to missions, and wearing in July a gray woolen gown that is four years, old and as hot as — as — her fervor ! ”

“ Teaching school from one year’s end to another, with private pupils all through vacation, an old, fretful mother to support, and no recreation or rest.”

B

“ Living in a three-room cottage that is like an oven, and without a green thing in sight. Poor Miss Gannett ! ”

Then all three girls applied their fans with vigor, warm at the very thought of it all.

When presently Kate and May, arm in arm, departed for their respective homes, Nell, at the window, stared absently till the last vestige of their sun-umbrellas and light ginghams had disappeared ; then, with eyes fixed on vacancy, she dropped into a willow chair and sat like a layfigure until a small sister rushed in to announce dinner.

“Didn’t you hear the bell? What’s the matter? You’re the blankest looking thing! Come, hurry, we must all gobble to-day in spite of the physiologies, or we sha’n’t be ready to leave to-morrow.”

Nell’s silence through the dinner hour passed unnoticed in the general clamor, but after that time the young lady walked with slow step to the airy room loved by the whole family of girls, because it was “mamma’s room.” Mrs. Drew and Nurse Braxon were busy mending and stowing away in packing cases the frocks and aprons and underwear of the four smaller girls.

“What has gone wrong? Have I given you too large a share of the getting ready to do?

Are you tired out?” Mrs. Drew asked anxiously, noting the cloud on the fair face of her eldest.

“No, indeed, you mother-bird. I have finished all you gave me to do, and am ready for more. But here’s a magazine Alice Gannett left for you ; those statistics are in it. Say, mamma, do you know that Miss Gannett hasn’t had a vacation since I have known her? that she works everlastingly, lives in a bake-oven, wears hot clothes, and — oh, dear, dear ! ” and with a burst of tears Nellie Drew rushed from the room and down the stairs.

“ What possesses the child ? I never knew her to give way to an outburst like that,” and little Mrs. Drew dropped a heap of pink and white apparel, and followed tearful Nell down the stairway and into the distant library. “Now, Helen, child, what is all this about? This will never do. Where there is trouble there is usually a way out of it.”

To her surprise Nell looked up from the depths of her woe and her wet handkerchief with the brightest of smiles illuminating her face.

“ There is a way out, and I’m so glad I wasn’t too piggish to see it. Listen, you mater^ and don’t say a word. You’ve known me for fifteen happy years, and you never knew me to do a

20 AUCK GANNETT’S VACATION

thing for anybody else that was any sacrifice to myself, any real sacrifice, I mean. There never seemed to be any chance. Well, now there is a glorious chance if I manage properly, and you’ll help me, I know. I am not going to Woodlawn to-morrow. I am going to be Alice Gannett, and let Alice Gannett be me. That isn’t grammar, but it’s right. She shall go as soon as she can get ready, have four weeks of rest and real enjoyment, while I stay here with her mother, and teach those small boys their ‘ readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic.’ May I, oh ! may I, mamma?”

Mrs. Drew looked at her brown-haired daughter a little oddly.

“ Perhaps, Nellie, we might arrange, with a little crowding, to have Miss Gannett go without your staying. She might sleep with Clara, and then by putting a cot in Kdie’s room for ”

“ But her mother? The old lady can’t be left, and she can’t be taken, for she has dizzy spells and doesn’t dare ride on the cars. And mamma, if I could get her — old Mrs. Gannett, I mean — here into this house, I confess I’d enjoy it better, for I believe I should smother outright in that little snuggery of theirs. You know you have arranged to keep this house open anyway. The pupils could come here too, you know ; and surely if we should drive very slowly, and in the cool of the evening, papa and I could get the old lady over here without making her any worse. Oh, do say yes, mamma ! Think of the good it will do that tired-out woman ; and when she comes back freshened and rested, I can rush up to Woodlawn and cram six weeks’ good time into my remaining two weeks, and be just as happy as if I’d gone at first. Will you ? May I, mamma?”

Mrs. Drew herself went with Nellie that evening to Alice Gannett’s dingy little home. When the plan was unfolded the weary schoolteacher’s face changed from an expression of complete daze to greatest delight, and then to weary concern again.

“You are so very kind, I never can thank you enough ; but I couldn’t think of taking this pleasure by depriving Nellie of the good times she has looked forward to so long. She is tired too, for she has worked hard this year at school.”

“ Oh, I know I’m a terrific worker, while as to

being tired ” Then with a sudden whisk she

caught the little teacher and whirled her about before the diminutive mirror over her wash-stand. “ There now, put your face close to mine, exercise your really fine judgment, and answer truthfully, which of us looks most in need of rest.”

22 AUCK GANNETT’S VACATION

The picture in the glass was a striking one, the round, rosy cheeks, the soft, brown hair, and the laughing eyes of Nellie Drew in brilliant contrast with the pale, tired face of the thin little woman at her side. Miss Gannett could only smile in her turn, and gently pat the plump hand that held her in place before her own reflection.

“ Well, I do look like rather a poor excuse for a woman,” she said slowly.

‘‘Yes, you do, if you’ll forgive me for saying it. You look like the most untiring, devoted worker that ever lived, who, being after all but flesh and blood, has worn herself into an absolute wreck. A wreck ! That’s what you are. Now will you just tell me what reason or sense there is in your using yourself up like this? Is it kind to your pupils ? You can’t teach so well when your mental and physical powers are strained to the utmost. Is it kind to your mother? You’ll soon be as great an invalid as she, and where will be the kindness then ? Is it kind to me to deprive me of doing the one thing of all things I am most anxious to do ? I tell you, I’m a spoiled child. Miss Gannett, and it doesn’t do not to let me have my own way.”

In the end she had it.

The short jouruey to Woodlawn was postponed

AI.ICE GANNETT’S VACATION a day in order to arrange with Miss Gannett’s pupils, move the old lady to Mrs. Drew’s home, and make what few preparations Alice found necessary for her departure.

May and Kate, from being inconsolable at the thought of going without Nell, finally entered into the spirit of “ the exchange,” and went to work industriously, helping Miss Gannett make the single gingham dress in which she had indulged for her visit.

When the great hack and the little pony cart left the house, loaded promiscuously with satchels, packages, and happy people, Nellie stood on the front steps and waved them off merrily.

No four weeks ever seemed to her to fly as did the four that followed. To be sure, occasionally she wanted to shake some particularly provoking little boy out of his boots, and sometimes it was hard to bear the fault-finding of the childish old woman whose broth and gruel never seemed to be just right. But even the very dullest little boy had his good points, and the very worst whinings of the fretful invalid were as featherweights upon her spirits when she could read the breezy letters that came daily from the girls at Woodlawn.

Soon the letters began to read like a romance.

24 AI.ICE GANNETT’S VACATION

Miss Gannett had gone the first Sunday to the little town church a mile away, looking very much improved by her few days of country air and living. She had taught a class in Sunday-school and helped with an afternoon mission concert in her own sweet, self-forgetting way.

This bit of news coming from Kate had a postscript from May :

Her evident influence over her class of burly farmer boys, and her gentle enthusiasm in meeting were not lost either on the big blonde minister who sat on a back seat and watched with interest the gray-gowned stranger within his gates.

Then came a loving letter from Mrs. Drew :

Rev. Mr. Goodall called this afternoon. It seems he has known Alice some place before. I don’t understand it all ; but certainly she is the loveliest character I ever knew. I never half appreciated how much earnest Christian zeal lay under her quiet exterior.

Next from Edie :

I was in the hammick and heard them talking. He said it was all a mistake, and she cride and laffed at once and said she was old and set and had her mother. What do you gess they mean?

Nell guessed a good deal, and felt somewhat mystified and wholly delighted. Meanwhile a greater surprise was being prepared at home. Something — whether it was change of house or air or gruel, Nell had no idea — somethiijg was improving old Mrs. Gannett. She asked to sit near the window, and wanted quilt-patches to cut, gaining from this occupation much evident enjoyment. Then she grew interested in some bright news of the day in “ our advanced periodicals,” as Nell called them, and began to talk of them to the utter routing of the gruel question.

Often in the evenings, after the sun had gone down, and yet before the late twilight, Nell persuaded the little old soul to walk up and down across the lawn on the stone paving where there was no dew.

“ I’m — I’m not so dizzy-headed. Isn’t it rather unusual, my dear, for a woman of my age to walk about like this ? ”

“ Why, no, Mrs. Gannett. There was that dear old friend of mamma’s who visited us. She was — let me see — seven years older than you, and as brisk as a cricket. You aren’t an old woman. Pooh ! I mean to be playing croquet and going visiting without my glasses when I’m no older than you.”

The bent old lady straightened up a bit and laughed, not unmusically, amused and rather pleased at the girl’s cheery spirit.

“ I’ll keep it the very stillest secret,” mused Nell to herself, “and strike them all dumb with amazement when they find how, in four short weeks, my invalid, feeble only because she thought she ought to be at her age, has been metamorphosed into a happy, helpful old lady.”

Nor was it over-sanguine musing. When the four weeks were up and Alice Gannett came home looking ten years younger, she stopped in the doorway, her little hand-satchel falling with a click to the door-sill, for she couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw Mother Gannet, smiling, cheery, a basket of quilt patches at her hand, rising to greet her, even coming forward to meet her !

Nell hugged them both with some feeling under the merry words : “You needn’t have thought. Miss Alice, that you could come back looking so young and sweet and not find us young and sweet too. We’ve been girls together. Mother Gannett and I, haven’t we ? ”

The old lady’s thin lips quivered as she answered : “At least I have grown young enough to realize what a selfish, pampered old woman I have been. Alice, dear, generous daughter, with the L/ord’s help, what life is left to me shall be, for your sake, a very different life.”

“Didn’t you hate to leave them in their cramped little home again?” asked Kate and May, when the three girls were again together exchanging confidences in one of the great, cool rooms in the Woodlawn home.

“Well, not so much, you know,” Nell answered, with a comical drawl. “Why, you geese of girls, hadn’t you eyes ? I could see it when I wasn’t here. Put your ears up close, qnd don’t breathe it to a soul till I give you leave. Mr. Goodall — they were sweethearts long ago — parted somehow — Alice cried and I didn’t ask particulars — but you know that pretty parsonage over the hill — long piazza, elm trees in front, don’t you? Well, Alice and her mother will be domiciled there inside of a month ; and though Alice had prepared him for the worst, any man might envy him his mother-in-law elect. He’s a good man, and she’s a grand good woman, and,” with a quiver in her merry voice, “ I thank God for that hot day when I sat howling at home, making up my mind to forget self for once in my life, and do a humble bit for him.”

Ill

HOW JESSICA LEARNED

AY I walk in?” said good Frau Meyer brokenly ; and Cornelia, lifting herself upon her elbow, said, “Yes,” trying to smile, and then fell back again, a disconsolate heap upon the narrow bed, crying as though her heart would break.

“ Tut, tut ! for how is this ? I rub your back with my good grease. Or is it the feet ? ”

“ Oh, it’s back and feet, and — everything ! ” “In time you will get used to it.”

“ Or die,” the girl said bitterly. “ Why should I get used to it, Frau Meyer? What good will come of it in the end? Just enough bread and butter to keep cheerless body and soul together. And in the meantime I shall grow to despise human kind. Such arrogance, such self-absorption, such disregard for the feelings and comforts of others ! ”

“ Ach, I thought ! ” broke in the elder woman 28

HOW JESSICA EEARNED excitedly. “ It was not so much back and feet, as heart. I know my stout-courage friend give up never so quick to ache of body. But ache of heart — that is different. Well, now, liebchen^ tell it out. Was it the big, fat woman who says, ‘ Hustle up here and cut me twenty yards red vanity?’ or was it the man of one lung and two livers who scold because his change come in silver, not bills.”

Cornelia laughed in spite of herself at the droll, good-natured mimicry ; and as the cheery, motherly soul began to rub her tired back briskly, she said with grateful penitence, “ Dear Frau Meyer, I was a wicked sinner to fret you with these silly tears. I ought to be ashamed to complain when you are here to brace me up and comfort me just as any own mother might. But they are all alike ; heartless, soulless, caring only for themselves and their pleasure. To-day it was really the last straw when one elegantly dressed girl priced everything at our counter, had me tear down and sort over goods until my arms tingled to my shoulders, asking, ‘ Will it fade ? ’ ‘ How wide ? ’ and paying no

attention to my answers, until she finally went away without buying anything, and brought me a reprimand for not having sold to so patient and long-searching a customer. Do you blame

HOW JESSICA LEARNED

me for aching, Frau Meyer, when there are such things to be endured all day, and through many days to come ? I try so hard to be quick and willing and careful, but- it isn’t easy, and I feel as if I must just cry it out here at night.”

“ And so is right, if it help you.”

“It is you who help me, you dear,” said the girl, sitting up at last on the edge of the bed, and patting the plump, red hand. “ And if ever I am rich again, you shall haye such caps and gowns and good times as will do' your heart good. Surely, in the old days I was never like that careless girl who toyed with the silks at our counter to-day, and was too selfish or too indifferent to see ”

“Ach, now! You were gracious and sweet, I know, in that good time — and are now — too much to be judge for this other girl, who is better, maybe, than we know.” And then as a jangling bell sounded in the hall, the good soul bustled off, calling back, “ I send Minna to show you that stitch for your muff.”

A moment later Cornelia, answering, “ Come in,” to a rap at her door, was startled to see, instead of Minna, a handsome figure in furs stepping airily into her little room.

“ I’ve been reading about you poor shop-girls,” said the figure blithely, “ and when we girls gave

HOW JESSICA EEARNED our last bazaar for the poor and the heathen, I just determined to use some of the funds for you.’’

A hot flush was rising to Cornelia’s pale face, but her visitor, not seeing it, or supposing it to come from pleasure, continued patronizingly :

“ I selected you this afternoon of all the ones I tested, because you didn’t lose your temper the whole hour you waited on me. You see I wanted to be sure our charity was worthily bestowed, so I had myself made the committee to see to it, and I’ve put in the whole afternoon. Here is five dollars for you,” and she thrust a bank-note into Cornelia’s hand.

Cornelia, still standing, a bright spot glowing in either cheek, dropped the money as though it had burned her.

“ I am not in need of charity,” she said hotly, “ excepting such charity as Christian people are supposed to bear each other. I find none of it in the girl who gives me an hour’s unnecessary work that she may insult me afterward. Take your money. You never should have entered here had I known your errand.”

When the door of that bare room banged forcibly shut, no one could have told which girl was the more angry, more ashamed — the one without or the one within.

HOW JESSICA EEARNKD

“ Charity ! Charity ! ” Cornelia groaned. “ Where was my own that I dared order her from my room ? ”

The figure in furs, hurrying down the darkening street, blinked two shining tears from her long brown lashes, and shook her head wrathfiilly as she did it. With swift-flying feet she sped through the narrow streets and into the broad avenue, to “go and tell Dell all about the horrid, stuck-up, insolent thing.’’

She burst in like a gale upon the two girls sitting in the glow of the firelight in Della’s beautiful home.

“ Dell ! Sue ! I’ve done it ! And great good it did ! I’ll never pity poor shop-girls again ; ungrateful things ! She isn’t nearly so tall as I, but she made me feel inches smaller, and she flung open her door like a queen to hurry me

out. But let me tell you ” and drawing up

a chair, and throwing back her heavy wrap, she recited graphically the whole story.

“ Perhaps she didn’t need it, anyhow,” Sue ventured consolingly.

“Not need it? She was as shabby as a beggar, and her room was about as comfortable as our barn, and not half so well appointed. Here, Dell, you’re treasurer. Take the money. I’ve had enough missionary work to last me a good

HOW JESSICA EEARNKD while. That piece of grandeur in twenty-cent mixed cotton has cured me of my sorrow for the indigent poor.”

“The indignant poor, in this case,” amended Sue, as the door closed upon Jessica’s stylish figure.

Then she and Della looked at each other and laughed.

“ Poor Jess ! If one could only buy tact by the yard, what a dear girl she might become.”

“Yet she doesn’t realize and never will, I suppose, that she always rubs folks the wrong way and brings her troubles upon herself. Perhaps she’s not to be blamed for lack of tact.”

“ I don’t know. Sue. There is a kind of tact that comes simply from genuine kindliness and sympathy. If Jessica had this — but I’ve no doubt she was patronizing to the last degree in this case, and any spirited girl would resent it. I, for one, am interested in this girl. Works at Black’s at the silk counter, she said, and lives far out on Olive Street.”

“ Della ! ” Sue suddenly clutched her friend excitedly. “ I wonder if this isn’t that slender little blonde who comes to our church, wears gray, and always sits back near the door, on the right ? ”

“ What makes you think so ? ” c

HOW JESSICA learned

“Why, I’ve been trying for a long time to think where I’ve seen that face, and I believe it was at Black’s at that very counter. I will find out, anyway. And let’s see if this twenty-cent girl who lives in a barn — was that what she said? — can’t be helped in a better way. She looks like a bright, sweet, overworked girl, and I don’t suppose her life is any too wildly happy.”

By the following Sunday Sue had “ settled for sure ” the identity of the girl in gray with the girl at Black’s ; and Della, had she seen it, would have understood why Sue was late at church that day and had to sit far back just behind the “ impudent shop-girl,” who looked modest and humble enough in her quiet gown, with her thin, sad face. She would have understood too, why Sue had so carefully supplied herself with two hymn books, that she might naturally offer one, with the brightest of smiles, to the girl in front.

The next day Sue professed a burning eagerness for a shade of old rose surah, and apparently absorbed in the search for it at Black’s silk counter, suddenly looked up to exclaim, “ I beg your pardon, but aren’t you the Miss Vaughan who attends our church and sings such a clear, rich contralto ? ”

Cornelia flushed with pleasure.

“ I attend Dr. Steven’s church,” she assented.

HOW JESSICA EEARNED

“ my name is Vaughan, and I think you are the young lady who was kind enough to pass me her hymn book yesterday.”

“ Then you will be kind enough to do something for me, I hope. We are planning the loveliest cantata for our Mission Circle, and we are quite in despair because Mademoiselle Teboir, who always took our alto parts, has gone away, and we have not known where to get another voice strong enough. It isn’t so very hard, and you’ll only have to run it over a time or two in the evenings. We pay ten dollars — little enough to make it a tremendous favor, if you will do it.”

To Cornelia, working for six dollars a week, the sum seemed munificent.

“ If — if you think I could do it.”

“ I am sure you could. That was an utterly new hymn we had yesterday. Didn’t you read it at sight ? ”

Cornelia nodded. “I used to study music before — a long time ago,” she said.

Thus it came about that Cornelia practised with the young music lovers in the pretty cantata, and was received so cordially, and so much as though she had always been one of them, that her old views of the selfishness and arrogance in the world began to fade away.

HOW JESSICA EEARNED

The ten dollars helped her scant support, but the warm friendliness helped her heart and soul as no Aladdin’s wealth ever could have.

Jessica, seeing these things, actually learned some new lessons in charity, and went home the night of the cantata singing to the air of Cornelia’s sweetest solo, “ Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly.” Then she added under her breath, “I’ll help her too — out of that store and into pleasanter places ; and wait until I show them that I have learned how to do it.”