EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. EQUAL TO THE OCCASION EDWARD GARRETT AUTHOR OF ' BV STII.t. WATERS,' ' AT ANY COST,' 'ONE NEW YEAR'S NIGHT,' ETC. ETC. FLEMING H. REVELL NEW YORK 12 BIBLE HOUSE CHICAGO 148 & 150 MADISON ST. CONTENTS, CHAP. PAGE I. SAINT CECICILA-IN-THE-GARDEN 7 ii. CHEISSY'S FATHER, 24 in. NEXT MORNING'S NEWS, 49 IV. THE GREAT METROPOLITAN BANK, .... 63 v. MR. BENTLEY'S VERDICT, -75 VI. IN THE SKY-PARLOUR, 89 VII. HANS KRINKEN, .Ill vui. CHRISSY'S HOLIDAY, . . . . . .118 IX. AN OLD PICTURE, 132 x. CHRISSY'S TEMPTATION, 146 XI. TEN POUNDS, 156 XII. A VENTURE, 170 XIII. ESTHER GRAY, l86 XIV. AN ANNIVERSARY, 2O2 XV. TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS, 2l6 XVI. THE TWO SISTERS, . . ". ~ . . . 227 XVII. A LOAN AND A LEGACY, 236 XVIII. WHERE THE SERMON ENDED, 245 2135S44 Eqttal to the Occasion appeared in serial form In ' The Quiver, ' some years ago EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. CHAPTER I. SAINT CECILIA-IN-THE-GARDEN. ONDON, the bust- ling and the crowded, has yet retreats and soli- tudes peculiarly its own. So thought the Rev. Harold Bent- ley, as he stood in readiness for week- night service in the vestry of St. Cecilia-in-the-Gar- den, in the heart of the great city. The very name of the church told the story of the 7 8 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. remote and far different days in which it had been reared and dedicated to the worship of God. The ground on which it stood had been part of the great pleasure garden belonging to the mansion of Sir Godfrey Turner, Knight. When his young wife Cecilia died, he had detached this plot for a place of family sepulture, hallowing it by the erection of the house of God, and, in his simple old-world piety, leaving no record of his love and grief except the name that he bestowed upon it. At least so ran the local legend, borne out by many facts. For certainly the church had been built on Sir Godfrey's grounds, and considerably endowed by him ; and since many later generations of Turners had been unmistakably buried in the vaults of St. Cecilia, it was no very great stretch of imagination to believe that Sir Godfrey and his spouse themselves rested among the few unnamed and crumbling sarcophagi. Did not the ancient church plate bear the inscription ' Gifted to God and to His Church of Saint Cecilia- in-the-Garden, by Godfrey Turner, Knight, in the year of our Lord 1570'? Antiquarians indeed said that there had been an ecclesiastical foundation on that spot many centuries earlier, but that did not necessarily militate against the legend of Sir Godfrey. What more likely than that the church lands had been thrown into his demesne at the Reformation ? What more likely than that when Sir Godfrey's SAINT CECILIA-IN-THE-GARDEN. 9 mind turned to church-building, it should revert to a spot already consecrated, and he should long to devote it anew to a purer devotion ? The parish- ioners of St. Cecilia-in-the-Garden would not give up the story of the good knight and his beloved lady. Tradition further said, that when the church was built, and for long afterwards, there had stood about its quadrangle sixteen trees, four on each side. An old man, still living, remembered another old man who had seen these in their glory ; and certainly, in going about the damp little square, one could see inequalities in the paving where those trees ought to have been. But only one remained now, with its poor roots closed in under the stones, and it put forth leaves more scantily every year, though Miss Griffin, the old housekeeper of the warehouse at the corner, threw buckets of water round its trunk. The Rev. Harold Bentley was an entire stranger in the place. He did not know the church nor its vicar. He had never been in the neighbourhood be- fore, and did not even know much of London at all. The vicar of St. Cecilia's was now taking his summer holiday. A mutual friend of his and Mr. Bentley's had undertaken the duty, and had fallen ill, and so Mr. Bentley, passing through the metropolis, had taken his place for this one evening. The Rev. Harold Bentley was not a young man, io EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. though there was still a fire in his eye, and a vigour and suppleness about his commanding figure, which younger men might have envied. But there were masses of silver in his hair, and many experiences, deep and sad as well as joyful, had written out their history over the beauty of youth, which at its best is but a fair blank page. His own cure of souls lay in a great northern manufacturing town ; there he had laboured for nearly thirty years, and there he was now surrounded by a generation who had learned from their parents' example and words to honour and to love him. His church there was big and bare, guiltless of carved oak or glowing glass, but filled from aisle to gallery, from the organ-loft to the square pew where his own children sat, with throbbing, earnest life. His con- gregation was not quite an ordinary congregation ; he had gone down to the depths, and had brought up strange treasures for his King, rough, wild-looking colliers, infidel mill-hands, and weird, haggard women of every age. His hearers were old men, with emphasized histories, who knew the truth of every word he said ; middle-aged men, acting out the drama of life, shaping the politics of their country and their town, and coming to him hungering and thirsting for the great principles which must underlie the right conduct of affairs ; young men, with hands already stretching out to the future. SAINT CE C1LIA-IN- THE- GARDEN. 1 1 A vision of the /aces he was accustomed to meet from his pulpit rose before his mind's eye as he opened the door of the vestry of St. Cecilia-in-the- Garden, and peeped into the building. To him, the church seemed empty in the dusk. A few lamps were burning dimly about the reading- desk, but daylight still streamed through the great windows, which for the most part were filled with small clear panes, though all of them were gemrned with borders and shields of exquisite stained glass. The altar, with its sumptuous carvings of flower and angel, lay in deep shadow, except that some brass ornaments and the crimson velvet altar-cloth caught a single ray of light from one of the pale lamps. Upon the broad desks of each wide high pew Mr. Bentley could see great Bibles and Prayer-Books, whose first owners were probably among those whose eulogistic memorial tablets were supported against the walls by plump cherubs in black or white marble. Did anybody use those books now ? And would they ever be used again ? As Mr. Bentley looked out, the church bell ceased, and the organ its player entirely hidden from view rolled forth its deep, melodious welcome. He saw the attentive beadle, gorgeous in crimson and black, advancing, wand in hand, to conduct him to his rostrum. But where was the congregation ? i2 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. That was the question the clergyman asked while the attendant needlessly adjusted and stroked his hood and surplice. 'They are all here that's coming, sir,' said the man. ' We're pretty few on Sundays, leave alone week nights. No, the Miss Millers are not here yet ; but they're sure to come.' ' But I don't see anybody,' remonstrated Mr. Bentley. ' Oh, you will when you're in the pulpit, sir,' said the beadle, with perfect satisfaction. ' There's nine already, without the Millers, and I've never known more nor twelve for years back not even when the bishop preached,' he added, misunderstanding Mr. Bentley's concern. ' They are mostly old folks and children, and sits low. You'll see 'em all, sir, when you're mounted, and they are on their feet.' ' Well, well,' thought Mr. Bentley, as he followed the man, ' this is disheartening work. The parish may have changed from what it used to be, but certainly there are still many more people in it than seem to care for the ministrations of the Church. I scarcely know how I shall conduct a service under circumstances like these. When one thinks of the surging multitudes outside, this seems labour thrown away, and one never works well when one feels that.' SAINT CEC1LIA-IN-THE-GARDEN. 13 But as he knelt in prayer, his mood changed. The very text which he had chosen for that even- ing's meditation came back upon his own heart as by the whisper of a Divine voice ' He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.' He rose from his knees, and looked round. There was the same dusky, empty church, but he could now see the faces of his scanty auditory poor old women, ancient alms-men, apple-faced boys, pro- bably sent there to be safely out of the way of over - burdened mothers. The two belated worshippers had arrived now, and they did not add much to the dignity of the congregation, though their fresh /aces and bright ribbons gleamed in the sombre old place like flowers thrown down in a casket of ancient garnishings. They were only two young girls of sixteen or eighteen years old, daughters, probably, of some of the shopkeepers in the neighbourhood mere children in the eyes of the Rev. Harold Bentley, who had some of his own of about the same age. But the transient sense of disheartenment had passed from the good man. What was the largest audience but a congregation of units and here were the units ! Some word of his might carry a thought of cheer or consolation to one of these old folks with the patient faces and threadbare i 4 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. garments, who had borne poverty in the midst of wealth, and now hoped for nothing but the end. ' We have no right to think what our deeds may effect,' said the preacher, disregarding his notes, and speaking straight out of his own heart to , himself. ' It is our place only to see that we act rightly, and to leave the issue with God. None but He knows which is greatest and which least, what shall fade and what shall flourish. One man may be ' the adviser of a mighty potentate, whose plans an assassin's hand may cut short to-morrow ; another may be the teacher of a little child, whose future life may be a light to all mankind. The broad cornfields which a man sows may lie blasted and bare, while the little acorn he dropped unawares may grow into a great sheltering tree. It is far more to be good than to do good because being good is doing good perpetually, while attempting to do good without being good is like carrying bread to feed the hungry, and dropping poison from our garments as we pass along. 'The poor man thinks that the rich man has a chance of doing greater things than he ; the rich man thinks his poorer brother is freer for the service of God. The young think their time will come when they are old ; the old, that their opportunities have passed away with their youth. But there is no place better for us than the place we are called SAINT CECILIA-IN-THE-GARDEN. 15 to fill ; no work worthier than the work we are called to do. God made us what we are, and put us in our places, not necessarily to stay there, but to do our duty there, and to go out where it leads us. We have not to think what we might do, but what we can do. We have not to meet to-morrow's trial, but to-day's duty. In discharging it, we do meet to-morrow's trial in the only way in which it can be met we prepare ourselves and all about us for it. " Take no thought for the morrow ; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," are words often blasphemously quoted by those who seek to find in them an excuse for recklessness and indifference. They are really the utterance of a wise Providence, and a noble forecasting. They say simply, " Do not think of your next step ; is your foot sure now ? " 'From that spirit all true heroisms spring; in that spirit all good work is done. I once heard an aged woman say to a little child, " If you look at the whole length of your seam, you will never get it sewn : look only at the little bit between your thumb and finger." There was a philosophy of life in those humble words. It is not godliness to sit and dream of the heights and glories of heaven : it is godliness to advance towards them, step by step, day by day. The truly devout mind is the " present mind," which knows that God is all about it, sanctifying its homely surroundings, and which 1 6 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. seeks to do the lowliest duty as in His sight, with all one's heart, and with all one's mind, and with all one's strength. There is a story told in Scotch history, that on one occasion the king, Robert the Bruce, then a struggling patriot, sorely pressed by English troops, was fighting single-handed with many men. If he had paused to think of the future, it must have seemed as if what happened then could not matter much, for the fortunes of his country appeared so low that victory to-day could be only defeat to - morrow. Or, if he had thought about himself, he might have judged, " I am not of so much consequence ; I may as well let myself be slain or taken prisoner ; it is no use struggling so desperately." But he thought only of the present and its duty ; and that was, to struggle. And, one by one, his foes went down, and left him triumphant; and his life, passing safely on, was the life of the man who saved his nation from servitude. And it would have made a great difference to us all here if Robert the Bruce had not been found faithful on his occasion, for it was through his brave maintenance of his country's freedom that Scotland and England are united to-day not by conquest, but by peaceful union. ' Brethren, there is one ambition which can be set before all lives, however diverse. It is that each may be equal to his occasion. Then that thread of SAINT CECILIA-1N-THE-GARDEN. i 7 the world's history which is spun from our being will be sound and pure, and ready for any future strain that may come upon it. 'And remember, in being faithful, to what we should be faithful. Not to our own wills and wishes; not to the judgments of others; not to) the forms and fashions of the world. We must be faithful to God faithful to His law, which is the' foundation of all right. His law is everywhere above and below and within every possible action or circumstance. A Christian poet has told us that a room may be swept according to God's law. His law is what we familiarly call " the right way," "the right thing to do." But sometimes it is not easy to discover what His law in a matter is. It dips out of our sight, as it were, though it is certainly there. But God has not only given us a law ; He has also given us a Person a life to guide us along the way to the truth. Are you in any doubt as to ( what you should do ? as to how you should be faithful ? Pause and ask yourselves, " What would ' Jesus do?" The very thought of Him the re- membrance that He calls you " brother," " sister ; " that He did not count it loss even to die for you will make hard things easy, and dark things light ; ay, my friends, even though the behest may come at last, " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." ' 1 8 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. The clergyman sat down ; he sat in the pulpit, and forgot that the congregation would wait for his departure before they stirred. The beadle fidgeted uneasily at the foot of the pulpit stairs. ' Mr. Bentley had not preached the sermon he had meant to preach. He had spoken entirely to him- self, from beginning to end preached at his own faithlessness and discouragement preached, at last, to a pain and an anxiety which lay rankling in his own heart. It was that anxiety which had brought him up to London at this season. It had cost him many a yearning prayer and many a sleepless night. And, like most of our deep pains, it was closely interwoven with familiar happiness and with tender love and pride, for it concerned his eldest child, his son and namesake, Harold. When the people saw that the preacher forgot to come down, they rose silently and went out, one by one, waiting to speak to each other by the great carved font in the vestibule. ' That was a fine sermon,' said one poor old crone to another. ' Many's the time I've heard my good man that's gone say the very same things in his own homely way. It brought it all back to me, and makes me ashamed of the mean repining thoughts I've had lately, since he was took. "Faithful unto death " he was, if ever man was, and now he's SAINT CECILIA-IN-THE-GARDEN. 21 got the crown of life, and I ought to be proud and happy, thinking on it.' 'Ay, ay,' said another, a grey old maid, Miss Griffin by name, who lived alone with a cat in a wilderness of offices of which she had charge ; ' and I couldn't help thinking that the old woman who told the girl to look at the bit between her thumb and finger must have been very like my mother. It was just like her good common sense. I'm afraid there's no such women now-a-days. I'm sorry for the present generation of young people when I think of it.' 'You're just such a woman yourself,' said an elderly man, with a green shade over his eyes. ' I heard the doctor's parlour-maid repeating some of your sayings to her young ladies the other day, and the doctor's mother said they ought to be printed in gold. It's as well for me to tell you so. There's not so much pleasant truth spoken o' people in this world as will make them vain to hear the whole of it repeated. And one might as well repeat a good word when one can, for one never knows when a body wants heartening up.' ' I say, Jem,' said a little charity boy to his comrade, 'that was grand about the Scotch king, wasn't it ? I've heard my uncle say that it's a good breed of men or dogs that hold on it isn't the grand start, it's the pegging away, that wins any race.' 22 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. And there passed out a woman, who lingered to speak to nobody a woman clad in coarse dusty black, with a face dark and heavy. She went straight forward, with a sluggish tread. Last week the little group would have drawn apart at her coming. But to-night, after that sermon, they only moved aside to let her pass, and the grey old maid ventured on a slight grave nod. * Mother used to say it was not for us to judge, and we could afford to pity the sinner after his sins were visited on him,' said Miss Griffin to her friends, as if in apology for her courtesy. And as the lonely woman passed into the twilight street, she repeated softly to herself, 'Jesus calls me sister.' The young Miller girls were the last to leave the building, and they had youth's cheery nod and smile for their fellow-worshippers. 'Fine lassies, both of them,' commented the old man. ' But give me the younger one,' said Miss Griffin. ' You never know what young things will be till you see where their hearts turn,' observed the widow. 'I don't say what I mightn't have turned out if my old man hadn't been as good as he was.' 'A good woman gets a good husband or none at all,' said the old maid. ' There's no rule,' rejoined the widow ; ' but a SAINT CECILIA-IN-THE-GARDEN. 23 good woman will make the best of a bad job if it | falls to her. As I say o' my washing, you may\ make the dirtiest duds a bit wholesomer, but there's some that won't wash white.' They were just about to separate, when the youngest Miss Miller stepped back to the group and asked, ' Do you happen to know the name of the clergy- man who preached to-night ? ' ' Ay, Miss Chrissy,' answered the old man. ' The beadle told me he's the Reverend Harold Bentley, and he's got a big parish in the Midland counties.' ' Thank you very much,' said the girl, and tripped away. ' Blessings on her pretty face ! ' cried the old widow. ' Something in the sermon has laid hold of her too, I expect.' CHAPTER II. CHRISSY'S FATHER. HE Millers lived in a street which was almost as much a relic of old times as was the church itself. The fine old houses of the parish houses which had once been greatly affected by aged nobles and gentle dames who had sons or husbands in durance in the grim Tower hard by had long since fallen to dry business uses, the stately saloons turned into board-rooms, and the dainty china closets devoted to samples of grain or mineral. And the poor mean lanes of the parish lanes in which the Great Plague had rioted, and in which conspirators and assassins had lurked had all entirely disappeared before the demands of com- merce, and the increasing value of land. But Shield Street was something between these 24 CHRISSY'S FATHER. 25 two, and the security which generally attends a modest medium had protected it. Shield Street and its inhabitants had found place in many parochial records, but none in history. Nobody of particular importance had ever lived there. Its houses had been built for the purposes of trade, and remained to their original uses. They were not the less interesting for this their con- tinuance, only the more clearly indicating the change in times and men, telling, as they did, of days when stalwart apprentices watched their masters' wares, exposed in open booths, and customers could be expected to ascend flights of steps to make slight purchases. A picturesque street was Shield Street, with many pointed gables of varied elevation, for some of its houses were very small and lowly ; while others had considerable pretensions, even rising to back and front staircases, though for some generations past these latter had been mostly divided into two occupancies. So Shield Street still remained, but under a perpetual threat of doom. It was a source of lively interest to its inhabitants when that doom would fall some speculating on it joyfully, as giving in- creased value to their leasehold property ; others deprecating it, as if it would destroy all that they had, their last hold on a past which had more brightness for them than any future could have. 26 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Under its impending doom, Shield Street had plainly deteriorated. One does not renew what is likely to be soon destroyed. Nor do new beginnings start where continuance is not probable. The old residents might not leave Shield Street, except when they died, but as their sons got married they did not set up housekeeping there. What would be the good of planning fixtures, and measuring carpets for such corners and such floors as one was not likely to find anywhere else ? Therefore, every year took something from the life and cheer of Shield Street. Even though the old businesses were in several cases maintained, yet as the old people died out, the upper rooms of the houses were either left in dusty desuetude, or let off as offices of the meaner sort, or more generally as tenements. The Millers' residence was half of the biggest block in the whole thoroughfare. It consisted apparently of two tall thin old houses, and it was only an intimate acquaintance with their interior economy which revealed that they were really but one : that where the Millers lived consisting of the old shop, the best rooms, and the front stairway, with a wonderful dearth of special kitchen accom- modation ; and the other of a large number of small chambers, and a tortuous staircase. At the back these houses were built around three sides of CHRISS VS FA THER. 2 7 a small quadrangle. What had once closed in the fourth was not known, being only indicated on old deeds by a thin drawn line, but it was now shut in by the dead back wall of a comparatively modern edifice. The quadrangle was very small ; standing on its pavement and looking up, one seemed to be at the bottom of a well ; but at least it was private, and the little Millers had been able to perch on their back window-sills and chat and laugh with the Ackroyds, their next-door neighbours. \\ In whatever relation people stand, there is always 'somebody who takes the lead and is looked up to. And in Shield Street this was Mr. Alexander Miller, bookseller and stationer. He was quite an elderly man now, though his daughters were still girls. He had married rather late in life. Most of his neighbours were surrounded by large family connections. He stood alone. Of his history, it was only known that he was the son of a race of Scotch farmers, and that not another of the family had been seen in London. Despite the isolation of his position, it was not without its advantages to a man of high character and strongly marked good qualities. A large family connection must generally contain many elements, some dis- cordant, and the common people sometimes regard a good man with familiarity because his second cousin is worthy of contempt. There are few 28 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. people, too, so utterly without personal weakness and vanity as to be able to maintain a clear judgment respecting those closely associated with themselves ; and while the suspension of such judgment proves partiality, its exercise is currently suspected of private spite or harshness. If a man ' 'ignores the faults of his own kindred, his exhorta- ' 1 tions are received with a quiet hint to look at home. I If he looks at home and acknowledges what he sees there, he is judged to be without natural affection. Mr. Miller could be criticized only through his own individuality, and it was not very open to criticism. Further, there loomed out of this unknown history of Mr. Miller's, sundry facts apt to arrest the imagination of those who are yet at the lowest degree of reverence reverence for what is above them. His people were farmers, had farmed the same land for generations, and straightway, in his London neighbours' eyes, the bookseller's spare figure found the background of a roomy old mansion, such as they knew in the counties, with rich meadows undulating about it. Such a man ought to be an example : it was no wonder he was superior ; and it was certainly far easier for them to acknowledge this than it would have been had they known the facts about the unhewn stone cottage, with its divot thatch and its peat-blackened rafters. CHRISSY'S FATHER. 29 Also, he had had more than one brother at the University he had even narrowly missed going there himself. No wonder he was clever and dignified. Nobody else but the vicar and the doctor had had such advantages. The Cockney fancy was filled with Oxford and Cambridge with reports of boating races and Commemoration days. They knew little of the antique Scottish student's attic, and the weekly kist of meal and butter brought in by the carrier. Familiarity breeds contempt in vulgar minds. None but a man's equals are worthy to know all about him. It is doubtful whether Shakespeare himself would enjoy so supreme a fame if we knew all the homely ways and all the falls and weaknesses by which he learned the facts of life and the secrets of humanity. There was nobody now in the world who knew so much of the real man, Alexander Miller, as did his youngest daughter, Christina. Her mother had long been dead, and the father kept alive in his daughters' hearts a faint but sufficiently pleasant memory of her beauty and taste and dutifulness. Chrissy had once asked him whether she had been at all like her sisters the aunts whom she knew. He had answered gravely, ' No, not in the least.' And Chrissy felt secretly glad of his answer, but she saw also that the question had pained him. 30 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Mrs. Miller's relations had always ' kept an eye ' on the widower and his girls. They had a great respect for him a respect somehow a little mingled with fear. Therefore, though they objected to a great many of his ways, they never told him so, and only criticised them among each other. What was the use of always having cold dinners on Sunday ? Was it not ridiculously strict not to allow his girls to remain at any party later than ten o'clock ? And was it not absurd to send them to a quiet farmhouse for their yearly country holiday, instead of to some nice lively watering-place ? It might be all very well for him to know what books they read, and to become acquainted with the friends they made, so long as it could last, but that sort of thing must come to an end, since young people are young people. But, after all, it was wonderful what a well- ordered, peaceful home that was in Shield Street, and how bright the girls were. Little Chrissy might turn out a real beauty ! There could be no doubt that brother-in-law Alexander was a wise man, discounting these eccentricities, and that he would be perfect if he would discontinue them. It was Chrissy who had sat on her father's knee on Sunday afternoons, while her elder sister Helen elected to go to church with the servant. It was from his lips and the pictures of the old family Bible that Chrissy learned all her Scripture history. CHXISSY'S FATHER. 31 It was in the gloaming afterwards, with a pleasant smell of toast rising from the kitchen, that she used to hear all about the old Scotch home, and the grandmother spinning among her maids, and the studious uncle who could never be trusted to mind the cattle, and the old woman who lived by herself on the moor and was not afraid. She heard, too, much of that curious lore, in which untutored fancy stretches itself into the Unseen of the sands which came in and covered the arable fields that a wicked laird took from his brother's orphan girls, of the subterranean passage to the sea, down which an ungodly piper went in bravado and came back no more, though his pipes are still to be heard if you put your ear to the ground when the wind is high enough ; of the standing stones that the peasants could not count ; of the ghost in the abbey ruins which nobody saw save those who would not believe in it! She heard, too, about his leaving home, and how lonely he felt when he came, an unknown country boy, to f serve his time,' in the very house where he now ruled as master. The sensitive little girl almost seemed to see the shadow of the poor yoilng lad in the dim rooms ; she stood awed in the tiny gable attic where he had kneeled to pray 'for those at home,' and slept to dream of them. She had seen his poor little memorandum-books, sewn by himself, 32 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. containing his modest expenditures for clothes, and pew-rent and books not a single sixpence sliding away under the suspicious heading of 'sundries,', though many was the respectable amount disposed of under the heading ' sent home.' Nay, half- thinking aloud, he had confided the sterner struggles of later life to the reverent ears of the little maiden, and she knew that his marriage had come so late because he would not think of becoming husband and father until every penny was paid off on the business he had bought, and it was fully and fairly his own. There were little personal traits of stern independence, too the individual points of a strong type of character. 'They said I ought to name you Robina, my Chrissy,' he had narrated, 'because my rich old bachelor master's name was Robin, and he gave it to be generally understood that he would not forget his name-children. But I said no ; I'd christened Helen after my wife, your mother, and I must christen you after my own good old mother, who had got her new name in Heaven by that time, and that if my old master thought of remembering us at all, he should set more store on my honest services than on a compliment that might easily be paid from interested motives. And he did not remember us, Chrissy. But neither did he remember those who had named their children after him, and so they have CHRISSY' S FATHER, 33 in their families a standing monument of their own cupidity and of a fellow-creature's faithlessness. It's a good rule never to do for the sake of gain what one wouldnM: do for love or djjty, Chrissy. Then one is sure of one's reward at once, whether or not any comes after.' Was it any marvel that Chrissy loved her father with the deepest, most clinging devotion? Of course, she could not yet, in her dawning woman- hood, know all that he was to her. It is only time and experience which can teach us all the worth of the friends and guides of our youth. But she already knew the comfort though she could not yet appreciate the preciousness of possessing a true ideal, of which she could say, when her heart was stirred by noble precept or story, 'That is what father does ; that is just like father.' This is what she thought as she walked down Shield Street in the dusk after Mr. Bentley's sermon, and saw her father standing within the gas-lit shop, talking to somebody, whom she could not see for an intervening case. 'Father is one of those who have been faithful in all things,' she said to herself. But, as she drew nearer, she was struck with something in the expression of her father's face. It was a look she had never seen there before. Some- how it made her recall a picture she had lately c 34 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. seen, where a traveller, rowing down an unknown river, comes suddenly upon rapids whose proximity he did not suspect, and stands up and calmly confronts destruction. Her heart stood still for one moment, and then, with the swift elasticity of youth, bounded on again. What queer fancies she took sometimes ! Helen always said so. How Helen would laugh if she knew ! As the girls entered the shop, Mr. Miller's inter- locutor rose from his stooping posture. It was Mr. Ackroyd, the next-door neighbour. It was Mr. Miller's principle to be friendly towards anybody who entered into the remotest relation with him, but it takes two of one mind to be friends, and that Mr. Miller and Mr. Ackroyd were not. Mr. Ackroyd was an architect, and had done some clever work ; but he was a restless, shiftless man, ever on the eve of some great success, never achieved. He had a little plaintive, puling wife, whom everybody vaguely pitied and called 'poor Mrs. Ackroyd,' they scarcely knew why, and two children, a boy and a girl, of about the same ages as Helen and Christina Miller. 'Well, young ladies,' said Mr. Ackroyd, turning towards them, and speaking in rather a constrained tone, ' well, have you been to week-night service ? and did you get a good sermon ? ' 'Much the same as usual,' returned Helen Miller CHKISSY'S FATHER. 35 lightly. 'All sermons are good, you know, Mr. Ackroyd.' Now Chrissy Miller loved her elder sister dearly, and generally thought her the sweetest and kindest of girls. But when Helen came in contact with strangers, there was often something in her tone which jarred Chrissy. She did not seem to have a mind of her own, but to give back the mere reflection of what passed before her at the moment. Even now, she had answered Mr. Ackroyd concerning sermons with the same levity with which she knew he regarded them. Chrissy glanced at her father, lest he should be pained, and with her arm twined through Helen's, made gently to draw her on through the shop. But Mr. Ackroyd, too, was taking his departure. 'Well, Mr. Miller,' he remarked, Til say good evening. To-morrow will put us out of suspense, so we may live in hope for one more night. It is no use troubling ourselves : it is out of our power to do anything.' ' Except prepare our minds and foresee our paths,' said Mr. Miller gravely. ' Oh, well, that of course. Keep up your spirits, though. Things never turn out as bad as they look. There are a hundred ways of escaping the worst. Good-night, young ladies.' ' Helen,' said Chrissy, when they had reached 36 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. their little bedroom, and she stood, smoothing out her bonnet ribbons with thrifty neatness, ' Helen, something has happened which troubles father. Did you not hear what Mr. Ackroyd was saying ? ' 'I did not notice,' replied Helen, who was still lingering in her walking gear before the looking- glass, trying the effect of sundry bright bows against her black straw hat. ' I did not notice. Oh, but it will not be anything very serious. I think I heard something this morning about water having got into that chest of old books that father was getting from Germany, through some of Mr. Ackroyd's friends there.' ' I wonder if that is really all,' mused Chrissy. ' Of course it is,' said Helen, with cheerful con- fidence. ' What else could it be ? Besides, don't you remember what Mr. Ackroyd said that things never turn out so bad as they seem. When the books have been spread out and dried, I daresay they will be little the worse. I am sure I hope they will not,' she added, with a stronger shade of interest, ' for I want to coax father into letting us have velveteens for our autumn dresses, and he is always so strict in his rule that the first thing that must be done after any loss is to spend no money unneces- sarily till it is replaced.' ' A very good rule,' said Chrissy. ' Oh yes, of course,' rejoined Helen rather impa- CHRISSTS FATHER. 37 tiently, ' but it need not be carried out so promptly ; it could wait a little while, if one wants anything very particularly.' Chrissy did not argue that point with her sister. Nor did she feel quite satisfied that Helen was right in her conviction as to the source of anxiety. She stole down-stairs in search of her father. He was not in the little dining-room behind the shop, where at that hour he generally rested and read the newspapers, or examined the latest ancient treasure which had found its way to the shelves of the second- hand department in the bookshop. Nor was he in the narrow yard, where he kept a few growing plants which he made it his own daily duty to water and tend. She must look for him elsewhere. The shop was closed by this time, and the gas nearly turned off. Chrissy could but barely see to thread her way among the book-stands and cases to the little sanctum, called rather imposingly 'the counting-house.' It had a side light upon the shop, and somebody was evidently inside, for there the gas was burning fully. The lower part of the side light was blinded with ground glass, and though the door had two panes of glass in its upper panel, they were above Chrissy's head. She hesitated for a second, somebody might be speaking with her father on business. But when she knocked, her father's voice bade her ' come in,' 38 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. It was a very tiny bare sanctum indeed : its floor covered with waxcloth ; its only ornaments, an old- fashioned barometer, two steel engraved portraits in deep maple frames, and a dignified-looking clock perched on a lean bracket ; its furniture was equally scanty, being only two cane-bottomed chairs, a desk, standing on a plain four-legged table, and a fine old bureau, now open, and in front of which Mr. Miller was seated. That room had stood much as it did now for fully a hundred years, the furnishing having descended from one family in occupation to another. It certainly had its place in the domestic history of the house. Young wives had there shyly intruded on the business pre- occupations of indulgent husbands. There, too, wills had been solemnly signed and witnessed. And little children had stolen in to gaze and wonder at the many drawers and pigeon-holes of the roomy bureau. Even as Chrissy now entered the room, her eye was caught by a broken toy lying in one of the recesses a relic of the dead child brother, whom she scarcely remembered. Three or four of the bureau drawers were standing open, and its flap-desk was strewn with packets of papers tied up and endorsed, and sundry yellow deeds. Her father had his pen in hand, and seemed totalling up certain figures in a worn leathern-bound book, which Chrissy had only seen before on rare CHJ^ISS Y'S FA THER. 3 9 occasions. She half repented of interrupting him, but he welcomed her pleasantly. ' Well, little woman/ he said ; ' do you think that I have forgotten my supper ? Run away ; I'll be with you in a minute nay, stop, I'll come with you at once, and come back here again afterwards ! ' But Chrissy had her arm about his neck, and her cheek against his forehead. How pale it was and cold! ' Father, dear,' she whispered, ' something is wrong, is it not ? ' He turned, and, laying his hands on her shoulders, held her from him, and gazed into her sweet, earnest eyes. ' How did my little woman pick that up ? ' he asked. ' From what Mr. Ackroyd said as he went out,' answered Chrissy simply. ' Well, Chrissy,' said Mr. Miller, ' something may be wrong ; we don't know yet. We shall be quite sure about it in good time.' 'But won't you tell me what it may be?' she pleaded, laying her head again on his shoulder. ' I must not, Chrissy,' returned Mr. Miller ; ' I heard the report as a secret. I could trust you with my own secrets, Chrissy, but we must not trust any- body with secrets confided to us by other people. That is to prove ourselves untrustworthy altogether.' 40 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' It is so hard not to know what to expect ! For then how can one know what to do ? ' sighed Chrissy a little plaintively. ' And the sermon we heard to- night was about being faithful even in the least things, and equal to every occasion.' Much as that sermon had impressed poor Chrissy, she little thought what was soon to impress it on her heart for ever ! ' Chrissy, Chrissy,' said her father kindly, ' the present occasion calls for a little patience ! And that is the sort of occasion which occurs often enough in life.' ' Ah patience waiting,' said Chrissy ; ' but then we know what we are waiting for.' ' Do we ? ' asked her father, with a grave smile. ' By sick-beds, do we know whether we are waiting for life or death ? Do people know, as they rear their children, whether they will bring home pride or humiliation ? When they pray for prodigals, do they know whether the prodigals will return while they wait at the gate, or only after they are in the grave ? No, no, my Chrissy, God generally keeps us waiting in the dark.' ' With nothing to do ? ' said Chrissy, whose aroused moral energies were now longing for action, with the usual sore danger of running to waste, and expend- ing their freshness before the day of real battle. ' No, never, Chrissy,' answered Mr. Miller, holding CHRISSY'S FATHER. 41 her hand in his with a firm grasp, which she seemed to feel oh, how often, in after years ! ' Never. We may be shut up in a dungeon, or tied down to a paralytic's bed, but our loving Father never leaves us without the best work He can give His children, and that is to learn by heart to say, " Father, prepare us for whatever be Thy Holy Will, and help us to fear nothing except displeasing Thee !" ' He spoke with devout fervour. His sympathetic little daughter felt that this was no common occasion. But she was too loyal even to try to guess what might be the shadow hanging over them. Only, nestling close to him, she whispered, 'Nothing can matter to us very much, father, while we have each other.' ' God bless my little Chrissy,' he said softly ; ' nothing can matter to us at all while we all keep close to God, for then we can never lose each other. But we must not keep Helen waiting for her supper,' he said, with a rather forced return to his ordinary tone. 'And my Chrissy must not trouble herself too much. I would have spared her suspense if I could, for I know it is not the sudden blow, however sharp, which makes us crouch, so much as the sword hanging over us ! But life generally gives us both experiences.' He lowered the gas as he left the counting-house, but did not put it out, as he meant to return. As 42 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. they groped their way through the shop he struck his foot against something. ' There,' said he cheerily, ' that's the box of German books I was lamenting over this morning and they are all right, after all. Though the bottom of the chest was soaked, seemed, in fact, to have stood in water, no moisture has penetrated it.' Chrissy squeezed the arm to which she was cling- ing. She knew he mentioned this to reassure her with the thought how fears could seem well-grounded, and yet prove groundless. The light evening meal stood prepared, with Helen ready to dispense it. The Millers never thought of cultivating table elegances. But thrift and care and neatness had compassed the utmost of art. The little tablecloth, well preserved by Chrissy's delicate darning, was of pure fine damask, a relic of a former century, part of those 'household plenish- ings' which Mr. Miller had bought from his old bachelor master along with the stock-in-trade and the goodwill of the business. The crystal came from the same store, and was of heavy old cut-glass ware, while the water-jug was a veritable 'Uncle Toby' beaker, with that worthy character depicted in its upper tier of ornamentation in the enjoyment of his pipe and the contemplation of the parish church and the windmill, while beneath his feet horseman, hounds, and hare chased each other round the base. The FATHER. 43 Millers scarcely knew that these things had a money value, but they liked and treasured them for their old associations, and their own honest, substantial prettiness. An artist in still life might have been tempted to paint the homely table, with its crisp brown loaf, its freshly-cut cheese, and its dainty celery. And the picture would have told its own story of gentle housewifery and of lowly-lofty family life. Helen had been so little impressed by Mr. Ackroyd's words, and the conjectures to which they had given rise, that she had forgotten all about the matter-; and if there was an unusual gentle gravity in the demeanour of her father and sister, certainly she did not notice it. She chatted on with her usual bright gaiety, told her father the anecdotes out of the sermon, threw out a hint about the velveteen dresses, and finally informed him, in a tone wherein lay some suppressed mockery, that ' Esther Gray was in church to-night ! ' At sound of that name Mr. Miller looked up quickly. There had recently been a tragedy in that parish, a tragedy common enough in London, but sufficiently rare in that decent, business-like locality. A story of riot and dissolute living had ended in a death, about which some mystery hung. There were those who thought there was blood madly shed, perhaps ; but still blood on the hands of 44 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Esther Gray. Small wonder that her decorous fellow-worshippers had shrunk a little from that heavy-faced woman in the dingy black garments ! ' Was she indeed, poor soul ? ' saW the good man. ' I remember her when, if she had seen herself as she is now, she would have asked, " Am I a dog, that I should become this thing?" But that was beforel she knew trouble. That found out her weak points, i poor body. That always drives us up or down;'|\ and Chrissy thought he looked wistfully from one daughter to the other. ' People talk of her good looks once,' remarked Helen carelessly, ' but she never can have been pretty.' 'She was, in her way,' answered Mr. Miller reflectively. 'You might not think a flower was pretty, if you did not see it till it had been trodden under foot in a gutter. When Esther Gray was young she took after her mother, and she was a good woman.' ' Aunt Kezia says she was pretty, and that every- body said so,' observed Helen complacently. ' But then, as Aunt Kezzy must have been always plain, I fancied she only repeated the favourable verdict to show she was not spiteful.' ' Nellie/ said her father, with some severity, ' I fancy there is as much malice and envy in girls who think themselves pretty as there can possibly CHRISSY'S FATHER. 45 be in any who know they are plain. I think some- times we have a moment's share of the sight God sees with, and then some pretty faces seem ugly to us, and some *ugly faces grow sweet. If there is repentance in Esther Gray's heart to-night, I can well understand that her marred face is fairer in God's sight than it was in her young days, when the evil spirit was springing up within her. I do not mean to be stern to you, Nellie,' he said, with a strange softening, 'but I cannot bear to hear you speak lightly of fellow-creatures' terrible falls and degradations. To scoff at sin is no safeguard from \ it; it is rather like flouting at plague-stricken garments.' He bade his daughters good-night. And as they went off to their room, he returned to the counting- house, and Chrissy, looking back from the stairs, saw its side light again illumined by the fully turned- on gas. It was rather earlier than their usual retiring hour, and Christina, who did not feel quite able to rest, took up some needlework. But Helen said she was tired, and, going straight to bed, was soon sound asleep. Chrissy stitched on, feeling refreshed as the night air, coming through the open window, grew cooler and cooler. All was profoundly quiet; till suddenly there 46 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. was a sharp sound, which Chrissy knew well enough. It was the closing of a room door in the next house. The building was so solid and substantial, that though the two houses had once been one, sounds did not travel from one to the other. This sound reached her through the Ackroyds' open window and her own. It was followed up by a sound of voices. Mr. Ackroyd was speaking gruffly and sternly, and Mrs. Ackroyd retorted in high petulant tones, interrupted by hysterical sobs. Here and there an observation was put in by a quiet voice, which Chrissy readily recognised as that of their son, James Ackroyd. ' We shall know all about it to-morrow. You need not display your selfishness till you are sure it is necessary,' said Mr. Ackroyd's harsh tones. Chrissy sprang up. This had forced itself upon her hearing. But she would hear no more. She closed her window, and went back to her work. She would sit up till all was quiet, and open the casement again before she retired : it was too sultry to sleep with it closed. She sat so for fully half an hour. Then she felt the irresistible sleep of youth stealing over her. Moving softly, not to waken Helen, she drew aside the curtain and unhasped the window. The girls' bedroom was in the wing of the building, consequently it faced the wing of the Ackroyds' CHISS Y'S FA THER. 4 7 house. The window directly opposite theirs was that of James Ackroyd's room. There was a light there now, and, standing between it and the window, his figure was thrown on the blind. He was leaning on his toilet-table, with his face buried in his hands. Softly as Chrissy had moved, he heard a sound, raised his head, and, pushing aside the blind, thrust it from the window. ' Chrissy,' he said in a loud whisper, ' Chrissy Miller, is that you?' ' Yes, James,' said Chrissy hurriedly. ' It's very late ; good-night.' James and Chrissy had been friends from their cradles, and she did not usually dismiss him so curtly. But the boy did not wonder now. 'You know all about it, don't you?' he asked, with solemn mystery. ' Isn't it awful ? ' 'I don't know anything. Good-night,' said Chrissy. ' Stop, stop ! ' cried the boy. ' Do you mean to say you don't know there is something?' 'Yes, I do,' Chrissy admitted reluctantly. 'But father said he had heard it as a secret, and would tell me when I ought to know. I'll wait till I hear it from father,' she added resolutely. ' Good-night, James ; ' and the curtain dropped inexorably. It was after she had slept some time, but how long she could not say, that Chrissy woke suddenly, 48 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. starting up. Despite the open window, the room was close and hot, but Chrissy was shivering, and her heart went pit-a-pat. But all was still as death itself. ' I must have heard father's step going up-stairs/ she reflected. ' Or perhaps his room door happened to close rather noisily. What can it be that is wrong ? ' as the thought of last evening came back. ' Oh, what can it be ? I wish it was to-morrow ! How miserable poor Jem's shadow looked before he saw me ! I must just say father's prayer again, and try to go to sleep.' CHAPTER Til. NEXT MORNING'S NEWS. F T E R Chrissy's disturbed night she slept heavily towards morning, and it was little wonder that, for once, her sister Helen was first astir. It was Helen's voice carolling which awakened her. She lay drowsy for a moment, with that strange sense which most of us have known, that a burden and a shadow are coming towards us with our full con- sciousness. Then she started up. Yes ! There was that secret the Ackroyds knew already, and which she 50 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. was to know in due time. Would it be due time to- day ? Perhaps it might not be so very much, after all. Only there was that strange look on her father's face, and the shadow of James Ackroyd's bowed head on the blind ! Yet she ought to give no hint to Helen. And so Helen must go on singing. For one moment the merry tune and the gay words jarred Chrissy unbearably. * Oh, Helen, do be quiet ! ' she cried. Helen stopped instantly, and turned upon her a face of innocent amaze. Chrissy's heart instantly smote her. ' Is this how I bear trouble, even while it is far off? ' she asked herself. ' Then what shall I do if it comes ? ' Poor child ! she was inexperienced in life's deeper depths, and so how was she to know that the hardest of all blows to bear is the blow not yet fallen, and that they are indeed God's heroes who not only sub- mit to His rod, but wait, smiling, till He smites ? ' I suppose if I had any real sorrow,' she mused, ' I should want the sun to grow dark and the flowers to fade, instead of feeling sure that God must know all is well, else He would never keep the sun shining and the flowers growing. Don't leave off singing, Helen dear,' she added aloud, ' only sing a softer sort of tune.' ' What ! are you getting like the old lady father NEXT MORNING'S NE IVS. 5 1 tells of, who said " she aye liked sad sangs the best ; they garred the een to greet, wi'out wringing the heart " ? ' answered Helen, with an admirable imita- tion of the Scottish dialect. Chrissy smiled at Helen's mimicry. ' I think father himself is inclined to agree with her,' she said. ' Then I'll give you one of his favourites,' returned Helen, and straightway the clear voice was lilting, " O little did my mither ken, The day she cradled me, The lands that I should travel in, Or the death that I should dee." ' But presently she interrupted herself, to exclaim, ' How quiet the house seems ! ' ' It's quite early,' said Chrissy. 'Not too early for the sweeping up to begin in the shop,' Helen answered. ' I believe that new shop- boy is lazy I said he would be, the moment I looked at him. It is really wonderful to see the patience father has with people most unlike himself. I never 'would have hired that boy.' ' Father took him because of his imperfect German-English,' said Chrissy ; ' it stood in his way for so many situations, and it does not matter so very much for ours.' ' People who won't suit anybody else must be always made to suit us,' replied Helen. 'That's father's way, and I believe you are quite as bad.' 52 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' Hans Krinken has an honest face/ said Chrissy. ' If he is a little late to-day, I have no doubt it is an accident.' But Hans had not needed her excuses. When she left her room, leaving Helen still brushing out the coils of hair, which always occupied her attention for a longer time than her sister gave to her whole toilet, she found Hans seated in the passage, patiently awaiting the arrival of his master with the keys of the business premises, which Mr. Miller always carried to his own room. ' Have you not seen my father yet, Hans ? ' Chrissy asked, surprised. ' No, me-ess,' answered the German boy, with a ready, good-humoured smile. ' Martha the maid, she say he is not out of his room yet.' ' My father was at work in the counting-house till very late last night,' said Chrissy. ' If he is sleeping still, me-ess,' said the kindly German lad, ' don't disturb him yet for a while. I will make the more haste when he shall appear, and the shop shall be no later.' ' Thank you very much,' answered Chrissy, think- ing to herself how her father made people like him, and so turned their hired service into a labour of love. This youth had only been in his employment for a month, but what could that signify, when the good Scotch bookseller already knew more of the NEXT MORNING'S NEWS. 53 lad's history, of his past trials and future hopes, than most masters know concerning those who have served them for a lifetime, and had given him more counsel and thought than some parents bestow on their own children ? Because Mr. Miller had a living faith in eternity, he never lost a moment of time. Because he looked for a harvest, he scattered good seed broadcast. Chrissy went on into the parlour, where Martha had already set breakfast. Martha was not a bad specimen of a London general servant ; she was a little too much inclined to smart caps and dirty aprons, but she was honest and willing, had had hard experiences in former places, and, rinding it possible to please her present employers, did her utmost to do so. ' The master's sleeping sound to-day, miss,' she said. ' I've knocked at his door twice, and got no answer.' ' Poor father must have been tired out,' thought Chrissy. She felt a sudden fear stir in her heart, one of those sudden fears which great love often feels, quite causelessly. She wished Helen would come down. She wandered back to the passage, to Hans Krinken. He had gone to the side door by which Martha had admitted him, for he did not live on the premises. It was open, and he was standing there. 54 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Chrissy paused in the passage, looking in that direction. There was not much astir in Shield Street at that early hour. But the opposite shop was already open. It was a very unpretending establishment, a mere slice cut off a big leather store. It was kept by the old widow who had been at St. Cecilia's the evening before, and in it she sold small haberdashery, sweets, and newspapers. As Chrissy stood there, vaguely looking at the familiar boxes and bottles, a newspaper boy came along with his daily supply under his arm, and his paste-pot and brush in his hand. He paused to splash over yesterday's poster and daub on the fresh announce- ment sheet. Then, thrusting half a dozen papers into the shop, he went whistling on his way. Across the narrow roadway, Chrissy could read the list : ' Proceedings in Parliament. Alleged Libel by a Solicitor. Report of the Royal Scientific Society. Poaching Affray in the New Forest. Stoppage of the Great Metropolitan Bank.' ' Nothing very exciting to-day, Hans,' she said. ' No great battle, no great crime, no great speech.' Hans did not answer. Had he not heard her, or only not understood ? She stepped a little forward, and repeated her words. His broad German face looked pale, and he turned it rather from her than towards her, as he stammered, NEXT MORNING'S NEWS. 55 ' That will be one great failure, Me-ess Chrissy that bank.' Chrissy knew quite enough of Hans' antecedents to feel sure that no financial crash was likely to touch him directly. Yet he was certainly affected by this one. She asked kindly, ' Do you know anybody who is likely to be con- cerned in it ? ' ' I am afraid that I do, Me-ess Chrissy,' he re- plied very gravely, and, stepping within the passage, shut the door. 'We must call the master again,' he said, and Chrissy followed him to the foot of the stairs, and stood there listening, while he ascended and knocked at Mr. Miller's door. Hans knocked once twice thrice, each knock louder than before. But there was no reply. It seemed to Chrissy as if the dead silence was some- thing which could be heard. She repeated to herself that phrase ' the dead silence,' and her heart stood still. She could hear Helen's voice in their room, still singing, Hans came forward to the banister. * Me-ess Chrissy,' he whispered. ' Yes, Hans,' said Chrissy faintly. ' Does the master keep his key turned ? Don't you think you should go in ? ' 56 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' I must. Oh, Hans ! ' The girl waited with her hand upon the door. ' The good God go with you, Me-ess Chrissy,' said the young German, as she crept into the room. He stole in behind her ; for his sympathetic heart told him what she would find. ' He is not dead ! ' she cried. ' Oh, Hans, say that father is not dead ! ' ' He is with the good God,' said Hans solemnly. The passage from one world to the other must have been very swift and smooth. The room was in its usual simple order. The unruffled couch bore witness to no last struggle. On a little table at the head of the bed stood the extinguished candle, and beside it lay an open Bible. For a moment Chrissy stood like one transfixed. Her father's face was turned towards her. He could not be dead ! For were not his lips parting to wel- come her with the same wistful smile he had turned on her as she left him last night? And yet and yet he did not see her, for his eyes were closed. He had passed away in sleep. With one low cry, she rushed to the bed, and buried her face beside him. Only a few weeks before she had kneeled so beside a living father, and then a kind hand had been raised to caress his Chrissy's curls. That hand lay still and cold now. That slight memory that little fact NEXT MORNING'S NE WS. 5 7 brought home the whole awful truth to Chrissy's heart. ' Oh, father, father ! ' Never again. She may search earth's remotest region, but she shall never find him. She may live till her hair is as white as his was, till her steps and her senses fail, as his had not failed, but she shall never meet him in any path, by any fireside. Sharp swords pierce the girl's heart as she kneels there. Old words sound in her ears, fraught with a new meaning they can never lose again. A voice says, ' He is not here, but he is risen.' It is not the less an angel's message to Chrissy because it is homely Hans who delivers it. As her own agony yearns out into the unknown, she feels a great wave of love rush thence to meet it. Her father was longing to reach her, even as she was longing to reach him. Only he stood higher now. He must not return to her. She must go to him. Kneeling there, she saw as in a vision that the light of Faith can only illumine the path of duty. Walking with God, we walk also with those whose life is hid with Christ in Him. Henceforth, Chrissy knew what St. Paul meant when he said that whether he had been in the body or out of the body, he could not tell. 58 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. A door in the house closed a light step ran on the stair. Helen was coming down. Chrissy sprang to her feet It seemed to her that the glory of the vision departed, while the blow beneath which she had seen it remained. Only she asked, ' What can I do ? ' And when a vision ends so, it has come from God, and has fulfilled its mission. ' I must stop Helen,' was the quick resolve ; and she darted from the room. Her sister was within a few paces of its open door, but the sight of Chrissy's face arrested her instantly. ' Father is ill ? ' said Helen, with whitening lips. ' Father has been ill,' answered Chrissy solemnly. ' Oh, Helen, Helen ! bear it bravely be good and strong for father's sake.' ' He is not dead ? ' gasped the elder girl, making a movement to pass Chrissy. But the younger sister held her firmly. ' God called him very gently, Nellie,' she said. ' Don't you remember he always said he could not respond to the prayer against sudden death ? Oh, Nellie, Nellie ! ' Helen burst into wild lamentations. She could not believe that her father was really really dead. He had only fainted he was only in a fit and they were letting him die ! A doctor must be sent for. Somebody must be sent for. Anybody oh yes, and quickly ! NEXT MORNINGS NEWS. 59 ' Somebody "must be sent for, certainly ! ' said pale Chrissy, standing by her sister's side in the parlour, where she had led her. That frantic uncontrolled woe seemed like a profanation of the stately calm of the death-chamber. ' There are Mr. and Mrs. Ackroyd only next door/ cried Helen. ' Not the Ackroyds,' said Hans Krinken im- pulsively. ' Not the Ackroyds,' echoed Chrissy. And then there returned upon her the thought of the tidings her father was to tell her in due time. When would be the due time now, and who would tell her in his stead ? Oh, "how thankful she was that she had refused to snatch from James Ackroyd what her father had withheld, and so had obeyed his last wish ! ' Aunt Kezia is so far away,' cried Helen ; ' and who is to go for anybody ? ' ' There is Hans,' said Chrissy. ' Hans ! ' repeated Helen. ' You and I cannot be left alone with Martha and father, now he is ' She paused before the dreadful word. Helen had that sheer physical shrinking from death commonly found in those whose sensuous perceptions are stronger than their spiritual intuitions. ' I will go myself,' said Chrissy. 'You ! Could you leave me alone with strangers, 60 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. even if you have no feeling for yourself?' asked Helen. ' No ; Martha must go. You must tell where she is to go, and whom she is to fetch. I can think of nothing ; my head is whirling round with the shock.' 'There is Miss Griffin at the warehouse,' said Chrissy hesitatingly. ' She is kind and good, and father liked her. Be sure you don't startle her, Martha. Don't be more sudden than you can help.' Chrissy and Hans followed the weeping Martha to the door. ' Did the master have the disease of the heart, me-ess ? ' whispered Hans timidly. 'I never knew of it, Hans/ Chrissy answered, pausing. ' I know he heard something last night which troubled me. I don't know what it was.' ' I think I do, me-ess,' said Hans in a very low whisper. Chrissy shook her head. ' I don't think so,' she replied ; ' he heard it quite late, just as the shop was being shut.' 'And it was Herr Ackroyd who did whisper the bad news,' Hans went on. ' Is not that so ? ' 'I think so,' said Chrissy, astonished. 'James Ackroyd offered to tell me what it was, but I said I'd wait till father told me himself.' 'Just step you this way for one minute,' requested the German boy, stealing back to the street-door, NEXT MORNING'S NE WS. 6 1 which he opened gently, and held a little ajar, indicating to Chrissy to peer through the crevice. Like one stunned, or in a dream, she obeyed. She could see nothing but the little haberdasher's shop, with the news-board standing against its front ' Read the last of the lines,' whispered Hans. ' Now you see what the master would have told you to-day. And you know it first by no other voice.' It was not then that Chrissy appreciated the deli- cate consideration of the homely lad. 'Stoppage of the Great Metropolitan Bank,' she repeated mechanically. 'Why, what could that have to do with father ? ' ' I know he owned a share in it,' said Hans. ' Only one share ! ' echoed innocent Chrissy ; ' that could not have mattered so much. I should like to think dear father died quite naturally. It would be terrible to feel that something had killed him.' ' How would it feel if it was somebody ? ' asked the German boy of himself; and there flashed a fierce gleam through his soft blue eyes, and he clenched his teeth sternly. ' I'm so grieved that father should have had any- thing to trouble him just at the last,' sighed poor Chrissy. ' But really, if that was all, it could not have been very much ! ' Hans Krinken said nothing. 'The vessel can but hold its measure,' he philosophized. 'When the 62 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. heart is filled with sorrow, then there is no room for trouble.' ' Chrissy, Chrissy ! ' wailed Helen's voice ; ' how can you leave me so long alone ? You are thinking of nobody but yourself. I wish you would make me a little tea. What Martha had prepared for breakfast is quite cold. I feel as if I should faint. You know I am not so strong as you are.' ' Poor Nellie ! ' said Chrissy, quite compunctious. ' I really did forget you were alone ! ' She went to lift the kettle on to the hob. Why was it so heavy ? Hans saw her fruitless effort, and he understood it, and came to her help. ' I wish she would shed one little tear,' he thought, and cast about in his mind how he could strike one of those minor chords of feeling to which tears respond. But before he had hit on any kindly device, there was a muffled knock at the door, and he hurried away to ad- mit Martha, Miss Griffin, and a tall grave gentleman whom he did not know. Mr. Ackroyd had seen the group from his own windows, and was following hard on their steps. Before Hans could get the door shut he was upon them, asking them what was the matter. It was Hans who answered him. And Hans, who, under the strong feeling of that moment, had forgotten all his English, made answer in German. Perhaps it was as well for Mr. Ackroyd's comfort that he did not understand that language. CHAPTER IV. THE GREAT METROPOLITAN BANK. HE tall grave stranger was no other than the Rev. Harold Bentley. Miss Griffin and Martha had met him as they were hurrying from the warehouse to Shield Street, and Miss Griffin, know- ing, of course, who he was, had stopped him and pressed him into the service of the stricken family. It did not signify in the least to the good old maid that he was not the parish clergyman, but only a stray visitor. She wisely regarded clergymen as placed in the battle of life, like the Red Cross people in a war where each might have work specially his own, but all are bound to combat sin and to succour sorrow wherever they may be found. She did not count amiss on Mr. Bentley. He 63 64 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. listened, and followed her readily. He sought no excuse in a blow which had fallen on himself that very morning. By the crosses sent to a devout and disciplined soul it fences itself into the path of duty, and not out of it. Martha was again despatched in quest of the family doctor. And it was either when she went in search of that gentleman, or when she returned with him, that Mr. Ackroyd gained admittance to the house, though he kept in the background till the doctor and the clergyman came out from their solemn visit to the chamber of death. There was no doubt as to the cause of the death. The doctor had known that Mr. Miller had a deep- seated heart-disease, and had warned him against agitation of any sort, especially that of worry or anxiety. ' And despite the disease, a quiet-minded, brave- hearted man like him should have lived out all his days,' said the doctor. ' Something must surely have upset him terribly.' ' He heard some sort of bad news last night,' explained Chrissy, raising her strained, white face. ' And Hans Krinken that's the shop-boy says he believes my father had one share in the Great Metropolitan Bank which is stopped to-day.' The doctor and Mr. Bentley looked at each other, with a slight ominous shake of the head. They THE GREAT METROPOLITAN BANK. 65 knew the full import of poor Chrissy's words, which she did not know herself. * Terrible affair, this of the bank,' said Mr. Ackroyd. ' A great many people will be involved in it. I am afraid I'm not quite clear myself.' Everybody looked towards him. It was the first time his presence had been remarked. 'It is a ruin that reaches every way,' observed Mr. Bentley. 'My eldest son held office in the bank, and is of course thrown out of his appoint- ment by its stoppage.' ' It does not seem fair when a man like Mr. Miller gets drawn into these financial whirlpools,' said the doctor. 'His life was one of diligent work and careful saving, and it seems hard when one's prudence and economy lead up to one's ruin. And these poor girls ! ' he added in an undertone, glanc- ing towards Helen and Chrissy. ' Come away with me, dears,' said kindly Miss Griffin, putting her hand through Helen's arm. 'Come away to your own room, and keep quiet there. Your aunt will be here presently ; I've sent Martha off for her next. There's none of your papa's own folk nigh at hand, is there ? ' ' No,' said Chrissy quietly. ' My father's people were very few, and they are scattered far now. Aunt Kezia will do.' And at the door of the room she turned back to 66 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. say, 'Ought not the shop to be unlocked and opened ? ' ' Oh, Chrissy ! ' cried Helen ; ' how can you think of that ? What can that matter ? ' It was father's business,' she answered. 'She is quite right,' said Mr. Bentley quickly. He understood her feeling, that the matters to which her father had given his labour and his skill should not be thrust aside as if they were now nobody's affair. ' I know where father kept the keys,' she remarked, and went off for them. Nobody knew at any rate nobody reflected that her errand took her face to face with her dead father, that it involved her disturbing the garments he had doffed and laid aside for the last time on the previous night. Love, the gentlest teacher, ever sets the hardest tasks. But Miss Griffin and Hans Krinken, standing aside on a landing, preparing sundry little cordials and comforts for Helen, saw Chrissy pass out of her father's room with the keys in her hand and go straight to the dining-room. ' Everything is to be done to coddle Miss Helen, and Miss Chrissy is to be left to do the work,' said Hans reproachfully. 'And it is she who most wants the comfort,' he added. ' Ay, lad,' said the old lady ; ' d'ye think I don't THE GREAT METROPOLITAN BANK. 67 know that far better than the likes of you can tell me ? But it's easy giving a cup of tea, and a couch, and a few strokes and pats what Miss Helen wants. But Miss Chrissy wants God and all His promises, and who can give her those but Himself? The most and the best we can do for her is to leave her the work.' While Chrissy had gone away, the three gentle- men had held a slight conference. 'Mr. Miller has had a good business, and has always lived very quietly,' said Mr. Ackroyd, with a rather forced air of mere neighbourly interest. * He must have been a fairly wealthy man in his station. The loss involved by one share cannot mean very much to him.' ' The bank is unlimited, remember,' observed Mr. Bentley. ' If you are concerned in it yourself, sir,' said the doctor to Mr. Ackroyd, 'I am afraid you scarcely realize the gravity of your position. I am told that from three to four thousand pounds will be imme- diately called for on each share, and that will not be all.' 'Grave enough, of course, especially to a poor professional man like me,' said Mr. Ackroyd ; 'and the feeling, " that will not be all," makes it more or less alarming for everybody. But three or four thousand would not mean ruin to such an estate as 68 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Mr. Miller's must be. Oh, certainly not quite impossible ! ' The doctor said nothing, rightly holding that any knowledge of his patients' affairs acquired by him should be treated as confidentially as his knowledge of their ailments. But he knew what he knew that on the day when he warned Mr. Miller against agitation or excitement, the good man had quietly replied that his anxieties in. life were over ; he had not made a fortune, it was true, but there was just enough to keep the lassies from starvation, or to start them in careers of their own ; that if he lived he meant to train Chrissy to manage the bookselling business, and that would keep up a home for both, if they should not happen to marry. The doctor had an impression that three or four thousand pounds would have meant a good deal to Mr. Miller. The doctor had risen from poverty himself, and knew how hard it is to make a fortune when its beginnings are hampered by claims and duties, instead of being furthered by help and influence. But he kept silence, only fearing that facts would soon tell the truth but too plainly. When Chrissy reappeared with the keys, he made so as to take them from her, thinking to spare her a trial. But Chrissy held them. ' I will come too,' she said. For her father's step had been the last there, and THE GREAT METROPOLITAN BANK. 69 that made the homely places into holy places, which a stranger's foot must not be the first to invade. The doctor and Mr. Ackroyd demurred. ' Let the young lady come/ decided Mr. Bentley. Like Miss Griffin, he understood. Chrissy led the way through the shop to the counting-house. She knew that her father had spent his last hours there among his private papers. He might have left them lying about, thinking to be himself the first to enter. It was not likely, but it might be. No everything was cleared away. But the old bureau stood open, and a paper, ruled in double columns, lay on it. One column was headed assets the other debts. The sum total under the first was two thousand five hundred pounds the three or four sums set under the last were all under ten pounds. Only these were not added up; an ugly blank was left after the words, ' liabilities on one share in the Metropolitan Bank.' If poor Chrissy saw at first, she did not under- stand. And presently she could see nothing. Glancing up from the paper, her eye fell on the dead baby brother's broken toy set in the pigeon-hole of the old desk. And then a merciful mist of tears came. Oh, tender, loving father, where, oh, where are you now ? And by what token do you re- member your little Chrissy, as you remembered 70 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. youf lost baby by this little plaything ? She sat down in her father's chair, and bowed her head over her father's desk, and wept bitterly, the big tears falling on the sad paper which she did not yet understand was the summing-up of his ruin. Doctor Julius had a fit of coughing. Mr. Ackroyd softly left the counting-house. Mr. Bentley raised his hand and gently touched the bright, bowed head. That roused Chrissy. She rose, with streaming eyes, and held out the paper. 'Is that any use?' she asked. 'What should I do with that ? ' ' Lock it in the front of the desk, dear young lady,' said Mr. Bentley, very gently. ' It will be of great use the very use for which your father intended it.' He and the doctor stepped outside while Chrissy fastened up the desks and drawers and put her father's chair back against the wall. ' That retreat has been made in good order at any rate,' said the doctor, who had been in the army, and who generally used military terms when his higher feelings were keenly touched. 'But did you see what was on that paper, sir ? It seems but a sad outcome for such a life and character as I know his was.' ' But nothing we can see is the end ofwhat is, you know,' said the clergyman. THE GREAT METROPOLITAN BANK. 71 ' Ah ! ' returned the doctor, ' you are going on higher ground. Yet, when we feel how the defeat of good men disheartens us even yet, we can realize what the disciples must have felt when they stood on Calvary.' Mr. Bentley was silent. He was thinking of quiet, brave little Chrissy. It struck him afterwards that he had not thought of her as a penniless orphan, but only as a devoted daughter and a sensible girl. ' I suppose nothing more can be done till the relations come,' whispered Mr. Ackroyd, as the other two gentlemen joined him. ' My eye could not help catching the items on that paper/ he added apologetically ; ' but I am sure there is some mistake. I feel certain Mr. Miller was a rich man. Why, he was willing to lend me a hundred pounds, without any security, only a few weeks ago/ he concluded, with a little nervous titter, like that of a man who has some desperate attempt to make and wants to get it over. ' Only, of course, I could not allow that.' ' So you offered as security ? ' questioned Dr. Julius. He knew a little of Mr. Ackroyd, and was not attracted by what he knew. Besides, the doctor had seen many a sly fraud presently perpetrated on widows and orphans, for whom nothing but sympathy had been expressed in the first blush of 72 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. their bereavement. Some fact might have got omitted from good Mr. Miller's little schedule ; and if it should happen to be in favour of the dead man's representatives, then the sooner two or three people knew about it, the safer for them. ' Why why,' said Mr. Ackroyd, speaking quickly, ' I could not accept a loan at all : I did not need one. I only wanted a little ready money, and I thought, as I said to him, that I was doing him quite a favour in selling him a share in the Great Metropolitan.' ' Oh ! ' observed Dr. Julius, with a mistrustful glance ; ' one of several shares you hold, I suppose ? ' * Yes yes ; I'm considerably concerned in the bank,' returned the architect. ' It will be a terrible affair for me.' ' But not so bad as it has proved for him,' remarked the doctor drily. Mr. Ackroyd did not like the tone, but there was nothing that he could challenge in the words. ' I suppose nothing more can be done until the rela- tives arrive,' whispered Mr. Bentley. 'We had better leave these poor girls awhile with that good old lady. I shall be at the vicarage all to-day, and I shall tell her to send for me if my services can be of any avail.' Chrissy came forward to shake hands with Dr. Julius and the clergyman when she heard they were going. THE GREA T ME TR OPOLITAN BANK. 7 3 ' It was so kind of you to come, sir,' she said, looking up into Mr. Bentley's face. Her words expressed little of what was in her heart, for to his sermon she felt that she owed much of that pleasant talk with her father which would henceforth be graven on her memory with the solemnity and significance of all last things. ' I shall see you again before I leave town, my dear young lady,' he said. ' I shall make a point of seeing you. God help and bless you ! Never doubt that He will.' He was the last of the three to leave the house, and poor Chrissy followed him to the threshold. Just as he stepped out he was joined by a tall young man, whose very handsome face bore considerable traces of ill-health or mental disquietude. As he came up to the clergyman, Mr. Ackroyd raised his hat. The youth returned the salute rather slightly. ' How did you find me here, Harold ? ' asked Mr. Bentley. ' The vicarage housekeeper told me she had seen you enter this house, father,' said the young man ; 'so I came after you. Only, seeing the closed shutters, I did not ask for you, but waited outside.' 'And who is that person? I mean the person who stepped out before me, to whom you bowed. He had been in the room with me, but I never heard his name.' 74 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' He is a Mr. Ackroyd, father. He is an architect a slight acquaintance of mine.' ' Harold,' said the clergyman sadly, ' is it not a melancholy state of things when a father cannot feel prepossessed towards anybody who he sees is an acquaintance of his son's ? Oh, Harold, you young folks have the happiness almost the very dis- positions of your elders in your keeping. I am growing a soured, suspicious man since I have had so much disappointment in you. I don't even feel the present cloud over your prospects as I should. If all was well with you your very self the gloomiest prospect would soon brighten. While all is not well, what can prospects signify ? ' The youth answered nothing. Perhaps his pale cheeks flushed a little, and then he and his father walked in silence to the vicarage beside St. Cecilia-in-the-Garden. CHAPTER V. MR. BENTLEY'S VERDICT. lUNT KEZIA came and took up her temporary abode in the old house in Shield Street. And so there was no occasion for Miss Griffin to remain longer, and indeed Aunt Kezia gave her to understand that her presence could only be regarded as an insinuation that ' the relatives ' were not doing their duty. ' Which the relatives are quite ready to do,' she observed acidly ; ; they may have to be sharp about some things, perhaps, and so they may not get so much credit for kindness as strangers might. Strangers can always afford to be kind, having no real responsibility.' And yet it seemed to Chrissy that Aunt Kezia was there chiefly to guard against any responsibility being thrust upon herself. 75 76 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' Who would have thought of such a strict man as your father getting himself mixed up in speculation and ruined by it ! ' she observed. ' So often as I've heard him say he did not believe in money being set to breed money. What but the high interest could have tempted him to go buying a Metropolitan share ? But that is how it always is preaching is one thing and practice is another. It is better to be consistent in one's ways than high in one's ideas. / always believe in getting as good an interest as you can, with the capital safe. It is the greed that rushes to ruin which I hate.' Chrissy was used to her aunt's code of morality, with its mean method of preserving consistency by laying down no rules to which it was not convenient to conform. She scarcely resented her aunt's implied condemnation of her father, because she knew that lady always condemned anybody who had lost anything, and felt that, just as she blamed Mr. Miller for having lost his money, so she blamed Helen and her for having lost their father. She seemed to take the eighteenth verse of the forty-ninth Psalm as a precept for human conduct rather than an observation upon it. Misfortunes and bereavements were all 'judgments ' in Miss Kezia's eyes, and she seemed to think it would be 'a setting oneself against Providence' if she attempted to mitigate their pain and severity for others, while she protected MR. BENTLEY'S VERDICT. 77 herself against them as much as possible by keeping her personal interests within the narrowest limits. But it did hurt Chrissy to wonder whether in this instance there was any ground for the condemna- tion. If by doing right her father had lost his property and left his children beggars, then never mind the loss. Chrissy felt as if she could walk forth, homeless, yet proud of her inheritance. But had he really been doing, for once, what Chrissy knew he had always deprecated seeking to make money for money's sake ? Chrissy did not expect that her father must be infallible. Everybody was tempted, anybody might fall. With a swelling heart, Chrissy even remembered that her father had himself said, 'Whom the Lord loved, He was swift to chastise, and that the solitary lapse of t'he righteous man, the first deviation from the straight path, was often, in mercy, swiftly followed by dire results which the persistent wrong-doing of the ungodly or indifferent seems to escape in triumph.' Only it was so hard not to know whether her aunt's bitter words should be met by a brave defence or a loving excuse. There was no comfort to be found in Helen ; all her cry was, ' If our poor father had cared more for money all along, he would have made more, and then this loss would not have hurt us so much. And indeed he 78 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. would have had so much more experience that he would have known better than to have become possessed of a Metropolitan share. Aunt Kezia says so, and if she is wise about anything it is about money matters, especially about making money, I think she overdoes the matter of saving. The more I think about saving, the more foolish it seems. Have not we lost everything now ? We might just as well have enjoyed it more while we had it. We might have spent more on our holidays, and not been so sparing on our clothes. It would have all come to the same thing in the end.' ' No, it would not,' said Chrissy ; ' there would have been so much the less wherewith to meet our liabilities.' But when Chrissy heard that her father had taken the share because Mr. Ackroyd had offered it to him in exchange for a loan, a load was raised from her heart, and she lifted up her head. ' Ought not Mr. Ackroyd to take back his share ? ' she asked. It was Dr. Julius to whom she made that observation. He shook his head. ' No, little woman,' he said ; ' that might be justice, but it is not law. It would be honesty, but it is not what is called " business." ' They were standing in the shop. Hans Krinken, from behind the counter, broke in impulsively, MR. BENTLETS VERDICT. 81 ' I know all about it. I heard it. I think Mr. Ackroyd did fancy I had but little English. Mr. Ackroyd, he said he was badly wanting fifty pounds to pay his rent he had been disappointed in some moneys he was to receive. Mr. Miller, he offer to lend the fifty pounds for one week. Mr. Ackroyd, he offer to pay the what you call interest. Mr. Miller, he shake his head, and say he no usurer. Mr. Ackroyd, he say he is no beggar, and offer interest again. But the master, he very firm. Then Mr. Ackroyd, he clap his hands, and say, " I have it," and he runs out and brings back a bit of paper, and he says to the master, " Buy that from me. I give fifty pounds for it, but it is worth one hundred now." Mr. Miller, he say he will not take it for less than it is worth. He say he knows nothing about such things, and has none. Mr. Ackroyd look very sorrowful ; say he does not like to part with it it be very soon worth one hundred twenty one hundred thirty pqunds. Then my master say he will give Mr. Ackroyd what he says it is worth one hundred pounds, and he can buy it from him at the same price when he can get the money. Mr. Ackroyd, he goes away, and come back soon with some papers, and say it settled all right. And Mr. Miller, he answers that Mr. Ackroyd is not to forget it is his on the same terms. And Mr. Ackroyd, he laugh, and say, Mr. Miller has done him one 82 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. good turn, and himself another! Dr. Julius, Mr. Ackroyd is the bad man. I hate him ! ' And the warm-hearted boy brought his clenched fist heavily on the counter. ' Hist, hist ! ' said the doctor. ' My good fellow, we may have our thoughts ! But at that time the shares were selling at the price Mr. Ackroyd named. Things of this sort are among the lucky accidents one always hears of connected with great crashes. It is odd how they generally happen to a certain class of people ! ' ' But Mr. Ackroyd has other shares still,' suggested Chrissy. She would not defend her father from imprudence by rushing to impute treachery and fraud to a stranger. ' Ah, well,' admitted Dr. Julius rather reluctantly, 'he thought so at first. He thought he had a vital interest in some shares held under a certain trust. But it appears otherwise. He has had a narrow escape from ruin, he says.' ' I know Mrs. Ackroyd and James were terribly alarmed about it,' said Chrissy involuntarily, re- membering all she had overheard on the night of her father's death. But at the same instant came back the memory of Mr. Ackroyd's own cool, almost mocking tones. 'Ah, well,' said Dr. Julius again, 'we must not let our minds dwell on these things. What is done MR. BENTLETS VERDICT. 83 cannot be undone. And conjectures and suspicions lead nowhere, and can do us no good.' He himself had a medical man's horror of 'fixed ideas,' and their evil effect on the mental, moral, and physical nature. Also, he had a brother a lawyer, who was in the habit of saying that the best way to get one's wrongs redressed was to forget all about them. ' Ay, so it may be/ answered the young German ; ' but I can guess what was in the mind of my master as he lay down to his last sleep. And I marked that his Bible lay open at that fifteenth Psalm, on each verse of which my good grandfather used to say every minister should preach at least once a year.' Chrissy tried to obey the doctor's advice. And indeed Hans Krinken's account had given her one more glimpse of her father, so beautiful in its view of his stern conscientious and kindly heart, that it seemed to make the bearing of all else quite easy. But she could not stop there. Her father was not only excused, but amply and nobly justified, without casting any condemnation on others. Mr. Ackroyd could not have known what he was doing. No, that was quite impossible. If Chrissy could have thought otherwise, it is doubtful whether she could have repeated the story, for an ingenuous young heart shrinks from the thought of guilt in others, as if the shame and pain were reflected upon itself. But after she had told the history to Aunt Kezia, a horrible 84 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. doubt crept into her mind, for she found that Aunt Kezia did not seem to think it half so unnatural that Mr. Ackroyd should have thought of over- reaching his neighbour's innocence, as that her father should have been so ready to help a neighbour's need. ' No good ever comes of mixing yourself up in other people's business,' said Miss Kezia Daffy. ' I believe people only do so out of vanity, thinking themselves wiser and better than other folk ; and this is the way pride gets a fall. Well, girls, it is to be hoped you'll practise all the good ways your father trained you in, and put all his queer notions and high-flown ideas out of your head, and not strive to be better than other folks ; for that only makes the world a harder place than it is at the best of times ; and you'll have nobody to look to but your- selves. There is Helen beginning to expect every- body will run to help her. I tell her she will find it is not so. There are children left orphans and penniless every day in the year, and nobody thinks anything of it except themselves.' Those hard words had a certain stern comfort for poor Chrissy, who had a wholesome horror of tragic circumstance, and would rather that her sorrows were commonplace and unnoticeable. ' What you are to be, I don't know,' continued her aunt. ' You are scarcely old enough for governesses. MR, BENTLETS VERDICT. 85 I believe my friend Madame Vinet, who is a dress- maker in the West End, would take one of you for a word from me. You'd have to live in the house, and you'd get very little money for a year or two. I think Helen will take that chance. She did not seem to like it at first, but she came round when I said she'd have to be nicely dressed to be in the show-room. But that's only one of you.' Chrissy spoke now. She had been quietly form- ing certain plans, which she would not confide to her aunt till they had taken some shape. She had already laid them before Dr. Julius, and they had met with his approval. ' I think I may be able to stay on in my father's shop,' she said quietly. ' I know what the books are, and where they are, and the requirements of the customers. Father has let me learn all that lately ; and the people may therefore find it an advantage to hire me as an assistant. I thought of that my- self; and Dr. Julius says it may easily happen that it is often done.' Aunt Kezia looked at her niece, up and down. The good lady had not spared complaints of having ' all the burden of those helpless girls' future cast upon her mind ; ' but now she half resented the firm though modest way in which Chrissy seemed inclined to take hers into her own hands, and form plans and projects for herself. 86 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' Humph ! ' she said ; ' that will be a strange kind of place for you to fill. However, if you can get it, it may do as well as anything else. What sort of a salary will you expect ? ' Then, taking alarm as she reflected that her own residence was within walking distance from Shield Street, and that she intended her nieces ' to begin as they would have to go on,' which meant to expect nothing from her, she asked, ' I don't suppose you'd be able to stay in the house ; it's not too big for one family, without assistants. And they would not be likely to pay you enough to find you in board and lodging elsewhere.' ' I asked Dr. Julius what would be the very least they could give,' Chrissy answered gently ; ' and Miss Griffin says she could take me to live with her for the sum he named.' ' Miss Griffin has no house of her own to take you to. She is only a hired servant herself/ snapped Aunt Kezia. ' The warehouse people won't object to her taking me in,' Chrissy persisted. ' They have often said that they wished she had some young niece or friend to sleep there with her, and save her from being so lonely.' ' You'll find you are looked upon as quite a common working girl,' said the aunt, regarding Chrissy with strong disfavour. Chrissy smiled slightly. MR. BENTLEYS VERDICT. 87 ' That does not matter,' she said. ' I shall be doing the sort of work that father did, and it is the nearest plan I can see for doing the work he meant me to do. He always thought I should be able to keep on the shop.' ' But all that is over now ; being hired if you can get hired to serve in the shop is a very different thing,' observed Miss Kezia. 'Shopmen often rise to be masters,' said poor Chrissy, with an expression of resolution settling on her face. ' Women are not men ; women never rise,' pro- nounced Miss Daffy. ' That's why it's the duty of their relatives to see that they are properly provided for to begin with.' This was one of those side hits at her dead father which Chrissy could not endure. So she replied with some spirit, 'Then if a woman should prove that she has it in her to rise, it becomes clear that the very best provision possible has been made for her.' ' You will find that poor people must not have tempers,' said Aunt Kezia, with ironical good humour. The Rev. Harold Bentley was true to his word. His own business, or rather his son's, detained him in town, and, in the absence of the vicar, it was he who conducted Mr. Miller's funeral. And he went 88 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. home afterwards to the house in Shield Street, and spoke soothing words to the weeping girls, and listened patiently to the recital of Aunt Kezia's trials, among which that lady did not omit to mention what she considered the strong-headedness and wrong-headedness which her younger niece had in- herited from the dead man. As he went down Shield Street, on his way to the vicarage, he heard many of the neighbours talking of him whom they had just seen carried to his last rest. He heard one say, in almost the same words as Dr. Julius had used, ' Sad that such a life should end in such defeat ! ' ' Defeat ! ' echoed the clergyman within himself. ' He who leaves behind him such a child as Chrissy Miller, leaves an investment on earth, which he will find again with untold increase in the Kingdom of God. Alexander Miller is written down in heaven as a successful man.' And Mr. Bentley sighed. But the sigh was for some who still lived, not for him who was at rest. And so the dead was buried out of the sight of the living. And the sunshine once more streamed through the old house in Shield Street. And a few more days would decide the future of the girls. CHAPTER VI. IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. HERE are some cir- cumstances under which human nature is seldom seen to advantage. These are not the supreme crises of life. The possibili- ties of danger or loss often call out all that is best in us. But some who will not shrink from certain forms of self-sacrifice seem unable to resist very small temptations to self- aggrandizement Brothers and sisters who have vied with each other in the support and solace of an aged parent, when the filial duty is completed, will occa- sionally fall into most unfraternal feelings over the 89 90 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. division of such simple household spoil as feather beds and silver tea-spoons. Old neighbours and attendants, who have rendered services without price, will show a singular avidity to possess a ' memorial ' of pecuniary value. Many a dead man, could he stand among his friends after the reading of his will, would feel as if they must be almost glad of his departure, so eagerly do they make prey of his effects, while they seem to recall the ties of near kindred and long association only to urge them as claims for precedence in plunder. But the dead man does not so stand. If he has risen to the higher life, we may certainly trust that his vision is closed to all but what may rise there with him, the pure and patient love which sits silently aside, and will scarcely use his own expressed wishes as a claim for itself, strongly as it urges them in behalf of others. But, alas ! for that pure and patient love for its vision must remain open to the sordid struggle round it. Alas ! that to the agonized cry, ' Why was the light of mine eyes taken ? ' there must be so often added the bitter wail, 'And why was I left with these ? ' It all seemed so strange to Helen and Chrissy. It always does seem strange when we first discover that the old familiar surroundings of our lives can be torn from us, and that they have other value than IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. 91 their use or their prettiness. The child enters the world with a glorious sense of property. He uses the possessive pronoun with everything. Little by little he learns his own poverty ; his weakness to win his greater weakness to hold. And only when he has learned to think of nought as ' mine,' or even as ' ours,' but of all as ' God's,' does he enter on his true inheritance which can never fade away. ' Of course, till all the creditors are paid, every- thing belongs to them,' observed Aunt Kezia acidly ; ' and the Great Metropolitan Bank is a creditor that will swallow up everything. But there are some things it has no right to. There were certain articles your mother took from your grandmother's house that were not exactly given to her: she was just allowed to take them as a sort of obligement because she had grown used to them, and to save your father's money, I suppose. There's that bronze fender in the best bedroom, and a good feather bed and two down pillows ; I'd often thought of saying to your father that I'd had as good a right to those things as your mother could have had ; and that I'd no down pillows of my own. But I wasn't the person to disturb them while he lived. I think I'd better go through the drawers and boxes at once and see if I can find any other similar trifles, and then I'll take them away quietly in my cab to-night. When you know you have an honest right to things, 92 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. it's no use raising a scandal and a hubbub, and tempting lawyers and such people into trying to defraud you/ ' Aunt Kezia is like a magpie picking up buttons,' said Helen, who had begun to recover her volatile spirits. ' She has an innate hankering after " things," whether they are what she will ever use or not.' Helen accompanied her aunt in her rummaging. She did not shrink from seeing the old stores, and could find amusement in Miss Daffy's prattle con- cerning kinsfolk and old neighbours, brought to mind by the old relics she was turning over. It was quite decided that Helen was to go to live with Madame Vinet, the West End dressmaker ; and Chrissy wondered why it was that she did not like to hear how Helen dwelt on one side only of her future life. Of course, it was right to dwell only on the sunnier side to forecast only brightness. But why did not the real pleasure of honest work, the blessings of industry, and providence, and ambition, put in any appearance on this sunny side of Helen's future? Why was it only represented by the amount of hoped-for leisure, by the acquaintances which might be made, and by vague possibilities of changes for the better ? Chrissy felt an aching fear lest somehow life should disappoint Helen and then what then ? Chrissy could not bear to see her aunt lifting out IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. 93 and unfolding and criticizing. For the sake of her dead father, all the dead had grown sacred to her, and whatever had been linked with vanished lives became holy. There was a little quaint, inexpensive jewellery which had belonged to dead kinswomen on Mrs. Miller's side, of which Aunt Kezia took possession, saying that it was useless to the girls in its present old-fashioned state, and they would have neither money to alter it nor occasion to wear it for years to come, whereas she was an old-fashioned woman herself, and had known its original owners, and so forth. There was one ring in particular, of red Mexican gold, with something lying dim beneath the crystal set in it. ' I'll have that taken out, and your mother's hair put in,' said Aunt Kezia. ' And after my time, the ring will come to one of you to whichever best deserves it,' she added didactically. ' But is not that somebody's hair in it already ? ' asked Chrissy softly. ' Yes, child,' answered Aunt Kezia, looking up in wonder. ' But what of that ? If it is taken out, the ring will be as good as new.' 'But somebody put it there,' persisted Chrissy. ' Somebody loved it, and put it there. Ought we not to leave it for their sake ? ' La, child ! ' said the old lady; ' I don't know who they were, so what can I care for their sakes ? ' 94 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' For sake of the love, ' Chrissy whispered, her face flushing with the sense that she was speaking j words which would be nonsense to the ears that heard them. ' Now, that is what I call downright sentimental rubbish ! ' retorted Miss Kezia sharply. ' If people went on at that rate, the world would never move forward. I suppose you would have us keep old hats and shoes next, and our houses would be full of moth-eaten memorials.' 'No,' said Chrissy stoutly; 'that is quite a different thing. Clothes are no record of love ; they were bought for use, and that is their best end. You know I wanted you to give my father's clothes to Hans Krinken. They would have saved his money, and he knew my father, and would have valued them not less, but more, because they had belonged to him.' 'In the state of your father's affairs, it was not for me to go giving away his things,' snapped Miss Kezia. She knew it had hurt Chrissy sorely when she had bartered them with a second-hand wardrobe keeper, and she also knew that the Great Metro- politan Bank, in whose interest she had professedly indulged in these and many similar economies, had been no gainer by the exchanges she had got, sundry glass vases and a handsome tea-service, now standing; in her own house. IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. 95 ' You get far better value in kind than in cash,' she had explained to the girls, quieting her own conscience by the reflection. * We don't lose what a friend gets, and two orphan girls can be only the better off for any gain accruing to their aunt and only protector.' The day of the sale arrived. The incoming tenant of the Shield Street house the purchaser of the business, who, to Chrissy's solemn delight, had gladly fallen in with an arrangement for her services agreed to take over the greater part of the furniture as it stood, at a valuation. Only a few articles of a more special character were to be sold by auction as, for example, an old-fashioned black oak bookcase, which Mr. Miller himself had rescued from destruction at the hands of an ignorant furniture-dealer. It was bought by Mr. Ackroyd. Chrissy learned this because, in anxiety for its fate, she inquired of Hans Krinken. The boy's face darkened as he told her the fact. ' The Great Metropolitan Bank had not done him much harm, after all,' he said. ' There is always somebody strangely saved in shipwrecks and disasters,' said Chrissy, ' and I suppose it is the same in these failures. That doesn't make it really harder for those who are not saved though it makes it seem so,' she added candidly. 96 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' If it is not Mr. Ackroyd's fault that he is so fortunate, then it is his misfortune,' said Hans grimly. And Chrissy knew he was vexed, but fancied that his expression in English was rather defective. The aunt and her two nieces each carried off some salvage from the household wreck. Miss Daffy had her down pillows, and her out-of-date brooches, and sundry other little knick-knacks, to which she laid a family claim ; and Helen had a bundle of strange faded shreds, which seemed to her aunt utterly worthless, but in which the girl's quick eye detected the makings of singular and rather distinguished finery. The girls had not many books of their very own their reading, limited enough in Helen's case, having been in their father's library. Such as they had they divided between them ; and Helen, as the eldest, got the grandly-bound Bible, which her father had never used ; and Chrissy had the little worn volume, which had lain open by her father's death-bed, and the broken toy which had stood in his .bureau, and the stumpy pen with which he had written that terrible schedule which had proved his last earthly task. The last hour of the last sad day came in time. Helen was to go home with her Aunt Kezia and remain with her for a day or two, making sundry IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. 97 preparations for her ultimate sojourn with her aunt's friend Madame Vinet. Miss Kezia was determined that there should not be a scanty frill or a deficient garment in Helen's outfit, since that might be a slur on her own solicitude. But poor Chrissy was to go straight to Miss Griffin. Miss Daffy never even visited that worthy woman to see what accommodation she could offer her niece. Chrissy had taken her own way ; let her take it, was her aunt's feeling. Independence and enterprise are often left to a very ungenial freedom. Where* people cannot patronize, they often do not care to help. In the course of the day Miss Griffin ran up to the old house in Shield Street to tell Chrissy that everything was ready for her at her place. But she had to go home again to attend to some duties of her own, and Chrissy would have to walk up alone. She helped her aunt and Helen to stow their baggage into the cab that was to carry them away, and then went back for her own little package of relics, and stood on the pavement to watch them off. James Ackroyd was there too, helping Miss Daffy, and speaking last words to Helen, whose mingled tears and smiles made a picture of pain and patience enough to excite anybody's sympathy. The cab drove off. James Ackroyd, with a slight, 98 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. absent-minded smile on his lips, turned and went into his own house. He had not specially noticed Chrissy standing beside him. And there need be no last words for her. She was not going away ; he might see her again to-morrow. Chrissy moved off tearless, with her little bundle in her hands, and a great weight of loneliness in her heart. To whom, or to what, did she belong now ? The very portico she had just left was no longer her home-threshold, but a stranger's doorstep. An aching weariness, a sense of sordid drudgery, over- came her. The package she carried suddenly seemed to grow heavy and unwieldy. She was nobody's ' little Chrissy.' She was only one of those whom she had often heard so carelessly massed together as ' working girls.' ' Miss Chrissy, let me carry that.' Chrissy started. The familiar voice sounded so soft and subdued. It was only Hans Krinken. Chrissy surrendered her parcel without one word. She walked on. Hans did not keep pace with her, but kept behind. Nobody had seemed to re- member her but this poor shop-boy, almost a stranger. Well, she was only a shop-girl now ; yet still she had been his master's daughter. His acknowledged consciousness of the fact seemed like the last vestige of her lost position. Why should she surrender it ? IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. 99 That thought was not worthy of Chrissy, and a truer one came. Her familiar knowledge of Scripture supplied her with definite form for her intuitions. She had learned to think in Scriptural imagery. ' Who was the neighbour of him who fell among thieves ? ' she asked herself. ' He who showed kindness to him.' What should we think of the rescued Jew, if we heard that afterwards, because his benefactor was a Samaritan, he ' kept him in his place ' ? She turned and spoke to Hans, who stepped forward to listen to 'Miss Christina.' But the moment she was silent he fell back again. Chrissy had often visited Miss Griffin before, and then her sky-parlour, overlooking a landscape of red tiles and chimney-pots, had seemed a delightfully quaint abode, such as one reads of in Andersen's tales of Danish or German life. But to-day the dark stairway, common to all the offices of which Miss Griffin had charge, seemed dirty and stuffy ; there was a ceaseless clatter of voices behind the closed doors, a pervading smell of 'samples,' and even the nettle-geranium spreading itself across the window on the landing looked like somebody in reduced circumstances, resolutely making the best of things. It was all so different from the sweet simple quietude that used to reign in Shield Street. And that quietude was broken up now. It seemed to Chrissy ioo EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. that the cruel change would have been easier to bear if she had left that intact Some order would reign there again presently, but just now she had left dust and confusion and bickering voices even there. She had not only been driven from paradise, but paradise was shaken on its own foundations. The world Chrissy's world seemed coming to an end. There remained nothing for her but to try to do the right thing as far as each moment showed it to her. To do it, no longer easily and happily, but at least sincerely and strenuously ; even when it might be only in such small matters as giving an appreciative look at Miss Griffin's hospitably spread tea - table, and noticing its decorative bunch of china-asters with the exclamation, * How pretty ! ' And in doing this, poor Chrissy had her reward. For, as she looked from these little preparations to her hostess's face, she saw that they had been a labour of love. The little woman was in a perfect flutter of joyful excitement. Her lonely life was ended, for a while at least, and this was a gala day for her, only chastened by the recollection that it could be no gala for poor Chrissy. ' You'll stay and take a cup of tea with us,' she said to Hans, when Chrissy had gone to her own room to take off her bonnet and settle her small possessions. 'I reckon you've all had a hard day of IA T THE SKY-PARLOUR. 101 it at Shield Street, and you look nearly as tired as Miss Chrissy herself.' 1 No, thank you ; I would rather go straight home,' he answered. And he persisted in his deter- mination till Miss Griffin, giving a keen look into his face, saw something there which checked her kindly invitation. ' No, no,' he said to himself as he went slowly down-stairs ; ' it's not with me that the world's going to teach her it thinks she is standing in a new place. She is still Miss Chrissy, and I'm Hans Krinken. I may be Mr. Hans Krinken some day, though. Only I'll keep my distance till then. And I've heard my grandmother say that a friend beneath one often serves one better than a patron above one.' ' That German boy seems a fine lad,' commented Miss Griffin, as Chrissy took her seat at the tea- table. ' He must have been brought up by superior people ; he has such gentle, unassuming manners. I should say there are good things before him. Per- haps some day it will be an incident in your life that he helped you this afternoon. Stranger things have happened. It will be nice for you to have him to work under you in the shop instead of a perfect stranger.' ' He will be soon fit for a better situation,' said Chrissy. ' Father said he would be directly he knew English ways and spoke English fluently, and he io2 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. has made wonderful progress since he came to Shield Street.' ' Ah, well, at any rate, you will have got warm to your work before he goes away,' said Miss Griffin. 'And you'll be quite at home among your book- shelves from the first.' ' I hope I shall be able to satisfy my employers,' said poor Chrissy dismally. Miss Griffin laughed, a strange little soft laugh. 'You've got to do more than that,' she said.' ' That's the beginning ; but it would be dreary work if it was the end. You'll have to satisfy yourself too, and to serve God. And that last is the founda- tion of all. There cannot be a happy life if that does not come in. Our souls need that service, if they are to be healthy, just as much as our bodies need food.' ' I have been thinking that I shall begin to teach in the Sunday school/ murmured Chrissy wistfully. ' Ay, my dear, and that will be a good and a happy work for you,' said Miss Griffin, who could guess at once, by old secrets of her own heart, how the girl had been surveying her desolated life, and pondering how new interests of affection and service could be brought into it. ' But that is not quite what I mean. We must not give God what is worth nothing ; and until we have got all our lives into His service, no part of them is worth offering to Him. We have IJV THE SKY-PARLOUR. 103 got to do our work for wages, our work for our bread, with a constant sense of His presence, just as you, without wages, once helped and pleased your dear father.' ' Oh, but that was so easy ! ' sighed Chrissy. ' Ay, my dear, and so is the other. Never fancy that God's service is hard and dreary. " Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." Take your wages as quite apart from your work, as just something to keep you going, like the meals in your father's house. And don't measure God's love for you, nor what He is doing for you, by what you get of worldly gear, any more than you would have reckoned up your father's love by the number of dishes he set before you. And always remember; this, my dear, there is not a task in the world which isn't done differently according as he who does it fears and loves God, or only thinks of him- ( self and his own pleasure or gain. There's some employments in which we can see this plainly enough, such as teaching, and nursing, and domestic service (I'm only speaking of women now). But it's the same in all. And I'll tell you how I found that out, my dear. I found it out when my mother died, and her annuity died with her, and I discovered that I was not able to earn my bread by being anything but what I am now, a poor old chambers- keeper.' to 4 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. She paused with a trembling lip. Chrissy let her warm young fingers close over the withered hand. 'You have been so kind to me,' she said, 'and I've been feeling very bad to-day, and now you're mak- ing me begin to feel better.' ' If one has set one's face into the right way, one always gets what one wants to help one on,' said Miss Griffin simply, and then she proceeded : * Well, my dear, I can assure you it was a bitter day for me when I found out how little I was really fit for. I'd always flattered myself I was quite fit either for a lower sort of teacher or a hospital nurse. It is a foolish way that women have, of fancying that at a moment's notice they are quite fit to be what they'd like to be. I hope they're growing wiser now. It would be a terrible world if men had the same idea, wouldn't it ? Perhaps I might have been trained to fill either of these positions when I left school, but then that was many years before, and I had gone back, and the world had gone forward. And I found that the humblest teacher was expected to instruct in subjects whose very names I did not understand, and that nobody could get employment as a nurse who was under a certain height or over a certain age. These are all changes for the better, I don't deny. But still, there was poor little me, with thirty or forty possible years of life before me IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. 105 unless, indeed, I died sooner of starvation, which did not seem unlikely at that time ! ' The little woman's face still quivered. She was telling now what she had never told before. Her life had had its great sorrows, about which she could often speak calmly and trustfully ; but it is our very soul which is in danger on the day when its ambitions, be they homely or lofty, lie dead about it ; and when we stir the dust of that defeat, the old misery will rankle within us. ' Well, well,' she said, rallying herself, ' I found out I could dust rooms, and keep account of dinners, and lock doors ; and so here I am ! And very hard and bitter I was at first.' ' And what helped you ? ' asked Chrissy softly. ' It was just this: A young man, employed as a clerk in one of the offices below, went wrong. He had not been doing well for some time, and at last it ended, as it generally does, in his being dishonest. His masters did not want to be hard with him, but they could not keep him on in his situation, nor could they give him any character ; and, besides, there were other people mixed up in it, which made them fear he might have to be sent to prison. His poor mother came up from the country, travel- ling day and night to get here in time ; and when the gentlemen saw her, a poor, sickly, worn-out widow, they could not bear to speak to her in their ro6 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. business rooms, with not one woman that she knew in all the great city round her ; and they brought her up to me, and told me to give her rest and refreshment.' ' And I know how kind you would be to her ! ' said Chrissy. ' I did my best,' said Miss Griffin ; ' and I really felt for her, if that might be any comfort. And she sat just opposite where we are sitting now, and asked question after question about her boy, and what his habits had been in this respect and in that, and how he had begun to go wrong. And ever and again she would say, " There was nobody to keep him up to the mark in a frierj{Jl_way." I asked her if he wrote often to her. He had at first, she said, but it dropped off. " There was nobody to put him in mind, you see, but plenty of influences pulling the other way." And I said to myself, then and there, " There will be other young lads coming to begin the world in these offices, and I'll lay their charge on myself, and do my best to keep them in remembrance of what is good." And that has served to keep me up to my other duties better than anything else ; for one has to be both respected and friend-like before one can hope to do any good. One can find out many a way when one has the will. I think of their dinners for them, and find out what is cheap, and remember what they like ; and I look after their overcoats and IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. 107 boots on wet days, and put them in mind when they should begin their winter underclothing. And then they sit down and speak a little and talk about home ; and after that I can ask a question as to when they have heard from their folks, and when they have written to them ; and so I get a chance of being a friend to them in my small way. A woman isn't earning her living, but dying a slow death, unless she finds work for her heart as well as her hands ; if she is to be the whole creature God made her, and not only half a one, she's got to serve and help somebody. And there's lots of ways come to her in time. It is not God's work in the world that is running short, but the eyes and hands to see and seize it.' ' Do you think I, too, shall find God's work among my selling books and account - keeping ? ' asked Chrissy. 'That will be something better to think of than only of getting on : that could make one content if one happened never to get on.' ' I am quite sure you will find it,' answered Miss Griffin. ' You know the verse, " Wherever in the world I am, In whatsoe'er estate, I have a fellowship with hearts To keep and cultivate j And a work of lowly love to do For the Lord on whom I wait." That wasn't written when I was a girl, but directly io8 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. I read it I said, "That's exactly what I've been trying to put into words." And that verse keeps saying itself over to me as nothing else ever does, except "Who ran to kiss me when I fell," and " How doth the little busy bee," and other bits I learnt almost in my cradle. And now I think we'll go to bed early to-night, for you must be tired out, and when I've been thinking over old things, I like to go and lie quiet in the dark. Don't you think the angels may see us best then, and speak to our hearts in the silence ? I've lived so much alone, my dear, that I expect I shall be talking some of my strange fancies aloud to you now.' ' I have some strange fancies too,' said Chrissy ; ' and some of them help me to try to be good. Don't you think fancies, like people, should be known by their fruits ? ' ' Ay, my child,' said Miss Griffin ; ' and there's a sort of common sense which seems to me like an air-pump I once saw at work at a lecture. It only pumped away the air ; everything looked exactly the same in the vessel from which the air had been pumped, only whatever had life began to faint away, and would have died if the pump hadn't been stopped and air let in again. Our very bodies can't exist without the air which we cannot see, and I reckon our souls are much the same without faith, and I expect that is what you and I really mean when we IN THE SKY-PARLOUR. 109 say " fancies," and maybe we'd be wiser if we used the right word, so that nobody can misunderstand us. And now, my dear, you are not to get up when you hear me moving in the morning, for I shall be astir extra early for some time to come.' ' How is that ? ' asked Chrissy, in alarm lest her presence imposed some additional duty on her kind hostess. 'Well/ said Miss Griffin, clearing away the tea- things, 'we wanted an extra charwoman in the offices, and I've got leave to employ poor Esther Gray. The masters were against it at first. They said it was offering encouragement to a bad character. But I talked them round. " To give work like our charing to such a woman as Esther Gray might have been is no encouragement, but a severe penance which she won't take unless she's in earnest to do better." And they let me have my own way. But it wouldn't do to have Esther about the place when the office people begin to come, as the other char- women may be against it; indeed, she said to me herself that she could not stand that ; the very looks | they'd give would drive her wild, and send her back' to drink and misery. So I said she could come earlier, and I could easily get up and let her in.' 'Good-night, Miss Griffin,' said Chrissy. 'I feel quite happy now. What you have said has helped me, and what you are inspires me.' i io EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' Dear, dear ! to hear her talk ! ' exclaimed the old lady, after she had cordially returned the girl's warm kiss, and had shut herself into her own little chamber. ' It was just the sight of the brave young thing going out to fight her own battle which gave me courage to think what a poor old simpleton I had been when I started, and how God had smoothed and brightened the way even for me. I can trust her with Him. He won't forget his young lions when they cry to Him, since He does not even forget His poor old sheep like me.' CHAPTER VII. HANS KRINKEN. HRISSY MILLER soon found that there were plenty of little interests and duties springing up by the wayside of her life. To begin with, the new bookseller, a Mr. Bisset, a fellow-country- man of her father's, was a young man, and had brought a young wife from her own kith and kin in the North to the crowded lonesomeness of London. She had grown nervous and low-spirited before she came to Shield Street. It was like a Godsend to her when her husband told her of the arrangement he had made with the late bookseller's daughter. ' If she will come, will you let her go with me for a walk sometimes ? ' she asked. ' She will know all the turnings, and will keep me from being frightened at the busy driving to and fro.' 111 ii2 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' She shall go with you whenever I can possibly spare her,' said the husband. ' I daresay she'll be glad of the change. And exercise and a cheerful companion will soon bring back your bloom and merriment. Is it not a terrible thing that you do not find your husband himself a sufficing joy?' He laughed, happily confident that one half of her nervous terrors and depression arose from anxiety over his prospects and his delicate health. And he thought silently, 'That young Miss Miller has a sweet, sensible face ; but if she had not had so much sorrow and loss herself lately, she might be a more inspiriting companion for my poor lassie.' That was all he knew ! for men are very simple creatures about some things. How could he be expected to imagine that the sight of one who was still able to live brightly, and to smile and sing after 'the worst had come to the worst,' as Mrs. Bisset expressed it, was exactly the tonic required by that solicitous, forecasting little woman ? How surprised the young bookseller was when his wife came to him one evening in the counting-house, the very counting-house where Chrissy and her father had talked together, and, putting her arms round his neck, told him that she saw how wrong and foolish she had been to worry and forebode, and spoil life's sunshine to-day for fear it should be eclipsed to-morrow ! HANS KRINKEN. 1 1 3 ' Even if it is,' she added, with shining, tearful eyes, ' it will shine again the day after. Just think of our Miss Miller!' And even in her simple manifold labours in the shop, Chrissy soon learned, as Miss Griffin had done in her time, how much influence lies in very lowly, unregarded places. She found how often she could / recommend one book, and withdraw another from notice, and how a little judgment and tact presently gave weight to her recommendations, so that they / were sought again. She found how much time and temper she could save for busy people by a con- / siderate hint or suggestion ; how often she could help the ignorant to economy, or direct a confused taste. These were the discoveries which lightened her heart and took the sting from many a wound she received in those early days of independence. Sophia Ackroyd passed her in the street with the briefest of nods, and gave her no greeting beyond a cool 'Good morning,' when she had occasion to enter the shop. And Chrissy knew that the distance between them originated not in Mr. Ackroyd's having ruined her father, but in her father's ruin having made his child into ' a shop-girl.' It is very easy to say that one should take such people at their real value, and hold oneself above such petty contumelies ; but, in truth, it is not the ii4 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. noblest or the gentlest heart which most readily accepts the baseness of one's fellow-creatures as a natural thing, and which is not surprised at the injustice or wrong-headedness of the world. God does not mean the young to have all the quiet, patient wisdom of the old. He wants their burning hearts and struggling hands in His service first, destroying and pulling down as much evil as they can ; and then He will give them faith and contentment that what they have not conquered shall still be conquered, and that, in the meantime, what God can suffer they too can endure. But best of all to Chrissy was something which presented itself as in no sense a duty, but as only a sweet natural incident the growing friendship between herself and the German lad Hans Krinken. Little by little, by no express confidence, but in the chance remarks of daily intercourse, Chrissy learned his history, and caught glimpses of the quaint interior in which Hans had been reared. She learned about the good grandfather, busy from morning till night at his trade, polishing spectacle-glasses ; while the grandmother sat and knitted in the great flowered chair in the chimney-corner. The grandmother had been only a peasant woman, full of the sharp fragmentary wisdom of her class ; the grandfather had been something more, and had evidently been a philosopher in his own way. HANS KRINKEN. 115 ' He had been intended for one of the learned professions,' Hans said one day ; ' but he could not satisfy himself that he was fit for any of them, and so he took to the spectacle-making. " One can't be wrong in making eyesight go a little further than it otherwise might, and one's customers will keep one up to the mark at that work," he used to say.' Hans never spoke of his father or mother. They seemed to have died before his recollection at least Chrissy thought so. When the good old couple died the old man last they had left no money behind them. It was in obedience to his grandfather's wish that Hans had come to England. His grandfather had never given any express reason for this wish ; but his grandmother had backed it up by the words, ' You'll be left alone in the world. Lonely people are less lonely in strange places. There's no place so foreign as the old chimney-corner when the old faces are out of it.' The old household gods of the lowly German home had been sold to pay the boy's expenses. While the sale was going on in Shield Street, and when Hans saw the pained expression of Chrissy's face, as the desire for a good bargain overcame some neighbour's sense of kindly propriety, he had slipped up behind her and whispered, ' I have seen all this before. One outlives it ; one even forgets it.' n6 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Hans had had terrible days when he first arrived in London. His little store had been speedily exhausted. He had sunk lower and lower. The pet of the good old grandfather had seen and felt the wild and sordid miseries of the common lodging- houses. Once, when a hungry-looking lad came singing down Shield Street, Chrissy noticed Hans draw from his pocket a leathern purse, which she had never seen on any other occasion, and take from it a silver coin, which he handed to the youth with a few words which made the boy stand watching him back into the shop. ' I've heard it said that one should not give to beggars in the street,' Chrissy observed. ' Where the face is pinched with hunger, pain, or age, one need ask no questions, for the want is clearly there,' said Hans, with a strange, dreamy look on his face. ' But that was a great deal for you to give,' Chrissy ventured to add. He looked at her. ' I seemed to give it to myself,' he said. ' I stood singing so once. I told him so.' Chrissy stood silent for a moment, then she asked softly, ' Did not all this suffering ever make you wish you had disobeyed your grandfather's wish, and stayed in Germany?' Hans shook his head slowly as he answered, HANS KRINKEN. 1 1 7 ' Perhaps it did sometimes, and yet again it didn't. One must meet troubles somehow ; grandmother used to say that life without them would be like a pudding without its cloth ; it wouldn't hold together. And one can't meet them better than when one is following the advice of a good counsellor. I don't know what might have happened to me if I had stayed at home ; and the worst I've been through has ended in my being here.' ' Do you ever write to anybody in the old place ? ' Chrissy asked. ' I haven't yet,' Hans replied. ' I've only one friend there, a boy who used to go to school with me, and he was a wild, wilful fellow, set on his own way, so I was determined I would not let him know the troubles I'd got into through obeying grandfather till I'd got through them. But I'll write to him to-night. I'm all right now.' And so Chrissy in her turn received a lesson in contentment. For the lot with which Hans was so satisfied looked hard and poor enough, even from her new standpoint. For he had started penniless decently clothed only by her father's charity, though Chrissy did not know that then and his wage was only the poor pittance earned by manual labour. But a happy heart can make a hard life bright, just as sunshine lends a charm to the most monotonous scenery. CHAPTER VIII. CHRISSY'S HOLIDAY. T was a long time before Chrissy again met her sister Helen. Madame Vinet's junior appren- tice always remained on the establishment during Sunday, while from certain exigencies of its business, the shop in Shield Street was not able to conform to the hours of the Saturday half- holiday, the season when Helen Miller seemed to pay a tolerably regular visit to Aunt Kezia. Helen was obliged to return to Madame Vinet's establish- ment just at the hour when the shutters were being put up in the old home. Cross circumstances like these often sorely mar the leisure and enjoyment of working people. Yet Chrissy fancied and then blamed herself for the fancy that if she had been the one at liberty, us CHJZISS Y 'S HO LI DA Y. 119 she would have had some plan for catching at least a glimpse of her sister. She would have walked into the old house and bought a trifle over the counter, for the opportunity of exchanging a few words. But Helen did not seem to think of this ; and Chrissy shrank back from reminding her. We never get any satisfaction from forms of love which we have shaped for ourselves, however they may fit our own wishes. The clumsiest scheme worked out by love itself comes sweeter to us, though we may be able to enjoy it only by the help of a great deal of ' make-believe.' Chrissy felt this, and felt as if it was only selfish pride which kept her from giving Helen the hint. She was certain that Helen would do anything that was kind if only she thought of it ! And did she not often send Chrissy a little note, hastily enough written perhaps, but at least beginning and ending with expressions of warm endearment ? By these little notes, Chrissy learned that Sophia and James Ackroyd had more than once been Aunt Kezia's guests at the same time as Helen. Once or twice James Ackroyd had escorted Helen home to Madame Vinet's, and then returned to Aunt Kezia's to accompany his sister back to Shield Street. Chrissy, in daily attendance in the old shop next door to the Ackroyds' home, saw wonderfully little of them. Certainly they never brought her any 120 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. message from Helen. Chrissy was not sorry to see little of Mr. Ackroyd himself, but it pained her to miss James so entirely out of her life. He had associated with the Miller girls in that easy, happy camaraderie, which comes with old neighbourhood or cousinship, and which, as life passes on, may ripen into the most reliable of friendships. Chrissy could not believe that James shunned her because the bookseller's daughter had changed into the bookseller's shop-girl a subtle loss of caste, which she well knew would quite account for the change in Sophia Ackroyd's manner towards her. But Chrissy could not help remembering her whis- pered interview with James across the back-yard on the night of her father's death. What had he known then ? Or what had he feared ? She could remember the very words which had passed between them : his question, ' Do you mean to say you don't know there is something ? ' her reply, ' Yes, I do.' How much, and what, had he believed she knew ? And then Chrissy felt half-glad not to see much of James. How could she confront him with a sus- picion of his father in her heart? Only when, peeping between her book-shelves, she saw him pass down Shield Street, she was- sorry to fancy that he did not look quite himself, but seemed dark and moody. She comforted herself that this was but her own fancy, born of her secret knowledge and CHRISS Y 'S HO LI DA Y. 121 silent cogitations. She did not know that more than one old neighbour had remarked that ' young Ackroyd was not improving.' At last Chrissy found she could look forward to a free Saturday. The moment she heard this, she wrote to Aunt Kezia to say she should pay her a visit, and so meet Helen. She did certainly expect an answer, but, as none came, she interpreted silence to mean assent, and started off the moment the shop was shut, or rather before the shop was shut, for Hans Krinken paused with a shutter in his hand to watch her neat little figure moving down the street. He was unconsciously receiving impressions which were to fix his standard of beauty and worth for ever. Aunt Kezia lived in a house of the kind which give shrewd observers an idea of property in the funds. It was small, gloomy, and shabby, but with gloom and shabbiness quite different from those of poverty. The furniture was old and ugly, but it had been costly when new, and that in the best rooms had not only never been used, but had been preserved with every device of cover and drawn blind from those atmospheric influences which, left to themselves, will mercifully subdue the most garish upholstery into artistic ' repose.' What Helen called Aunt Kezia's 'love of things,' was manifest in the heterogeneous mass of articles 122 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. which she had gathered together, without any relation to each other or to her own requirements. Only one requirement she apparently never had the meed for the beautiful. She bought tea-spoons and cake-baskets, not pictures or statuary. In Aunt Kezia's house, stuffed full of ' things,' ornament was represented by three huge Bohemian glass vases and two pictures, one representing the death of Abel, and the other the burning of Archbishop Cranmer. They were so dim and old that they might assume the dignity of heirlooms. But in reality they had been thrown into lots at sales, to get them out of the auctioneer's way. One had been bought with a set of dish-covers, the other with a kitchen fender. Aunt Kezia was a great frequenter of sales especially sales in private houses. Most of her bargains had a flavour of tears and ruin about them. Chrissy found Helen already with her aunt. Helen rushed upon Chrissy, and embraced her warmly. Aunt Kezia said, ' Dear me, child ! is your work wearing you thin ? Or does not your dress suit you ? There's some- thing wrong about you surely. Or perhaps it is only seeing you beside Helen ; though I used to think you would be the better-looking of the two. But circumstances alter cases and faces as well.' Helen was certainly a very brilliant young damsel. CHRISS Y'S HO LI DA Y. 123 and Chrissy thought so, and was quite content to be second to the beloved sister, utterly unaware that any artist's eye would have passed over Helen's befringed brow and befrilled dress to rest on her expressive face and the graceful lines of her simple garments. ' I don't suppose you'll have much news to give me,' Miss Kezia went on. ' Helen always brings me quite a budget, descriptions of the grand ladies who have called at Madame Vinet's, and the dresses they have ordered, and little secrets about the fashions that are coming out. It's wonderful to me how people can spend such sums of money on them- selves. It's terrible to think of.' ' It is certainly thriftier to do what you do, aunt,' laughed Helen, and then narrated to Chrissy, ' Aunt goes through the fashion-books and decides what material she would prefer and what style she would choose, and then shuts the book and goes on wearing her dear old satin. Oh, auntie, auntie,' cried the girl, who seemed quite a privileged person in the stiff old house, ' it is no use to make believe you are not fond of dress ! you are only much fonder of your money ! ' 'You are a saucy chit,' said the old lady, smiling, and almost blushing under the imputation, which, far from displeasing her, did rather the reverse. ' I never was reckoned fond of dress,' she remarked i2 4 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. impressively, ' but I like to see people well dressed ; indeed, it's a mark of proper respect to one's betters. People with means of their own may do as they please, of course ; but those who have their way to make must take care to be acceptable in the eyes of others. It is very vexatious to see scrubby-looking poor relations going about, causing strangers to say that their kin ought to do more for them.' * Now how glad I am I bought this new dress ! ' cried Helen. ' I was afraid you would think me extravagant, but my first mourning was getting so shabby.' ' And you must do credit to Madame Vinet,' said Miss Daffy, rising and feeling the material of her niece's skirt. ' That is a pleasure to touch, Helen. You must have paid dearly for that, though I suppose you would get it at a reduction.' ' I did pay dearly for it,' Helen admitted, finding herself on safe ground. 'Shall I own the whole truth? I've been boarding with Madame Vinet for four months, and you know my salary is only a trifle, and every penny of it has gone into that dress. I had set my heart on it,' she pleaded bewitchingly, 'and I'm well stocked with other clothes ; I shan't need any- thing else for a long time. I know you have always said that good things are the cheapest in the end.' ' But there may be good calico as well as good silk,' Chrissy ventured to interrupt. CHRISSY'S HO LID A Y. 125 4 Well, you that can't get much money can hardly do better with it than put it into handsome clothes, which give you a comfortable, satisfactory appear- ance,' said Aunt Kezia. ' Helen has a right to do what she likes with her money, and I can't see how she could have done better. It's a sort of invest- ment for her.' ' Only if one wanted the money instead ? ' Chrissy suggested timidly. ' What could she want the money for ? ' asked Aunt Kezia. ' She won't want any for herself, she says ; and you two have got nobody to look to you for anything, thank goodness ! ' Chrissy sighed. ' You must smarten up too,' said Aunt Kezia. ' You get much higher wages than Helen, only of course you have to pay Miss Griffin, though she oughtn't to charge you much for sharing with her ; and I hope you look out sharply to see she doesn't impose upon you. I suppose any shabby clothes which are decent, are good enough for you during your working hours and at home in the evening ; but that is only the more reason for your keeping something very nice for special occasions. What are you think- ing of for your change of mourning ? You needn't wear much crape for more than six months, you know. A fine cashmere made up with crape-cloth would be becoming ; and they are all the fashion.' 126 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' I have enough dresses to last me till next spring without buying anything/ said Chrissy bravely ; ' and I have resolved never to buy any dress which will not be suitable for a working dress when its best days are over.' ' Chrissy wants to make her fortune. I'm sure you ought to approve that laudable ambition, aunt,' remarked Helen mischievously. Miss Kezia sniffed. ' Chrissy may want what she chooses,' she said. ' She won't be able to do it. Women only get fortunes by inheriting them or marrying them. And men look for something in their wives. Girls with no establishments of their own must be very particular about their appearance and their manners and opinions, else they will offend where it would be their interest to please.' 'Did you hear Aunt Kezia on the duties of portionless maidens ? ' laughed Helen, adverting to this speech, as, later in the evening, she accepted Chrissy's company in her walk back to Madame Vinet's. ' I don't believe Aunt Kezia means all she says,' returned Chrissy. ' She feels that single blessedness is reserved for the well-to-do, like herself,' Helen went on. ' Poor girls, like us, owe it to society to get married and relieve our relations of all responsibility concerning us. Well, it must be awful to be a poor old maid. CHXISS Y'S HO LI DA Y. 127 Almost as bad as to be a poor wife but that deepest depth is one's own fault. I wonder where Aunt Kezia will leave her money ; she ought to divide it between us two.' ' Helen, Helen,' cried Chrissy, ' do not speak do not think of such things. It is not helpful ; it is not right.' 'But money is,' said Helen almost gloomily. ' Every day I see more what money can do. You, poked up in Shield Street, scarcely know what we have missed through being left so poor.' 'All that I miss much is father,' said Chrissy softly ; ' and rich girls' fathers die, as well as poor ones'.' But she broke off there, with the sudden reflection that, but for the ruin which had overtaken them, her father might be living yet. It was hard to accept the hand of God behind the blow dealt by that treacherous neighbour, Mr. Ackroyd. Just as his name was in Chrissy's thoughts, Helen said, ' I suppose you don't see much of the Ackroyds ? Sophia makes believe she is afraid of you, because you must be so eccentric and strong-minded, to take up such a strange way of life. I know' it's only make-believe. She'd make up some such fable to excuse passing over me, if she had to see me at my work. But she accepts me as Miss Daffy's niece, not i 2 8 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. as Madame Vinet's apprentice. And isn't she jealous of James ! As if she could expect to keep him to herself for ever ! ' The sisters had known no brother, except the little dead boy they scarcely remembered that little baby brother, whose broken toy had passed from her father's keeping into her own. Chrissy's sister-love was not less tender and sensitive because it was ideal, and Helen's tone and words alike jarred Chrissy. * She was so vexed when James asked my advice, and it went counter to hers,' Helen went on, in reckless triumph. " The time has come when James has got to settle finally what he will be. Sophy, going in for gentility, wants him to be a doctor " a professional gentleman," as she says. That was the original idea in the Ackroyd family. But now James has a chance of entering the office of a friend of his father's, a stock and share broker. It would be sure to end in a partnership, he says.' ' And which will he choose to take ? ' asked Chrissy. ' He'd like to be a doctor,' Helen narrated ; ' but then, as he says, fortune is on the other side. He says his father would have made a bare income as an architect. Whatever money he has made has been by speculation.' ' I don't think Mr. Ackroyd attended very strictly to his professional work/ observed Chrissy. CHRISSTTS HOLIDAY. 129 ' Oh, but it is the same with everybody,' observed Helen. ' Men who really succeed in their professions cannot make as much money in twenty years as others do with one lucky stroke in stocks and shares. James says so. So I said to him, " If that is the case, I cannot understand why you hesitate for a moment." And so he has decided. And Sophia is so cross. She had advised for the doctor.' ' I think I should have agreed with her,' said Chrissy. And remembering Sophia's last curt nod, it cost her something to say this. ' Why so ? ' asked Helen quickly. ' Because I'd rather have some other end in my daily work than money-making only.' ' Oh, that's it, is it ? ' said Helen, evidently re- lieved. ' Sophia doesn't think about that It's the gentility she is aiming at. It's the very same feeling which makes her snub you for serving in a shop. And now you needn't come any further. Madame Vinet's door is in sight. James Ackroyd has brought me home the last two Saturday nights, and I don't want the girls to know he is not here to-night. And it's time you were at home, too, though you are such a discreet, sober-looking little body that one could trust you anywhere.' She extended her hand. Chrissy held it lingcr- ingly. Were they to part like this? What had become of the best side of Helen? What would 1 3 o EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. their father have said if he had heard her talk to- night ? 'Any messages for our old friends, Helen?' she asked. ' Our old friends ! ' Helen echoed, with a light laugh. ' Oh ! give the correct civilities to Miss Griffin. And stop ! is that stupid German still in the shop ? I quite forgot to ask.' 'He will soon be too good for the shop,' said Chrissy, with a curious feeling of pique. ' He is so already. Only he is one of those people who don't make haste to change.' ' A model of all the virtues,' said Helen. ' Well, good night, darling.' Chrissy sped citywards with a very unsatisfied heart. She had looked forward to this holiday, and it had disappointed her. Aunt Kezia and sister Helen were vestiges of the old happy life which had been so hard to give up, and yet it seemed a relief to return to the thought of her daily toil and her fellow-workers. When she reached Miss Griffin's house, to her astonishment she found Hans Krinken leaning against the door-post. 'Oh, Hans !' she cried, 'is anything the matter? ' Have you been up-stairs ? ' 'No, Miss Christina,' he said. 'I waited here for you. You remember, months ago, I wrote a CHRISS Y 'S HO LI DA Y. 131 letter to a schoolfellow in my native village in Germany ? ' ' I remember perfectly,' Chrissy replied. ' I have often wondered whether you got an answer. I have meant to ask you.' ' An answer has come to-night. It has come from America. My schoolfellow has gone there, and my letter was sent out after him.' ' But he left the village after you did,' said Chrissy; ' so I hope he has given you some later news.' ' Some strange news,' said Hans, in a low tremulous voice. ' Very soon after I left the place, a stranger in a grand coach came making inquiries after me/ ' Oh, what a pity you were away ! ' cried Chrissy. ' And you suffering so much at the very time ! And haven't you the least idea who the stranger was ? ' Hans shook his head, but didn't speak. ' I hope you are not very sorry you came away,' said Chrissy. ' But isn't it a pity that nobody could give him an address where he might have written to you ? ' ' Miss Christina,' said Hans, speaking with some emotion, his German accent returning under the influence of a strong feeling, ' Miss Christina, to- night I am more glad than ever that I came away. Perhaps my grandfather expected the coming of this stranger. Perhaps it was that expectation that gave him some good reason for the advice he gave me.' CHAPTER IX. AN OLD PICTURE. S time passed on, Chrissy began to find that definite duties, beginning and end- ing at definite hours, leave one very definite leisure. When there was nothing to do between seven o'clock and ten, there was really a temptation to begin remodelling one's bonnets and dresses, and planning where a bit of embroidery might come in effectively. ' There can be no harm in that,' said one very natural side of the girl's nature. The idea came to her in thinkinsr over Aunt Kezia's observations. It AN OLD PICTURE. 133 seemed to offer a way of conforming to some of her aunt's suggestions without spending money a matter on which Chrissy's mind was quite made up. ' But, then, is there any good in it ? ' quickly re- torted her secret consciousness. ' Perhaps there is. It is right to cultivate beauty, it is right to make oneself a pleasant object in the world which God has made so beautiful. There was something in what Aunt Kezia said, though, of course, she expressed it after her own fashion.' 'Quite true,' returned the Mentor in her own bosom. ' But is not the beauty which God makes always that which helps, and does not hinder, the highest functions of that which it adorns ? And how often is there any true beauty in mere fashion ? Take up any book of portraits ten years old, and what will you find ? The pictures of dear old ladies in their plain dresses and muslin tippets are still pleasant to look on. So are those of ladies in trim serviceable travelling dress, and of servant-women in their white caps and aprons. But when you come upon the portrait of a lady in the full fashionable costume of its date, you burst out laughing, and say, " How funny ! is it possible that people ever made themselves such guys as that ? " As for making oneself a pleasant object in God's pleasant world, neither much money nor much time need be spent on compassing that object most successfully ; no 134 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. more, indeed, than must be spent in procuring decency and neatness. A dash of rich colour suited to one's complexion and easily enough procurable, and a neat white ruffle, which will wash and wear for ever, are cheaper and more simple than a dozen fancy scarves of every unnatural hue which fancy may dictate, or yards and yards of tawdry "frilling." No, no ; it is not in making ourselves pleasant in God's pleasant world, and sweet in the eyes of our friends, that we waste our time and money, but in indulging our own vanity, and teasing our acquaint- ances by out -vicing them. You know it is so, Chrissy Miller. You know that at this present time it is not your dear father's wishes, Miss Griffin, or Hans, or harmony with the shadowy dignity of St. Cecilia's Church, which is in your thoughts, but it is Sophia Ackroyd, and Aunt Kezia, and your next visit to Aunt Kezia's house.' God be praised for every faithful friend, who will ' speak the plain truth to us ; and God be doubly praised when He has given us such a faithful friend to dwell in our own hearts, and sit in judgment on' our very thoughts. And such a friend has He given j to all of us, but we know it takes two to make a] friendship. It is not the amount of wisdom which we hear, either without us or within us, which makes us wise, but only what we accept and live up to. Still, if we do not keep in wisdom's ways we are AN OLD PICTURE. 135 sure to pass out of hearing even of her voice. But if her voice speaks within us, we find ourselves surrounded by echoes of it. A very homely oracle echoed the conclusions of Chrissy's own heart. On one of these leisure evenings very long and monotonous as they would seem sometimes Chrissy took Miss Griffin out to a public picture-gallery. Miss Griffin would have been scared to have been told she was an art-critic. But she was one, never- theless, inasmuch as she said what she thought about what she saw, instead of saying, as too many people do, what she thought ought to be said. Perhaps her simplicity was one element in her candour, for she did not know ' masterpieces ' from 'pot-boilers,' old masters from new students, ex- cept by such merits as she could recognise, and consequently gave forth all sorts of heresies quite innocently. Perhaps, for the taste of those connoisseurs who dwell much on 'texture,' and seem to think that human incident is quite subordinate to 'still life' and 'fabrics,' poor Miss Griffin dwelt too much on the subjects of pictures. She could not bear Murillo's ' Beggar - boys,' with their expression of coarse cunning, and their low tricks. She would not admire the realism of their dirt-engrained feet. ' We see too much of such things in real life. I'd 136 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION, sooner wash some of them than copy them/ she said. She turned away with contempt from many of the Dutch interiors. ' Drunken men are an ugly sight. I would not hang on my parlour wall a representation of what I would turn off my doorstep,' was her judgment ; but she would add, ' I do like some of the pictures of clean Dutch kitchens, with everything in them just a model of what things ought to be, and heaps of beautiful vegetables, and abundance of wholesome food. Yet there are too many of them, and there seems to be nothing going forward but eating and drinking.' Shewould not admire the delicate sentimentalities of Greuze. ' If I saw live women like his pictures,' she decided, ' I should be terribly afraid they were not worth much." But she could appreciate many of the old painters' Madonnas, and would gaze raptly into the soft eyes of the Mother of the Son of Man as they looked down at her through the dim mist of centuries. Yet the mere 'subject' did not carry her away, for, even of these, she would pass by some with the comment, 'A woman like that could never have been the " Blessed among women." ' And she always liked landscapes, if, as she described it, '.they looked like real places,' no AN OLD PICTURE. 137 matter though the country they depicted might have no striking features, but be flat and tame. ' It's worth painting,' she would remark. ' It's a bit of God's world, and there are hearts that remember it, and eyes that grow dim with longing to see it.' She stood still opposite a picture. It was the portrait of a lady painted in the early years of this century. From the back of the head rose an elaborate erection of hair, transfixed by a huge pin. At either side of the face, on a level with the eyes, was a highly ornate comb, beneath which the hair was arranged in drooping plaits, caught up round the ear, and fastened into the coronal. From the ears were suspended long drop earrings. About the brow was bound a black velvet ribbon. The dress was very low and elaborately laced. One hand was just visible, holding a book, and the wrist was clasped by a bracelet heavy as a gyve. Yet the face, when one could separate it from its grotesque surroundings, was pure and noble. The effect was like a statue of Minerva masquerading in a South Sea Islander's trappings. The two the old woman and the young gazed for a moment in silence. Then Miss Griffin spoke ' What was the artist's name ? ' she asked. Chrissy had the Catalogue, and replied. It was a very famous and familiar name. 138 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. 1 He ought to have known better,' mused Miss Griffin. ' And who is the lady ? ' Chrissy told her. She was the daughter of a great ducal line whose scions princes had feared as enemies and sought as friends. 'Ah,' said Miss Griffin, 'some folks don't like to say the plain truth to these very grand people. But that artist ought to have been above that. For it's not so very long ago : it's since slavery was found out to be wicked. And there's no slavery like being driven to do work one knows would be better left undone. A very queen has no right to set a genius to draw an ugly fashion picture. He might have made a pretty speech to her, and said that he could not paint her in anything that would not give pleasure as lasting as her beauty could ; and that the power of her rank should be exercised in showing people what they ought to do.' 'Artists might do good if they spoke out like that,' said Chrissy. ' They do sometimes,' returned Miss Griffin. ' My grandfather was a rich man, and my grand- mother had her portrait painted. She was a notable housewife and a famous spinner, but on that occa- sion she thought she ought to array herself in a nodding head-dress and a stiff stomacher. The artist had seen her in her own home, and knew what manner of woman she was. When he saw her in AN OLD PICTURE. 139 her fine toggery, he shook his head, and said, " This will not do. I want to paint you the lady who turns out the finest napery and the best preserves on the country-side the woman who looks well to the ways of her household, and eats not the bread of idleness. I want to paint your character, not the conventional madam who goes out to tea-parties and carpet-dances. You could not do those things in these garments." And he made her put on a black bombazine, with a fine hand-worked muslin cap on her head, and a similar kerchief folded over her bosom, and hung a bunch of keys round her waist, and put her spinning-wheel in the back- ground.' ' And I must say,' Miss Griffin added presently, with a humorous smile gleaming over her prim countenance, ' that excellent man's advice did me a good turn which he never dreamed of at the time he gave it. For when my poor father fell into mis- fortune, and all his effects were sold, of course the family portraits went too. And the be-frilled and be-feathered portraits, with no historical or human interest, went for the price of an old song, and may be hanging yet, smoke-dried, in the dens of the marine store-dealers who bought them. But when the auctioneer looked at my grandmother's picture, he said, " We needn't call this a portrait ; it is more, it is a subject." And he put it down in the 140 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. catalogue, "A housewife of the good old school." And it sold well.' And so Chrissy made up her mind, seeing clearly that what she should feel it was foolish to spend money upon, it must be equally foolish to spend time over. She thought she knew of better uses for her money uses which might secure competence and independence in later life. She was not quite sure how these uses might arise. Yet, meanwhile, money was coming in but slowly, and could harmlessly accumulate while awaiting fit opportunity. And that was where money evidently differed from leisure. Leisure would not accumulate. Idle half- hours could not be saved up till they made a whole holiday. They must be expended on the spot, or lost for ever. Chrissy could not readily see her way to a satis- factory conclusion in this matter. It required consideration ; and all the while precious hours were wasting in a manner against which Chrissy's fresh energies rebelled. What could she do? One thing occurred to her. There was some needlework presently required by herself and Miss Griffin. There was no haste for it. If anything else had supervened, it could have been taken up and laid down during the ensuing winter months. Chrissy resolved to put it, as Miss Griffin expressed it, ' straight through ' to work as women AN OLD PICTURE. 141 work when a wedding or a long journey is imminent. While she was doing that, some other task might present itself, for which she would be then found entirely disengaged. It was a narrow and lowly entrance to that best philosophy of human life, which teaches us that we must have made the utmost of every humble duty beside us before we venture to say that our lives are barren of interest, our powers thrown away, and our souls stranded on the barren sands of ennui. And so Chrissy and her good old friend planned and cut out thriftily, and sewed substantially, for Miss Griffin had her own shrewd version of economy. 'There's no cheapness in being ill put together,' she said. ' Folks and fabrics wear the better for a good_constitution.' It occurred to Chrissy, as she picked up the ' pieces,' that there were enough ' left over ' to make a useful little garment for the hall-porter's child, provided a certain rather quaint style of making it up was adopted. 'Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost,' quoted Miss Griffin approvingly. Chrissy's face flushed with a strange thrill of pleasure. Yes the Divine eye the Divine behest reached even such matters as these. She felt like a sentry on ome remote outpost, who suddenly hears his general pass by with an approving word. 1 42 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' I should not wonder,' mused Miss Griffin, ' but fashion itself actually began in thrift in a determi- nation to use up pieces of all shapes and colours, and to keep things strong, and make them look pretty, after they had seen a good deal of service. And then, perhaps, somebody did her patching so daintily that somebody else copied it when there was no occasion for it. It's wonderful how there is generally something good at the bottom of everything.' When that little garment was finished, Miss Griffin and Chrissy took it with them to the hall- porter's own home. They had long promised him a visit, because he had a wonderful old grandmother, said to be nearly a hundred years old, and still hale and brisk. They found the centenarian rocking her great- grandchild's cradle. Her grandson and grand- daughter stood aside in reverent gratification, feeling that the visit was paid to the old lady, and that it was due to their visitors that she should be seen at her best. She was delighted with the gift, yet shook her head, saying, ' It was made up too fancy.' (Miss Griffin and Chrissy exchanged a significant glance.) * Not but what she had liked bright colours in her young days, and liked 'em still.' (' Grannie can't bear to wear what she calls a dowdy shawl,' put in the mother of the baby.) ' But the whole world is AN OLD PICTURE. 143 getting too fancy now-a-days a-beginning every- thing at the wrong end, thinking more o' feathers nor of flannel, and putting down bits o' carpet instead of scrubbing the floor. It's the same with everything, even with learnin'. Neither mind nor body should have victuals for ever a-standing about. Food should not be put down till there's a good appetite ready for it.' ' But surely you like every one to learn to read and write ? ' pleaded Chrissy. 'Well, yes,' the old lady admitted, with a slight reluctance. ' But I'd rather not if it makes them set no value on reading and writing. I learned reading followin' my mother, and asking her the letters on the back o' the Catechism. She knew them,. but she was not always sure of the words. An' I didn't learn to write till after I was married. And I taught myself, long winter nights, when my husband was at his work, an' I did it, picking out letter by letter from the notes his master used to leave for him. I got a few good lessons at last, from a writing master, just to finish me off; I couldn't have afforded more. "And," says he to me, says he, "you've done well. You happened to get a good model, an' you put your will into it. The will's the thing ! " says he. And I always had a good will ! ' chuckled the old lady, with a pleasant egotism, surely pardonable in one so nearly putting off the armour of life. 144 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. 1 Well,' said Miss Griffin, as she and Chrissy walked home, ' it is wonderful what different people come to the same opinions, and in what different ways they get them. You heard what that good old body said ? And when I was a young woman, I heard a great professor of Oriental languages say much the same thing. He was in the house of a friend of mine, talking over a young student, who did not seem getting on with his learning so well as he might. They were speaking of classes and tutors and cram-books, as they called them ; and, says the professor, " They are all very well in their place, but success is in none of them. Success is in setting yourself down to your work. Every educated man is a self-educated man," says he.' 'And,' thought Chrissy, 'after all, why should I give up all the thoughts I had had of going through a regular course of drawing ? Dear dear father was going to let me have lessons this winter. If he had been living, I should have gone to a morning class. I might go to an evening one now, if I left the shop very promptly, and made great haste over my tea. But no, I should not like to be bound to run off from Mr. Bisset, if he really wanted my services, and I should not like to leave Miss Griffin alone, after all, when I know how she has been looking forward to having a companion in the long lamp-lit hours. I can certainly learn a great deal more than I know AN OLD PICTURE. 145 now, working on by myself. And I'll make myself stick to what a master would keep me, and not copy landscapes and flowers, but go on drawing lines and outlines, and then practise " from the round " on Miss Griffin's cups and candlesticks.' And this was how-Chrissy found out that leisure can be stored, by converting it into something else, and that the interest on such wise investment is an ever-increasing value for the new leisure life may bring. CHAPTER X. CHRISSY'S TEMPTATION. OOKED at from the outside, it might have seemed a very still and monotonous life which Chrissy Miller lived through that first winter of her orphanhood. Certainly it seemed so to Sophia Ackroyd, who never had less than three parties 'coming off' each week, and who felt the interven- ing days to be insupportably long and dreary. It seemed so, too, to Helen, who felt that her own existence would have been unendurable to her but for a glamour which was thrown over everything a strange perilous delight, revealing in its flashes all sorts of castles looming in the dim future, and in the present transforming the common incidents of life a visit, a letter, the badinage of thoughtless companions into fairy gold. But then neither Sophia nor Helen could see into CfiXSSSY'S TEMPTATION. 147 the heart of Chrissy's life. In their degree they were removed from it as the poet's poodle is from the poet whom he sits and watches. Nay, perhaps further, for the poor dog watches in a mysterious love and reverence, while they beheld only with a mean wonder, verging on a meaner contempt. How could they guess that there was developing in Chrissy something very like a new sense even the perception of the way in which the expression of truth and beauty may steal into the simplest and humblest material forms ? How could they know that in her search for help and guidance in her homely art-studies, she had lighted on an oracle, which answered many a doubting question, and found shape for many a misty thought had, in short, found a new friend, great and good, in the written works of a master-mind ? For, from the rector's library, she got the works of John Ruskin, art critic and social philosopher, whom cen- turies to come will recognise as the prophet of this present age. And if Sophia and Helen could have known these facts, they could not have appreciated the exquisite delight attending them. And there was more still. For during that winter Chrissy sounded the meaning of many a theological phrase, which she had hitherto whispered in reverent mystery, as something quite outside the experience of common life. She learned what ' communion with 148 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. God 'is. Kneeling by her little lonely bed, pouring out her bitterness and griefs as she would not pour them out even to Miss Griffin, lest they should make her sad, Chrissy felt her heart fill with peace and patience. Things around her did not change. She changed herself. God's sunshine had never gone out ; it was hidden because her own head was down in the dust. This raised, the brightness was there again. And she learned, too, what good Bishop Taylor calls the ' practice of the presence of God,' the truth which he declares to be the readiest way ' to make sin. to cease from among the children of men, and for men to approach to the blessed estate of the saints in heaven.' In her loss and loneliness, she found there was One ever with her to be served and pleased, as she had once striven to serve and please her father, who could be with her as even her father could never have been, seeing the very thoughts of her heart, and leading her on to an ever purer service. And as she thus entered into some of the meaning of the Fatherhood of God, she felt a strange new human tie to Him, the Elder Brother, who revealed it, so that she saw His life as sharing with her own life, and all lives, and interpreting their mysteries by itself. For her father's untimely death, for the wrongs done him, and the slights cast on his memory and his children, what comfort was there like CHRJSSY'S TEMPTATION. 149 Calvary, where He, who had 'known no sin,' did not shrink from sorrow, and shame, and death? Was she not meaning to discover a little of His meaning when He said, ' It is expedient for you that I go away : for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.' Chrissy began to feel that if the meetings in the higher life are dashed by any grudge over the part- ings here, then the partings have not fulfilled God's meaning. Even in the moments when her heart most yearned for the touch of her father's fingers on her hair, there came ever the thought, ' but not for myself as I used to be then.' Is it any wonder that Chrissy would not have agreed with Sophia Ackroyd and Helen, in pro- nouncing her life that winter to be dull and dreary ? It was early in the spring of the following year that Chrissy, looking over the advertisements in the morning papers, was arrested by one : WANTED a well-educated youth, who can speak English and German fluently. A small beginning, with hard work, but good prospects. And then followed an address, which Chrissy, with her long acquaintance with dim city byways, knew belonged to a small old-fashioned firm of Dutch origin, and doing business with those States of North America where a German population predominate. She remembered the office quite well a low building, 150 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION, flanking two sides of a tiny triangular court-yard. She had asked her father concerning the nationality of the quaint name, ' Zachary Bilderdyk,' and he had bidden her remark the way in which the worthy Dutch merchant had expressed the habits of his race in the painful cleanliness of the mean little building, and the great green bucket, with its well-clipped evergreen, set down on neatly-laid red tiles. He had drawn a contrast between all this homely neat- ness and the glaring plate-glass and dirty grandeur of most of the surrounding offices, adding that 'the Bilderdyks were a respectable firm, who might be thought rather slow-going now-a-days, but whose word was as good as a bond and better than many. He had seen Zachary Bilderdyk once on some public occasion, and he seemed a character.' Chrissy had known what the last phrase meant from her father's lips, seeing that he never, under any circumstances, applied it to those gross exaggera- tions of recklessness and selfishness which have nothing to do with character, unprefixed by the word ' bad.' When Chrissy had been a little girl, she had asked her father what he meant by 'a character.' And he had said, ' I mean somebody extra-good, but ( with the extra-goodness growing a little on one side, I like a tree which is too big for the place where it > is planted, and has to reach round or stretch over something.' CffRISSY'S TEMPTATION. 151 Chrissy remembered her father's words as she read this advertisement, and she felt as if Mr. Bilderdyk was quite an old friend. Might not this prove a good opening for Hans Krinken ? He really ought to be looking out for something better than what he was getting now the poor pittance which is paid for sheer manual labour. He had no right to seem so settled down as he did. And yet and the thought struck Chrissy like a blow there was no change which could now come to life in Shield Street which could be so much for the worse as that Hans should leave it. The Bissets were kind and good ; true, but they had never known her father. Theirs were new faces, which had had no part in the finished household drama. Some of the old neighbours, too, were pleasantly familiar, but they had always stood outside. They had been going on, all unconscious, with their own business, on that terrible morning when she and Hans had crept to her father's silent room. And she and Hans knew what they knew about the Ackroyds, and the way of Mr. Miller's ruin. Nobody else knew it, or, at least, under- stood it, as they did. Poor Chrissy almost started, to find what strong ties are woven of companionship in sorrow and mutual comprehension of a secret. And why must it be Hans to go, when there 152 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. seemed no likelihood that the Ackroyds would not remain for ever, ' flourishing like a green bay-tree ' ? said poor Chrissy in that bitter moment. Surely, surely, it was very nice of Hans if he was not so terribly impatient to leave old friends. And perhaps, if she told him about this, he would only think that the matter did not make any difference to anybody, and that she did not care how soon he went away. And his going would be a great loss to Mr. Bisset he would hardly get anybody so efficient in his place. And there might be some way for Hans to stay where he was, and yet get on. Nobody knew what might turn up. And perhaps, when his grandfather had so wished him to leave Germany, he might have preferred his not entering into any relations with Germans. Besides, if Hans had any intention of changing his situa- tion, he was probably watching advertisements on his own account, and would take due notice of any which seemed likely to suit him, without any seemingly ungracious reminder from her. Besides, if he did apply for the situation, very likely he would not get it, and that might only dishearten him. No, no ! this would not do. Chrissy felt that she had got on a wrong tack ; she was steering with the wind, not on her proper course, and that may be easy sailing at the outset of a voyage, but it CHRISSY'S TEMPTATION. 153 will never land us in the haven where we would be. It was not Chrissy's duty to study what Hans might think of her, nor what might be his duty under any circumstances which might arise. It was her duty to do the simple kindly thing. We can never act rightly and truly until we realise that we have nothing to do with the consequences of our actions, but only with their motives and their wisdom. Yes ; she would tell Hans, come what might. But as she came to this resolve, she could not help feeling that it was the easier to carry out because she knew how many situations must be applied for before one is obtained. It may seem strange, but such humbling self- revelation is generally the Divine recompense for honest endeavour, just as self-satisfaction seems the deadly growth of sloth and indifference. 'To whom that hath shall be given,' and whoever has worthy aspirations, shall never lose sight of the un- attained. Wise men say, ' He who blames himself has done his best.' "*""' ~^ v_ She told Hans while they were at work together in the shop he lifting out a boxful of books which she had to catalogue. ' I shall certainly go after the chance,' he said, in what seemed to her a rather dry and matter-of-fact way. r54 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' A great many people go after every place,' she observed. ' You must not be disappointed if you don't get it.' ' I shall not be disappointed,' he answered, in the same quiet tone, bending over the chest. ' I am sure to get something some day. I can't stay here always.' Chrissy's heart was beating heavily. She hoped Hans noticed no change in her voice. She could not think why it sounded so strangely. Possibly Hans was sufficiently occupied with similar cogi- tations of his own. At noontide, when Hans generally went out for some lunch, he came past Chrissy's place behind the counter. ' I am going to Bilderdyk's now,' he said. ' Won't you wish me luck ? ' ' I wish you everything that is good,' Chrissy answered. ' You know I do, Hans. I know father would like you to do well.' Chrissy had almost said, ' to get on ; ' but that phrase did not chime in with what had been the fashion of her father's thoughts. 'Thank you, Miss Christina,' said Hans. 'A thought of one's bg.st friend is the_best omen to start with. And I am not sure what might be a d isappointment' He was gone. What did he mean by his last CHRISSY'S TEMPTATION. 155 words ? Chrissy wondered ; more than they ex- pressed, she was sure. But busy people have no time to perform vivisection on their friends' speeches, tones, and looks. Chrissy felt vexed with herself, and somehow pained by Hans. If she had been an idle miss, she might have indulged her sensations till they ended in a flood of tears or a fit of ' nerves.' But Chrissy had to make up the weekly accounts, and before she was half through her task, the mist had cleared from her spirit, the world was again the healthy work-a-day world, and she and Hans, two friends in it, who would always keep a kind thought for each other, even if they ^parted and never met again. CHAPTER XL TEN POUNDS. HRISSY knew that HansKrinken's interview with Mr. Bilderdyk could not be a very long one, but she was busy in the counting- house all the affernoon, and though he could easily have looked in on her there, he managed to keep out of her way till just before the time for shutting up the shop. Even then, when they encountered each other, he did not look up at her, or appear to notice her presence, but went on steadily with the task he had in hand, to wit, the counting of sundry packets of notepaper sent in from a wholesale warehouse. ' Well, Hans ? ' said Chrissy, with a cheerful tone of interrogation. ' One two three,' counted Hans, and then TEN POUNDS. 157 paused to set up a pile before he went on deliberately, ' Well, Miss Chrissy I went' 'And I'm afraid you found the vacancy filled/ said Chrissy, hating herself for secretly hoping so. 'Four five six' another pile was set up, silently 'seven eight nine. No, Miss Chrissy I did not' ' And have you got the situation ? ' Chrissy in- quired anxiously. 'Ten eleven twelve,' another piling up. 'Not exactly. It is to be kept open till to-morrow for me' some very deliberate counting 'but I shall not take it' ' Shall not take it ! ' echoed Chrissy, with a sudden leaping of heart and a strange revulsion of feeling, as if, after all, she would not now mind so very much if he did. ' But why ? Is it not a real step for you ? Do you not think the prospects are good ? ' Hans did not answer in haste. ' It would be a real step for me,' he replied. ' Not that the salary is much higher than my wages here ; but, if I did my duty, my way would be opened up to good work and solid position in time.' ' You would like the work ? ' questioned Chrissy. ' Ay, that I should,' said Hans. ' Part of it would be taking charge of poor German emigrants over to America, and interpreting for them. At present, I 158 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. should only have to take parties from place to place from one accredited agent to another. But as I grew accustomed to their requirements, and picked up a knowledge of the country and of business in general, if I kept my character and gave satisfaction, I should become an accredited agent myself.' ' And settle in America ? ' asked Chrissy. . Her heart felt heavy as lead. Hans said he did not mean to take this chance, but the very sight of it seemed to show her how big the world was, and how very far people could wander away in it. 'And settle in America,' Hans repeated. Chrissy stood silent. These wholesome manly statements generally startle women into pitiful little remarks about loneliness, home-sickness, and so forth. But Chrissy's quick wit saw that in this case these forlorn pleas, unavailing as they generally are, were entirely out of place. Hans had only been in London for a year. What was there to make it more home-like to him than any other strange place ? Perhaps Hans had not expected this utter silence. Perhaps he tried to interpret it, for he said ' All places are lonely till we make ourselves at home in them. Wherever I go, I can have nothing to leave behind yet ! ' Did he expect Chrissy to contradict him ? How could she ? She only said, timidly TEN POUNDS. 159 ' But you say you do not mean to go.' ' I shall not go,' Hans answered. ' You don't wish to go,' she said, doubtfully. ' Whether I do or not, I cannot go,' he said. ' But it is not decided ? ' she asked. ' You say it is open for you till to-morrow.' ' Mr. Bilderdyk wished it left open,' said Hans. ' I told him what my decision must be, but he seemed to think I might change it.' Chrissy was puzzled, and rather hurt by something in Hans' manner ; and she felt that, hard as it had seemed that Hans must go away, it would not be any easier if he stayed there against his will. ' Won't you change your decision ? ' she pleaded. ' I cannot, Miss Chrissy/ he replied. By this time he had made up the last pile of paper, and setting it down, he turned and walked into the store-room, leaving Chrissy standing mute, her secret wish of that morning apparently fulfilled, yet her spirit touched with strange unrest and dissatisfaction. She had done nothing to secure her own gratification nay, she had done all she could to risk it, seeing that she had herself started Hans on his quest. Yet she had a lurking sense of remorse something was certainly discordant, and her secret consciousness of having been out of tune herself seemed to lay the blame at her door. But what more could she do ? She had tried to invite Hans' friendly confidence, 160 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION, generally so freely given, " and for once he had repelled it with a stubborn frowardness she had never noticed in him before. It was not her fault. She tried to comfort herself with that. Somewhat mechanically she finished off her duties for the day. Mr. Bisset and his wife were in the parlour taking their -tea, and she looked in upon them to say good evening, and went _on through the shop. Hans had just closed up all but the door left open for her to go out. He stood, leaning against the door-post, and a street-lamp shed a strong light on his face. Its expression was not sad, but moody, almost discontented ; and his voice, as he bade her good-night, had a dreary sound in it. Chrissy walked a few paces down Shield Street ; then paused, and suddenly turned. The youth was standing where she had left him. Chrissy stepped back into the shop. ' Hans,' she said, in a hurried whisper, ' Hans, I know there is something wrong something's troubling you. What is it ? ' His face brightened as she spoke. The cloud broke up, but the brightness that came forth was as pathetic moonlight, not sunshine. ' What can be troubling me, Miss Chrissy ? ' he asked. 'I don't know,' said Chrissy, waxing braver. ^ JEN POUNDS. 161 'But something is, I am sure. Do tell me the truth, Hans ; I know you will.' 'I have been a little troubled,' he answered. ' One may be foolish sometimes, and fancy things might be managed better for us than they are. But that mood passes, Miss Chrissy. It is passed already.' ' Won't you tell me what it was ? ' implored Chrissy. Hans was silent. ' You would really have liked to take this situation ? ' she urged. ' I ought to have been glad of it,' he admitted ; ' and I wish I ought to be very glad of it,' he added more enigmatically. ' And it is kept open for you till to-morrow,' cried Chrissy, ' and yet you have made up your mind not to take it ? Hans, it must be offered to you with some condition you do not like. But won't you think it over, even if you won't say what it is ? For father thought Mr. Bilderdyk was a good man, and he may have reasons for his rules which you do not understand.' if His rules are reasonable and wise, I can see that,' said Hans quietly ; ' but I cannot meet them.' They were both inside the shop now, and Hans had closed the door. Only one lamp was burning, casting a dim light on the book-laden shelves and . heavy packing-cases. The old place looked very much as it did on that evening when Chrissy had 1 62 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. groped across its gloom to find her father in the counting-house. It had been her duty then to submit to silence and secrecy. But that did not seem her duty now. The same duties seldom return upon us. Experience must grow with our growth, or it will check it. Some people never do^ the duty of to-day, because they are striving to do the duty they neglected yesterday; while with the wiser sort, one task accomplished generally leads to a widely varied one. ' Hans,' she pleaded, ' won't you tell me what it is ? It cannot be any habit which Mr. Bilderdyk imposes on his people, for all your habits are good ; you go to church, you do not smoke. Hans, it will be kind- ness to me to tell me ; there are so few now who care to tell me anything about themselves. I'm not very wise, Hans, but I might think of something to help you ; a very little helps one sometimes.' ' If it was counsel I wanted, I would seek yours I would indeed, Miss Chrissy,' said the young man earnestly. ' But this is something quite different.' ' If father had been alive, could he have helped you ? ' she asked. Hans paused, then answered ' Yes.' ' And would you have asked his help ? ' she went on eagerly. The pause was longer, but the answer came again, ' Yes ! ' TEN POUNDS. 163 'It must be something about references or money ! ' cried Chrissy. 'There there !' said Hans hastily. ' It does not matter you can never guess ! But Chrissy was not to be so silenced now. She went on boldly ' It cannot be reference. Mr. Bisset would speak well of you, and I am sure Dr. Julius would give you a good word, and so would Miss Griffin. It must be money. Hans, do do tell me what it is.' But Hans was stubbornly mute. ' It is about money ; if it is not, Hans, at least say that' ' It is about money, Miss Chrissy/ said Hans in a choking voice ; ' but it does not matter. I don't want to go. Perhaps I might not have gone if I had been able.' He moved towards the shop door, opened it, and went out. He was not going to risk more of this perilous interview. His secrets would be safer in the street. But Chrissy followed him. * Hans,' she said timidly, ' is it anything about clothes ? ' Hans laughed a painful laugh. ' No, it isn't, Miss Chrissy,' he answered. ' These are all I have, but Mr. Bilderdyk did not guess that, so that subject did not come up. When your father had mercy on me,' he went on with austere truth- 1 64 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. fulness, ' I was a beggar, in beggar's rags. These clothes I wear he gave me ; and I have saved money sufficient to buy more. I have got so far ahead of the world in one short year and yet I am discon- tented ! ' he added, in a gentler tone. ' Hans,' pleaded Chrissy, walking by his side, and never noticing that James and Sophia Ackroyd passed them by ' Hans, will you not tell me what this money is needed for tell me because I am my father's daughter ? ' ' Women ought not to be burdened with money troubles ; women like you have enough burdens of their own,' said Hans. And then he came to a dead stand-still ; for he said to himself, ' She ought not to be seen speaking with me in the street ; she is Miss Miller, and I am only the German shop-boy.' For he had observed the architect's son and daughter, and had compre- hended the scorn on the young lady's face. ' 1 cannot leave you like this,' said Chrissy ; ' you, whom my father liked and thought so much of.' And without a word, she turned from the thorough- fare down which they were walking still crowded and bustling in the long spring twilight and passed through a small iron gate which opened on her right hand. Hans could not do less than follow her. That little iron gate led them to a quaint retreat with which Chrissy had been familiar from her TEN POUNDS. 165 earliest days. It was a broad quay running parallel with the dingy street they had just left, and it was flanked on one hand by spacious Government offices, while on the other lay the river. Thus a few steps gave them an entire change of scene and surround- ing. On the street side, the Government offices were dark and mean, with rough men lounging at low doors, while all the houses round were either gloomy or sordid, and one scarcely dared to raise one's eyes to the strip of sky overhead, lest one should find oneself jostled into the mire. But to the river, the great building turned a calm and stately face. Countless pigeons found refuge in its deep eaves and on the capitals of its pillars, and fluttered down to take their tithe of bounteous ship cargoes, fearless of the pale little city children who played about the great flight of steps, or of the feeble old city pen- sioners who rested themselves on thoughtfully pro- vided seats, and watched the busy vivid life of the silent highway, the big ships coming in and going out, the passenger-laden steamers passing to and fro, the picturesque hay barges with their dark red sails and fragrant freight, or else looked up at the sun- set over the city, and thought deeper and sweeter thoughts than they could ever find words for. The sun was already down to-night ; only one line of pale glory still lingered on the other side of the river, behind a magnificent pile which might have 1 66 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. been ' the cathedral ' anywhere else, but in London is only ' a parish church.' The old people were beginning to bestir themselves ; the breeze would soon blow cold, and the liveried porter would come out of the Government office to lock the gates of the quay. Chrissy knew that what she had to do must be done quickly. ' Hans,' she said, ' how can you shrink from speak- ing out to me? I am poor, like you. We must both^ know the same struggles and defeats and successes too, perhaps.' ' Perhaps that does not make it easier,' muttered Hans. But Chrissy did not catch his words. ' It is so hard to be kept out of a friend's counsel, r just because the friend feels that one cannot help,' , she bewailed. Oh, the wiles of a woman ! Let no man think to escape them. The utmost that is given to him is to take care that the wiles beguile him to his good and not to his hurt. Hans was fairly conquered. How could Chrissy take up his silence so, at precisely its opposite meaning ? He was driven to defend himself. ' It is not that at all,' he cried. ' Only why should I trouble you with hearing that I must give up a chance of of doing a great deal I should like to do, because it is one of Mr. Bilderdyk's rules, like a law of the Medes and Persians, that the youth who takes TEN POUNDS. 167 the place which is offered to me, should always pay his first passage to America himself. The rule arose because he had two or three young men in succession who hired with him simply to secure the passage, and deserted his service directly they landed. It is therefore quite a reasonable rule, but it is a speci- men of the harm dishonest and selfish people do.' ' Hans,' said Chrissy very quietly, ' are you quite sure you like the work ? And did Mr. Bilderdyk really think you would suit? ' ' I should like the work, certainly,' said Hans. * It is a way of gaining one's living into which one could put a lot of usefulness. And Mr. Bilderdyk kindly said he thought I would suit particularly well. And as for the going away well, that's the part which makes the disappointment easier.' The rough edge had gone from his voice. He was good-natured Hans once more. ' Hans,' Chrissy said breathlessly, and with shining eyes, ' if it is only about ten pounds that you want, I have them ready ; they are just lying by, waiting to be useful in some way.' She did not leave him time to rally from his astonishment and refuse, but went on rapidly, ' Because I am a woman, you will not say I ought not to be a friend. Because I am a woman, you will not say I must not try to carry on what my father began. You will repay me those ten pounds long before I shall need 1 68 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. them, It is nothing, Hans; it is no favour, it is no kindness, it is only a neighbourly service." ' I cannot take it ; it must not be,' said poor Hans ; ' but you have already done me a kindness I can never repay by offering it to me.' ' So, am I to work only to buy finery, or to pro- vide for my own old age ? ' cried Chrissy. ' Nobody would have blamed me much if I had spent most of that money on myself, on what I do not want, and can do quite well without. But I suppose nobody will approve of my using it in any such way as this to serve a fellow-creature, and bring happiness to myself. If you cannot accept help from a woman, Hans Krinken, it must be because you think a woman is unworthy to help you. Then I wonder , why God made women at all ! But in great men's . lives one often reads that they were helped and served in their early days by ' Chrissy paused in confusion ; for there was something in the radiant face Hans turned upon her which recalled what in her excitement she had rushed upon, forgetful, to wit, that her sentence must end with the words, ' Those who, in many cases, were afterwards their wives.' Hans looked at her earnestly. ' Miss Chrissy,' he said, in low solemn tones, ' I will take your kindness if, after I have seen Mr. Bilderdyk to-morrow, no other way is opened for TEN POUNDS. 169 me. But, Miss Chrissy, I, too, know all about you and your affairs and how much, therefore, you are doing for me. This money must be ' ' It is all my own earnings since my father's death,' she interrupted, ' and I have a little more still, and more will be coming in every week to pay my ex- penses, and I need very little. It is all right, Hans.' ' My life ought to be something good, after such an event as this coming into it,' mused Hans. ' Good-night, Miss Chrissy. I will do my very best to get away from you it will be quite easy now I find you are willing to risk your fortune to send me off.' There was something in the playful words which made Chrissy's heart leap, and it danced within her all the while as she ran home to Miss Griffin's. She felt sure Hans would go now, and it was her own hand which had loosed his moorings ; but the pain of parting was over over, at least, for this ecstatic hour, though it might come back upon some lower mood. For the soul which can make God's will its own, and cheerfully set its hand to work in the weaving of His circumstances, is master of events. There is a truth for daily use in the Divine paradox ' Whosoever would save his life, shall lose it ; and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake ' for the love of God and of his brother man ' shall find it.' CHAPTER XII. A VENTURE. 'HEN Hans presented himself at Mr. Bilder- dyk's office for his second and conclusive interview, the grave Dutch merchant said ' So you've come back again. I thought you would.' He had formed his own conclusions as to the condition which had given rise to the youth's hesitancy. Of course it concerned the ten pounds on which he insisted for preliminary expenses. It was unlikely that such a sum would not be a grave consideration to a friend- less young foreigner a matter calling for debate and 170 A VENTURE. 171 delay. But Mr. Bilderdyk did not choose to believe that it could be any insurmountable obstacle if the young man really wanted to be employed by him. Any respectable person could find means to borrow or raise such a sum. Mr. Bilderdyk had never looked poverty full in the face. He had had his own early struggles with it, but he had conquered, so to speak, from trench or battlement : it had never come to a hand-to-hand fight. Further, he came to this conclusion because it suited him. He thought Hans a specially promising applicant. But he had no in- tention of abating his rule for any exception, always arguing that it did less harm to be wrong in one case, by strictly adhering to a good rule, than to hold such rule at the mercy of impulse or circum- stance. If Hans could not raise this money, then he must be relegated to the ranks of the undesirable. Mr. Bilderdyk was an upright man, and had strict ideas of duty, but they all took an organised and official form. He would not have picked up a wounded traveller and set him on his own beast. He would have called a policeman and sent for a hospital ambulance. His mind was something like a kitchen garden, free equally from the rankest weeds and the sweetest flowers, but well stocked with potatoes and pot-herbs, by no means to be despised. To those who knew it best, his life pre- sented a regulated symmetry quite consoling and 172 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. restful among the general mass of human muddle ; but it was the regulated symmetry of a neatly-ruled ledger, not of a noble ode. ' Sir,' said Hans, with the clear colour coming into his face, ' I saw, from the first, there was nothing I should be more thankful for than such a chance as you offer to give me. My only hesita- tion concerned the money for my first travelling expenses.' ' I knew that I felt sure of that,' observed Mr. Bilderdyk, gratified by the frank statement which confirmed his own shrewd conjecture. ' I told you, sir, that I was poor, a stranger, and friendless,' Hans went on ; ' but ' 'You find you are not so friendless as you thought,' said the merchant, with a quiet smile. He was not a hard man, except in the matter of his rules. On the security of Hans' honest face and candid manner he would almost have advanced him such a sum himself, for any purpose but to enter his own service. For this rule of his had been made, not so much to prevent money-losses, as to spare the confusion caused by mere temporary hirelings. The colour on Hans' face deepened. ' I told you, sir,' said he, ' about my first master Mr. Miller, who took me up when I was but a beggar, little more than a year ago, and who is A VENTURE. 173 since dead. His daughter, sir, desires to lend me this money.' 'Good!' said Mr. Bilderdyk, delighted by this confirmation of the theory on which his rule was founded. ' But my master died not rich, you know, sir. It is a question whether I ought to accept this money.' ' It is only a loan ? ' inquired Mr. Bilderdyk. ' It is a loan,' said Hans ; ' but it is a loan freely offered to a wandering foreigner, who can give no security for its return in case of his misfortune or death.' 'What interest are you to pay?' asked Mr. Bilderdyk. ' None,' said Hans, almost sharply. ' I could not propose any the loan was not offered so.' ' Because, of course, high interest covers risks,' mused the merchant. 'Well, the old lady shows that she has considerable faith in you.' We are all apt to conjure up pictures in associa- tion with an idea presented to us, and some fine imaginations have a curious gift for correctness, even in very small details. But Mr. Bilderdyk's did not dance and leap like an unaccountable cataract, but ran in straight lines, like the canals of his native Holland, so that every step of its progress could be accounted for. Women never had money to do 174 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. what they liked with till they were old. Good old women liked helping worthy young people. Ergo, Hans' benefactress must be old. Perhaps it was significant that Hans did not at once contradict the inappropriate adjective. A minute or two afterwards, his silence struck him as false as something like a lie. 'I don't think I should disappoint the lady's confidence in the long run,' he said ; ' but I might die and she could ill afford to lose such a sum. I could not bear that she should lose it through me.' The merchant sat reflecting. ' I know one thing you can do,' he said presently. ' You can insure your life for twenty-five pounds, and, in the event of your death, that would cover your funeral expenses and pay this debt too. But I'm afraid you are not of age ; the difficulty may be got over, only it will give rise to complicated arrangements, and cause some trouble.' ' I am of age next week,' said Hans eagerly. ' Dear me, that is particularly fortunate,' returned the old Dutchman, looking at the youth over his spectacles. 'I did not think you were so old; I took you for about eighteen ; if I remember rightly, I did not inquire your age I took it for granted.' Hans thought Mr. Bilderdyk had a faculty for guessing ages wrongly. ' It will be quite easily managed,' went on the mer- A VENTURE. 175 chant. ' You can make arrangements for getting the insurance complete by the time you are of age, then you can make a simple will leaving all you have to this old lady ' ' To Miss Christina Miller,' put in Hans. ' And that will can hold good till you have repaid this loan.' ' It can hold good for ever,' thought Hans, ' at least, unless until ' and there he reined in his fancy, for if he let it carry him on so fast he should lose his head. ' It will be best to put the will in charge of some trustworthy person,' pursued the business-like Mr. Bilderdyk. ' I will not offer to take charge of it myself ; its custodian had better be some personal friend of yours or of the old lady's.' 'I had rather Miss Miller did not know anything about it,' returned Hans. ' I will ask Dr. Julius, the medical man who lives opposite St. Cecilia's Church, to take it in hand.' ' Ay, that will do,' said the old merchant. ' And if you like, I will be one witness to the document. These arrangements are always made more secure by several responsible persons knowing of them, especially as you don't wish to acquaint the old lady herself with them, and enable her to protect her own interests.' There is a place for everybody in the world, and a part in which every man's innocent idiosyncrasies can disport themselves for the general good. Cer- 176 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. tainly Mr. Bilderdyk's matter-of-fact precision made poor Chrissy's enthusiastic generosity into the most rational proceeding possible ; and if worldly wisdom and shrewdness would more often hold themselves at the service of the higher intuitions and warmer emo- tions, instead of dominating over them, much that is now thought ' visionary ' would become ' visible.' As Hans Krinken walked back to Shield Street, all painful sense of obligation, all lurking fear of unmanly dependence, had quite passed away, and there remained but that gratitude for the enjoyment of a ready and watchful love, which is one of the most helpful possessions with which a soul can start on the journey of life. Yet not for worlds would he let Chrissy know how carefully she was to be shielded from possible loss. He would not have done anything which could make her think that he imagined he had lessened his debt to her. Hans was far too wise to imagine any such thing. Nor was he any the more tempted to do so when, on going to Dr. Julius, and telling that gentleman the whole story, he not only promised to keep the secret and give the purposed arrangement all the help and further- ance in his power, but treated Hans with marked consideration, and even hinted that had he come to him in the first instance, he himself might have advanced the required sum. A VENTURE. 177 Hans was thankful for the doctor's expressions of kindliness, and did not doubt their sincerity; but, young as he was, a severe experience of life had taught him that people are viewed much more favourably through the medium of another person's confidence and friendship, and that when anybody comes to us so commended, it is not all of us who have sufficient imagination to realize how we should have regarded him had he come before us without such credentials. Hans rather felt that Chrissy had done more than lend him gold she had given hirn^ character. Chrissy was a little anxious all th~at morning while Hans was away at Mr. Bilderdyk's. She was afraid he was dreadfully unwilling to take her money; and fancying, as women often do, that every- body must see the worth of what they value, she could not help thinking that the Dutch merchant himself would smooth the way for the young man. And somehow, if Hans went away without her help, it would make his going seem harder. Why, it would have been hard to say ; but the mind, and still more the heart^ have processes which defy logic. And these will have their way, however unaccountable, like many other forces of nature ; like the sun, for instance, which dominates the planets round it, quite serenely, though we know little more of ' gravitation ' than the name we have ourselves given it. When Hans came towards her with a light step 1 78 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. and a beaming face, she felt sure that his object was to be accomplished without her aid. Well, she must be glad, and rejoice in his rejoicing. But it is useless to deny that she found it much easier to be glad when Hans said ' You are to have it all your own way, Miss Chrissy. Yours is to be the hand which is to send/ me into banishment.' 7 Chrissy told only Miss Griffin of her venture, for the girl had a loyal heart, and did not care to keep secrets from one who opened up to her all the treasures of her own experience. She could not be sure it would win Miss Griffin's entire approval, but it would certainly meet with the kindly sympathy with which the good old maid always heard and considered other people's affairs. Chrissy told her story with beating heart and blushing face. Miss Griffin, arranging her tea-china in the early summer twilight, said not a word while she told it, and was silent for a few minutes after- wards. Then she suddenly came round to where Chrissy was sitting, and put one of her hands on each of Chrissy's shoulders. ' I suppose I ought to preach up prudence, and ' condemn you for rashness and over-generosity, and / remind you of your own old age, and of all the mischances which may befall you. It's a good ser-, mon, but you'll find plenty of people to preach it. ( A VENTURE. 179 Chrissy Miller, I'd have done what you have done, i There was a day once, Chrissy. But I had nothing i of my own. The will of the Lord be done ! Onlyi men will never be worse off for the better fortune of/ women ! ' Hans Krinken left his post in the Shield Street shop, and entered Mr. Bilderdyk's employment a few weeks before he was required to leave England. A day or two after this change it was only natural that he should find some message which required that he should visit Miss Griffin's rooms after office hours. Many a young heart has leaped with delight when some sweet voice has shyly dropped an accustomed title, and taken up the more familiar Christian name. But in this instance matters were reversed. It was when Chrissy softly said, ' Mr. Krinken,' that Hans looked up, and thanked her with his kind blue eyes. For one thing, it was so good of her to recognize and remember that though he was still as poor as ever was even her debtor in a special way which he had never been before yet he had advanced a step in social status, and now had a humble position among educated men. And more than that, he was there- fore drawn nearer her. The little ceremony of her address did not mark a barrier set up between them, but one broken down. It would not stay for ever. But its rearing made possible some future fair day when he miht ask to be Hans once more no loncrcr i So EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. homely Hans the shop-boy, but Hans the equal friend, perhaps the happy lover. Yes, there was music for him in Chrissy's simple phrase. 'We are just sitting down to tea, Mr. Krinken ; won't you join us ? ' 'Yes yes, certainly Mr. Krinken will/ said Miss Griffin, bustling to her china-cupboard for another cup and saucer. And this time the invitation was accepted. They talked to him about what he would need to take with him for his voyage, and for his sojourn in the strange country. Hans had a true instinct that he must joyfully accept must almost request little kindnesses from the hands which had done so much for him. He told them frankly how much money of his own he had to spend, and what he absolutely required, and appealed to their woman's wit and fertility of resource to make the best of the business for him. Miss Griffin undertook to do all the buying and making up. Chrissy said she would have plenty of time to help now ; there was all the evening leisure. But what about her drawing? Hans asked ; for he had heard about her efforts and her studies concerning them. Chrissy laughed. Her drawings could wait. She would work all the better after a/ rest. There would be time enough for them when , there was nothing else to do, she added, a little pathetically. But she would show them to him. A VENTURE. 181 She had certainly worked hard. She had started with a good stock of such mechanical skill as girls acquire at school. And after a little ' free-hand,' and a few original exercises from the ' round,' she had taken for models sundry prim old representa- tions of buildings of historical interest in England and on the Continent. The pictures were to be found in a rare old book which she had borrowed from Mr. Bisset's stock. Many of them were of places which had vanished already, or were likely soon to be improved off the face of the earth, and the accuracy of Chrissy's copies almost rivalled the precision of the originals. ' If people pored over these things as Chrissy has done,' said Miss Griffin, ' I don't think they could build the nasty modern houses they do.' ' I don't think it is a bad plan to multiply copies of these pictures,' said Chrissy, as if in excuse for what she felt too many people would regard as wasted labour. ' Many of these places were removed or altered before photography became general, and as time slowly destroys a few old engravings, it will not be easy to find what the scenes of great his- torical events were like when they happened.' ' Miss Chrissy,' said Hans in a low voice, as Miss Griffin went to and fro, on hospitable cares intent, ' Miss Chrissy, should you object to part from some of these drawings ? ' 1 82 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' Nobody will want to part them from me, I fear,' retorted Chrissy, laughing. ' But I was going to offer you one whichever you like best. I thought it might be this picture of St. Cecilia-in-the-Garden, as it used to look when all the trees were about it.' 'Thank you, Miss Chrissy/ said Hans, 'thank you very much indeed ; and you were right in thinking that it would be my choice for myself He spoke English fluently now, his recent know- ledge of it only evidenced by an occasional formality. ' But I was thinking when 1 go abroad I shall go into very out-of-the-way places, among all sorts of German and English people, with many old associa- tions with Britain and the Rhineland. I think some of them might appreciate these drawings. Could you trust a few of them with me ? ' 'You shall take them all,' said Chrissy, her face aglow with hope and delight. ' I will trim them off, and mount them nicely, and make up a little port- folio of them. How clever of you to think of it, Hans Mr. Krinken ! What a delightful venture it will be ! Nothing will be lost if it fails, and what pure pleasure and gain if it succeeds ! ' Hans came back many times during those last few weeks. Except the very last visit, he never came without some reasonable excuse. He brought card- board for Chrissy 's drawings, hunting out of the wholesale warehouses some of a specially suitable A VENTURE. 183 size and tint ; he had a portfolio made to order for them, light but strong and waterproof; or he came to give Miss Griffin instructions concerning the size of his stockings, or the quality. But that last evening (he was to sail on the morrow) he came in quietly, and offered no excuse. ' I suppose it is really good-bye to-night, Miss Christina,' he said, when they were left alone for a moment. ' Not to-night,' Chrissy answered, bending her head low over her work. ' Miss Griffin and I will come to the dock to-morrow to see you off. We have never seen an emigrant ship,' she added shyly. And so the two women went down, through a wilderness of meagre crowded streets, which even Miss Griffin, dweller in London all her long life, had never seen before. They stood on the crowded quay among the groups of emigrants, some tearful, some tearless in the terrible meaning of that word, but most simply eager and excited, as if there was little to regret behind and all to hope before. There were stalwart agricultural labourers, with their apple- cheeked families ; there were shrewd town mechanics with their wives and old-faced children ; there were sweet-voiced Irish Biddys and hard-faced Welsh women ; there were worn old fathers and mothers sent for by dutiful children, and going out, as it seemed, chiefly to lay their bones where those children could 1 84 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. look upon their graves. Miss Griffin and Chrissy threaded their way among the crowd, till they came to the group of fair -haired, blue -eyed Germans, clinging together mute amid the Babel around them. Presently Hans appeared on the scene. Mr. Bil- dcrdyk was with him. When the old merchant saw the lad lift his hat in salutation, he asked briefly ' Friends of yours ? ' ' Miss Miller and her friend Miss Griffin,' Hans answered as briefly. Mr. Bilderdyk looked shrewdly at the pair. He had no doubt as to which was Miss Miller. Of course, it was the elder woman. His eye went on to the girl. ' A pleasant face,' he thought ; ' perhaps she is a particular friend of my new clerk's and the good old lady may not be disinclined to help him forward for her sake.' ' Where does Miss Miller live ? ' he asked of Hans, as they went about together collecting the stragglers of their party. ' She lives with Miss Griffin, sir. She is still con- nected with her father's shop, and spends the greater part of her day there.' Hans made this reply with flaming cheeks. He knew Mr. Bilderdyk had fallen into a mistake in the first instance concerning Chrissy's identity ; but now, with her before his eyes, he felt quite sure that the good Dutchman must see into the whole matter. It is always hard to A VENTURE. 185 believe that affairs important to our own hearts, and ( wholly occupying them, are not perfectly lucid to , our neighbours. ' You will have opportunity to spend a few minutes with them at the very last. You must do so. It will be only a proper token of respect to Miss Miller,' said Mr. Bilderdyk. He said what he meant, and he meant no more than he said ; and poor self-conscious Hans, blushing again, thought that his master veiled his real kind- ness with delightfully dry humour. 'Miss Chrissy,' whispered Hans, when, at last, the opportunity for speech was obtained, ' Miss Chrissy, I shall be away from England for one whole year. Many things happen in such a time. I shall find changes. There are some things I should like to say, but ought not to say now. Only shall I is it at all likely I shall find you the same ? ' ' I shall be the same,' she said, with a resolute emphasis. ' There may be death, you know ; but death does not change people, Hans.' And he was gone. There was only one long hand-clasp from Chrissy, but Miss Griffin put her motherly arms round the youth's neck and kissed him, and whispered in his ear ' I will take care of her. We will talk about you, and look forward to your home-coming.' ' God bless you ! ' said Hans fervently. CHAPTER XIII. ESTHER GRAY. HRISSY did not deny to herself that Hans' absence made a terrible blank in her life ; and the poor girl began to realise the strange difference which exists between separation in life and separation by death, with all the haunting fears and park- ing unrest which belong to the former. Her father was gone whence he could never return to her, but where she was sure to go to him. .When faith was strong, and life was calm and clear about her it might be on her knees in her little bedroom, or it might be receiving the Communion at St. Cecilia's, or even going about her daily duties in the dusky crowded streets it sometimes seemed as if, in some sense, she could follow him already, and tarry with him a while, and gather strength 1S6 ESTHER GRAY. 187 for fainter moods and stormier days. But Hans ! Perhaps her last glimpse of him amid the bustle and discomfort of embarkation, was not soothing or reassuring. He might be in danger, he might be among rough or unkindly people, he might be ill, he might but, no, there was one fear that never haunted Chrissy. She never feared lest Hans should do other than honestly and well. If he had been her brother if he had been the familiar friend of her childhood, and nothing more such a watchful loving heart as Chrissy's might well have pondered that the paths of the world are dark, and their temptations are many, and that youth goes out to make its way among them with wayward wits and stormy passions. But Chrissy never doubted Hans. It was the sweet old story of womanlyjaith and following. Yet certainly a great restlessness fell upon Chrissy. Her nature had grown beyond the food with which her life supplied it. She went on with her work, with her art-studies, with her hundred little feminine duties, with redoubled energy, but they did not exhaust it. She began to understand something of that mysterious force which before now has driven men into crusades or explorations, battling with human wickedness or nature's fierce- ness, according to the times they lived in, which has sent gentle women to labour in grim lazar-houses or 1 88 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. amid wild heathen populations. What is it ? What can it be except the rushing through the new clear channel of a fresh heart, of that strange miracle which comes nearer the hidden ways of God than any other manifestation of nature, 'the love that makes the world go round.' Experience makes us shy of any panacea for the world's sin and suffering, yet we almost think one might be found in the right direction of this strong emotional energy, which, if left as it generally is, to overflow or to stagnate, is certainly the most fruitful source of sin and suffering. In the new light and joy that were filling her own nature, Chrissy took courage to look into the dark places of human hearts. That showed what a whole nature she had. We should always mistrust the gladness which makes us shrink from sadness. Health and joy and wisdom what are they for, if not to make us strong to help and to bear and to heal ? Chrissy began to think of all the woful people, only born to wickedness, as it sometimes seems to us. When she saw the ghastly crowd waiting outside the casual ward, she no longer shivered, and forgot it ; it seemed to her as if each battered limp figure might somehow, once upon a time, have been made into a brave honest youth like Hans. And in the streets, after dark, she had heard girls' laughter which made her heart ache. It almost seemed wrong 1 to be so ESTHER GRAY. 189 happy as she was, while these things went on ! It is in such moods as these that an ascetic enthusiasm seizes upon the nobler young hearts. Miss Griffin kept Chrissy in the open ways of wisdom ; for when the girl hinted misgivings concerning her own possession of blessings not shared by others, she answered, sensibly ' Don't you feel that you have nothing but what you'd wish everybody to have an honest living, good friends, and ' She glanced slyly at Chrissy, and spared the girl by a slight pause. ' You haven't got more good things than you should have ; it is other people who have fewer. Your giving yours up \vould not give them to those that lack them. A placejn the world can be but filled ; and if we are filKng it ourselves, nobody else can do more. But our very best things we can always share. The best things of life are like the five loaves and the three small fishes ; they'll not give out till there is nobody hold- ing out his hand for them. There are our friends, for instance, and ' Another pause. ' The world isn't poorer because these love us. If they love us really, it is the richer ; they'll be better and kinder to everybody for qiu- sake. Why, Chrissy, if we see one without hands or feet, we don't cut off ours to make ourselves like him ; we are thankful to have ours to help him, and to have our wits, too, to save those accidents from happening by which people are likely 1 90 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. to lose hands and feet. I do think that whenever we get a bit of happiness, we ought to look about to see whether there is any piece of God's work that it gives us courage to do. Do you know, Chrissy dear, if it had not been for the thought that I was to have your cheerful company of an evening, I'm not sure I'd have taken heart to have poor Esther Gray working here in the morning. The American poet says I * Only the sorrows of others, , Cast their shadows over me." But I really think the sorrows and burdens of others are harder to bear than our own. I've often thought that seeing pain is worse than feeling it. I can't help fancying that if I was in Esther's place I'd get some comfort from the thought of God's goodness, and of how He has promised to put our sins as far from us as the east is from the west, and has bidden us not to think of the things which are behind, but to press forward to those which are before. I believe Esther I has turned right round ; but the more one sees what a deal of suffering there is in getting repented-of sin out of one's heart and memory in this world, the' more one trembles to think what may await unrei pented sin in the next.' And then Chrissy thought to herself, How was it that she had forgotten this terrible shadow that haunted her daily life ? its horror only dimmed by ESTHER GRAY. 191 its familiarity. Why- did her heart yearn over the unknown crowds going down into the swamps of sin, or strugggling out of them, while she yet held aloof from this woman, Esther Gray, going and coming daily beneath her own roof? To own the truth, Chrissy had always shrank a little from Esther's gloomy averted face, with its blurred features and stained complexion, from the coarse clinging mourning, worn for him whom in the days of her youth she had loved with an unhallowed love, for which she had thrown away life's best hopes and simplest duties, and whom she had lived to loathe with an equally unhallowed hatred. In her presence Chrissy had never been able to forget that Esther was under the shadow of an awful doubt. Her husband, her companion in sin and degradation, had died a sudden and violent death, and whether by accident or by her hand no being in the world knew. Not even Esther herself. The tragedy had been enacted in a wild debauch, and when Esther, coming to herself in a prison cell, heard of her husband's death, her memory remained a blank concerning all which preceded it. A merciful allowance for possi- bilities, a wide construction of the medical evidence, had let her go free. But no verdict of not guilty could efface the brand of Cain from the woman's own heart. It was not to be expected that Chrissy Miller should not shrink from such an one. 1 92 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. But now she remembered how pitifully her father had spoken of the days of Esther's lost girlish innocence. Could it be any fault of Esther's fellow- sinners that Esther could realise no peace and cheer in the thought of God's forgiveness ? Miss Griffin had played a Christian's part she had opened up a way of honest work ; and whether Esther knew it or not, was, at her own cost, making this possible for Esther. But might not some lighter touch of human fellowship be awanting something that might seem less a working out the redemption of the sinner than a friendly greeting for a sinner who was redeemed ? It was the first anniversary of Mr. Miller's death. It was the evening before this which was terrible to Chrissy. Its very lights and shadows, its very atmosphere, brought back that evening in Saint Cecilia's, Mr. Bentley's sermon, and all the aspira- tions it awoke, and that last talk afterwards in the counting - house. Mrs. Bisset, who was far too friendly with Chrissy not to know all the dates of her life, and their significance, had bidden her husband give his girl-assistant a half-holiday that evening, and a whole holiday on the morrow. Chrissy had her little plan of loving remembrance. She took the train to Epping Forest, she knew an unfrequented glade where wild roses and sweet field- flowers of many kinds still flourished. She would ESTHER GRAY. 193 gather a great basketful, and then next day she would select the freshest and twine them in a wreath to lay on her father's grave, in the great dreary cemetery, where his ashes lay lonely, for Chrissy's mother had been buried in a little local graveyard long since closed by wise sanitary law. Chrissy got her flowers. She had a hard struggle for some of the richest boughs of roses, for she was only a little body. How easily her tall father had broken them for her in that very glade ! Never mind if there were some bitter heart-rent sobs in that sunny corner. God heard them, and -so did His trees and His daisies. Perhaps there was a little hot dew on the grass where Chrissy had pressed her face for one short moment. But she had no time to lose. She filled her basket as full as it would hold, and, going home in the train, she gave two bonnie blossoms to a babe, who crowed in its father's arms and stretched out its little hands towards her treasures. She set the beautiful basket out on the window- ledge in Miss Griffin's staircase, that it might get the benefit of all the air that blew into the dusky old house. It did look very lovely ! Chrissy stole out of her bedroom more than once to gaze upon it. For it was not often nowadays that the London- pent girl saw wild roses. The next morning she was early astir to make 194 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. preparations for her sweet-sad pilgrimage. There- fore Miss Griffin indulged in a little longer repose, and Chrissy herself admitted Esther Gray. She left the dismal woman to her accustomed tasks, and went back to her own bedroom. For a long time she heard Esther Gray's broom at work. But suddenly the sound ceased, and there was profound silence. There are some silences which call us more loudly than any cry, and, oddly enough, this silence arrested Chrissy's attention. She opened her bedroom door, and looked out. The dismal woman was standing in front of the basket of roses, her two hands spread out on the window-sill, and her eyes gazing into the rose- clusters with awful tearless agony. For a moment Chrissy remembered all the sin, all the degradation, all the crime. But next minute she thought of her father's words, and of all the terrible abysses which yawn round human lives, the slippery edges thereof veiled with honey flowers. She stepped forward, and put her hand on Esther's arm. ' Esther ! ' she said. The woman started, and stood upright. But she did not turn towards Chrissy, nor lift her eyes from the flowers. ' Aren't they beautiful ? ' Chrissy whispered. ' Does not God give us lovely gifts ? ' 'SHE STEPPED FORWARD.' P. 194. ESTHER GRAY. 197 The woman threw up her hands and clasped them about her head, and cried out with an exceed- ing bitter cry. Chrissy was so startled that she scarcely knew what to do. But nature had her wise way. After the convulsion, which, as it were, rent Esther Gray's soul and body, the merciful tears came, and she stood sobbing. And presently, amid the sobs, there were words. Chrissy bent forward to catch them. ' He gathered wild roses for me once long ago when we went out together. I haven't seen wild roses for years and years ! And they brought it all back ; I wish we'd seen them once again while we were together ! ' Chrissy understood that Esther was speaking of the unhappy husband whose life had ruined and haunted her life, and whose violent death must haunt it to the end. She scarcely knew what to say. But Esther went on ' Since I've tried to live a better life, the old days have come back upon me, and I remember him as he used to be, and I can't think how I ever changed towards him. I don't think I shall be able to bear it all. I'm like a dirty thing picked out of the mud. I'd better be thrown back again out of sight of everybody even myself.' 'No, no, Esther,' said Chrissy. 'You would not be out of God's sight.' 198 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' The more the pity, then ! ' she cried passionately. ' For he is out of God's sight.' 'Nay, nay,' whispered Chrissy, trembling; 'we must not pass judgment on our worst enemy, much less on those who have sinned and suffered with us. And there can be no place in the universe, Esther, out of God's sight.' Esther Gray raised her head suddenly, like one roused by an unexpected hope. ' But you don't know what my loneliness is,' she resumed dully, ' and I'm not like you, I can't amuse myself with pretty innocent work. I can't think of happy things ; I must not there are none for me to think about. When I go home at night, I'm too tired to do anything but sit still and mope. I don't try even to sleep more than I must, because I have such bad dreams.' Chrissy's mind just now was very open to all impressions received at this time last year. In her perplexity, she remembered the question whose use Mr. Bentley had suggested in his memorable ser- mon at St. Cecilia's: 'What would Jesus do?' 'Would you like me to come and sit with you for a little sometimes?' she asked gently, after a pause. ' Oh, Miss Chrissy ! ' said Esther, looking round in amaze, but shaking her head as she answered, ' Oh, Miss Chrissy, but you couldn't come ! I'm in the very room where it happened.' ESTHER GRAY. 199 It was too true, horrid as it seemed. The miserable woman had crept back, like a wild beast to its lair. Her little possessions were there, and the now resident landlord had known that whatever his tenant's other faults might be, she would be honest as far as she could, and so he had let her return, after her unsatisfactory acquittal. ' I know,' said Chrissy, ' I know ; but God is there too, Esther.' 'It's scarcely fit for human beings to live in,' Esther went on, ' but it was good enough for us and our ways, and it's good enough for me now. I've no right to aught better.' ' I'll come this very evening, Esther,' said Chrissy. ' Not this evening, miss ? ' repeated Esther. ' Yes,' said Chrissy ; ' why not ? ' ' I know what the date is to you,' cried Esther, and I know what you lost this time last year. Oh, dear ! what a good man your father was ! " God help you, Esther Gray ! " he said to me, when first I came out of prison ; " God help you, and God bless you ! " It was not much, but I know he meant a deal. When he died, I felt as if I'd lost some- body I might have looked to.' Chrissy's own tears were falling fast. ' We'll talk about him together this evening, Esther,' she said. ' I don't like your coming to my dismal hole 200 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. to-day,' Esther pleaded. ' When the spirit's sad and sorry, it needs a little cheeriness. It does. I know that, because I go awanting it.' A sudden inspiration seized Chrissy. It seemed as if her father's voice whispered in her heart those sweet words of the Master's ' Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.' ' Take my roses, Esther,' she said eagerly. ' They will make your room bright for a day or two, and I shall see them when I come at night.' Esther knew nothing of Chrissy's holiday, or the pathetic excursion she had planned for it. It was not for Chrissy to tell her what it cost to give her this pleasure. Esther poured out her thanks only was she not ' robbing ' Chrissy ? though, to be sure, the room would be the brighter when she came, since she would persist in being so good. ' No, you are not robbing me in the least,' Chrissy answered. ' Only ' and she gently disengaged one rich bough from the mass of blossoms ' I should like to take this for somebody else.' ' Oh, won't you take more for them ? ' Esther asked innocently. ' No,' said Chrissy. ' I am sure somebody else would far rather you had them.' Esther carried off the flowers. And when Miss Griffin came out of her room, and missed them, ESTHER GRAY. 201 she exclaimed, but Chrissy silenced her with a kiss 'Don't you remember what the angel said at Jesus' grave ? ' asked the girl. ' He said, " He is not here, for He is risen." Jesus only came there for one moment to comfort weeping Mary and then she scarcely knew Him. But the hand- maidens who must have set the supper-tables for the disciples found they had set for the Master too ! So, surely, if there is one place where the spirits of the just are least likely to linger, it is at their own graves ; and the best offering we can make to the departed is help and service to those still with us.' CHAPTER XIV. AN ANNIVERSARY. HRISSY made her pilgrimage to the cemetery alone. It certainly did not matter to her father where his ashes lay, but it did seem a little hard that one who had kept about himself the quaint individuality of the Shield Street house, and had held in utter dislike the uniform rows of pretentious vulgarity which are springing up round all huge cities, should have been carried by others to a large necropolis, scant of tree and bare of grass, and sur- rounded by a fungi of undertakers' shops and masons' yards, thriving on conventional woe, and doing their 202 AN ANNIVERSARY. 203 best to desecrate the solemn regions of death and sorrow. Chrissy had had no choice in the matter. The selection of a grave had been made by Aunt Kezia, certain Daffys of respectability and wealth having been among the first people interred in that cemetery. In fact, some shares in it were among the Daffy investments, so that Aunt Kezia had been able to buy the grave ' at an advantage,' as she expressed it, and poor honest Chrissy, anxious that every penny of her father's estate should be spared for its dreadful debt to the creditors of the Metropolitan Bank, had therefore raised no objection. Among the vast wilderness of gravestones only varied here and there by pretentious catafalques, looking not unlike petrified four-posters Chrissy found her father's grave. She found it by its number. It had nothing but a tiny wooden memorial-mark already mildewed and its turf was rough and poor. And as Chrissy stood beside it, she thought that it was well that she had already recalled the angel's words. No, her father was ' not there.' She kissed her sweet spray of wild rose, and laid it gently on the blackened sod, and turned away. As she turned, she saw two figures advancing towards her, down the straight narrow path. They were her sister Helen and her Aunt Kezia. 204 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Helen had a wreath of immortelles in her hand, and the first glance showed Chrissy that she looked pale and unhappy. Chrissy did not wonder at it, for she could not imagine that Aunt Kezia's com- panionship on such an occasion would be either soothing or inspiriting. ' Well, Chrissy,' said Miss Daffy, ' I thought we should not see you here. I fancied you were so devoted to business that you would not think of taking a holiday. Dear me ! how miserable the grave looks, doesn't it ? Who can have put down that trumpery wild-flower, I wonder ? You, Chrissy ! You won't like to leave it there beside Helen's wreath, I reckon. That did not cost less than five shillings.' ' It cost more than that,' said Helen. ' I should not have liked to bring a cheap thing.' She did not add that she had borrowed the money from a fellow-workwoman, having spent every shilling of her own upon summer additions to her wardrobe. 'You'll be thinking of putting up a memorial stone soon, I suppose, Chrissy?' Miss Daffy went on. 'To-day would be a very good opportunity for ordering one, when we are all here to consult together in the selection. I should not mind contributing a trifle. We must not ask Helen for anything just now, because she has less cash AN ANNIVERSARY. 205 payment than you, and is obliged to keep up so much more appearance. You must have saved a good deal of money, Chrissy. You must be able to spare six or seven pounds at least, and you could not spend it in a more meritorious way.' 'I am not thinking of putting up a memorial stone now,' said Chrissy with a beating heart. '1 shall put up a little stone cross some day some- thing that will mark the grave for us permanently. But I cannot do even that just now/ she added resolutely, hoping to put an end to Miss Daffy's solicitations. ' Oh, well/ said Aunt Kezia, 'just as you please; only I should have thought you would have liked to show every possible respect to your father. Of course I have no reason to interfere. He was not a blood relation of mine, you know. Nobody can blame me for whatever you choose to omit.' Chrissy might have known that it would be as well to drop the subject, but she was stung into rejoining ' Father did not care for large and costly memorials. He used to say the stones and the money would be better employed in improving poor people's houses than in making barren the resting- place of those who can no longer feel cold or damp. But I do wish he had been buried where flowers would grow,' she added impulsively. 206 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Aunt Kezia shook her head significantly. 'I know we had a deal of trouble to get your father to do the usual proper things when your poor mother died. He always had queer views. It's odd how such things turn round on people's own heads at last. Well, well there's nothing like making oneself as comfortable as one can while one lives, for when one's dead, one is soon forgotten. But perhaps it is as well that you shouldn't put up any memorial just now. If people who had lost through folks taking shares in the Great Metropolitan when they had no estates fit to meet the share's liabilities, should see a memorial, they might say ugly things. When a blunder has been made, it is best to court no comment.' Chrissy's heart swelled. She moved from the grave. She could not bear to hear her aunt's speeches beside it. ' Now, we'll go and see the Daffy tomb,' said Aunt Kezia cheerfully. ' It is in the first-class ground, of course, for Cousin Daffy was very particular, and had everything of the best. He made his fortune out in the East Indies. He managed to make an extra sharp bargain with Government over some matter. We heard there might have been a fuss about it, but it was hushed up. It was said that was because the Government servants were afraid they would be compromised. AN ANNIVERSARY. 207 That was said, you know ; but perhaps Cousin Daffy made it worth their while to keep quiet. Going abroad was a fine thing in those days, when the natives were not up to things as they are now, and a good deal might be made out of them. Cousin Daffy was the best business man I ever knew, and was my first adviser about money matters. That is his grave, girls.' She pointed to one of the largest and heaviest erections in the cemetery. ' Only two of his wives are buried there,' she went on. ' He had three, you know, but the second was one of the Burgesses of Strathallerton, and so she left directions that she was to be buried in her own family's vault at her own place ; for, of course, the Burgesses were county people, and quite above the Daffys in that way, for my cousin would never buy land, because it brings in such a poor percentage. Cousin Daffy used to say he married his first wife for money, his second for position, and his third to please himself. She was quite a young girl when he was an old man, and she could have married him only for his money ; and he left her very well off provided she never married again, and she was not to have a penny if she did. Oh, he was a shrewd man, Cousin Daffy, and a credit to the family! When your poor mother died, I wanted your father to buy a grave for her close to this monument. I'm sure it 208 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. would have done him good in his business if he had kept his marriage connection with Cousin Daffy well under the world's eyes. But he had his ways, poor man, and you seem to take after him, Chrissy.' Chrissy drew herself up proudly. Those words, uttered in scoff, atoned for all the pain. Our highest praise is sometimes given us in the form of blame. The aunt moved on towards the gate of the cemetery. The two girls followed behind. ' I have not seen much of the Ackroyds lately, Helen,' said Chrissy. 'When did you see them last ? ' 'Not for some weeks,' answered Helen. 'James has not come to Aunt Kezia's lately. Have you heard anything about him, Chrissy ? ' ' No," answered Chrissy, surprised. ' Have you ? ' ' Oh, only a sort of vague rumour the gossip which always goes about,' replied Helen shortly. She evidently did not care to be questioned, and Chrissy, mystified, dropped the subject. At the gate of the cemetery Miss Daffy gave Chrissy a careless invitation to spend the rest of the day with her ; but Chrissy was not sorry that her promise to Esther Gray enabled her to plead previous engagement. She walked home to Shield Street with a burning heart. Yes, it was quite true that people had lost by her father. The claim on his share in the Great Metropolitan Bank was four thousand pounds, and AN ANN1 VERSAR Y. 209 the whole of his property had only amounted to two thousand five hundred. It was quite true that he had given his life with it. It was equally true that he had taken the share in the dark, off the hands of a man whose property would not have been worth nearly so much. But Chrissy could remember none of these things at this moment. There would run in her head the lines from the familiar song ' He looks the whole world in the face, For he owes not any man.' And was her father one of whom that could not be said ? Oh, what would he have done if he had lived ! Ah ! she knew. He would have begun life again, and set himself to toil, no longer for his own future or the well-being of those he loved, but to repay to the uttermost farthing the debt in which a moment's want of caution had involved him. He had lain down to his last rest with his Bible open at the fifteenth Psalm ; and among its traits of the just man was one which his daughter was sure he would have acted out ' He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.' Then Chrissy must herself take up the task which God had taken from her father by removing him to Himself. But to her the task would mean carrying a burden all her days, and leaving it unfulfilled at last. One thousand five hundred pounds ! And Aunt Kezia said women never made fortunes! And o 2io EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. truly Chrissy had not aspired to making so much money as this, but only to amass such a sum as might buy some little business, and secure herself a competent independence thereby. ' I must do what I can,' said Chrissy, with the hot tears in her eyes. ' Perhaps it is good for me to feel what it is to have to live under a shame and blame which can never be wiped away. If they are so hard to bear when they are not one's fault, what must it be when they are ? ' And her heart yearned towards Esther Gray no longer in mere pity, but in that fellowship of pain and loss on which alone Divine Law has ordained that help and redemption can come. ' I suppose I ought not to have lent those ten pounds to Hans Krinken,' she asked herself. ' One must be just before one is generous, I know. And yet those ten pounds are not lost. Hans will pay me again, if he lives. [Little did she dream of the precautions he had taken.] And surely one has a right to make such a venture as that ! I think I recollect Bishop Jeremy Taylor said something on that matter. I shall look it up in his " Holy Living " directly I get home. I do hope I shall not have to feel I was wrong in lending that to Hans ! ' And when she went home, she was comforted. Bishop Taylor's opinion was as follows. For though the good bishop said sternly enough ' He that gives AN ANN1VERSAR Y. 211 to the poor what is not his own, makes himself the thief and the poor the receiver ; ' yet he went on ' This is not to be understood as if it were un- lawful for a man that is not able to pay his debts to give smaller alms to the poor. He may not give such portions as can in any sense disable him to do justice ; but such as, if they were saved, could not advance the other duty, may retire to this.' ' I have only lent,' mused Chrissy ; 'all I have really given is the very small risk of some accident preventing my being repaid/ She knew, of course, that the law set her free from her father's debt ; that if she gained a million on the morrow, not a penny could be claimed from her for a Metropolitan Bank creditor, though he might be starving. But law is made for lak of love. Love knows no law, being above and beyond all law. Chrissy saw that the law was just, in so far protecting the innocent from suffering for the sins and follies of those whose very name and blood they would cheerfully surrender if they might. Only the law which was just enough for such as those, was absolutely unmeaning to one who, like her, longed for nothing so much as utter unity with her father, owing all to him, and longing to bear his burdens, and to suffer and conquer in his cause. She spent the evening with Esther Gray. She did not wonder now that Esther could not hope she 2i2 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. had not been guilty of the worst could not joy- fully believe in God's forgiveness even if she had. It was the simple goodness of her father which had bound a weight on Chrissy's dutiful life, but it sufficed to give her sympathy with that sense of hopeless struggle that realisation of 'nevermore' which was crushing Esther to the earth. The woman felt that the girl was nearer to her, even, than she had been in the morning ; and as they sat together in the dusk in the dull room, watching the dim city sunlight fade over dreary back walls, she spoke out from the depths of her misery ' I wish I'd been found guilty. I believe capital punishment is mercy to such as I am. A life for a life. It seems the natural thing. And I begin to think there's no peace for them as miss it.' ' Esther,' said Chrissy suddenly, scarcely knowing her own words before she uttered them, ' Esther, perhaps it is so. You may owe your life. But you needn't throw it away in waste. Lives are wanted. Lives are always being risked for good ends. Find some duty, which somebody must do, in which life is always in danger, and then, Esther, do it ! If God takes your life from you in that way, you will have redeemed with your life the life of the person who must otherwise have done that duty. It will be a life for a life, Esther, after all ! ' Esther sprang to her feet. Yes, as Chrissy looked AN ANNIVERSAR Y. 213 up at her, she could now believe that in her youth she had been beautiful ! ' That's it ! ' she cried. ' That's the very thing ! Dear, how clear puzzles always are when they're found out! But then,' and a shadow of fear darkened her brightened face, ' it is the right thing ; but how is it to be done? Women are not let do dangerous work in mines nowadays.' ' There is the small - pox hospital,' suggested Chrissy timidly. 'You are not a trained nurse, but they always want strong, capable, willing women.' ' That will do,' said Esther, sitting down with a sigh of intense relief. ' Only I'll have to get you or Miss Griffin to write and tell some of the head people who I am, for I won't go in under any false pretences. Oh dear, what a blessed help it will be to have some- body to be kind to ! And when the poor souls are raving, maybe they'll fancy I'm their mother, or some good friend ! Oh, Miss Chrissy, your father was one of God's saints, and isn't it odd that it should be on the very anniversary of his death that you should come and give me a new hope ? For I could not have held out much longer. Despair had nigh got hold of me, and I mind hearing an old minister say, " Despair was the devil's fishing-rod." ' ' Yes, it was strange,' thought Chrissy, sitting silent. ' Her father's death-day was it not rather his new birth-day? And was not any service done 2i4 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. to this poor soul, the one gift which could surely reach him where he stood among those angels of God, who rejoice over the repenting sinner?' They had a little more quiet talk. They spoke together of Mr. Bentley's sermon on that summer night in St. Cecilia's-in-the-Garden. ' That was the first uplift I got,' Esther narrated. ' Do you remember how he said Jesus called each of us " brother " " sister " ? That stuck by me for a long while. I think he must be a good man, that Mr. Bentley. And he's got troubles of his own, too. I reckon.' ' Most people have,' said Chrissy ; ' but what makes you think so in Mr. Bentley's case ? ' ' There is a son of his who is very wild,' replied Esther. ' I used to see him at taverns and gaming- places when I w r ent hanging about such, waiting for my poor husband. I happened to hear his name, and that he was the son of a clergyman in the country. He was a clerk in the Great Metropolitan Bank before it failed, you know. And the very night after I was acquitted, I went out after dark to get some food, and I met him, half-intoxicated, in charge of your old neighbour Mr. Ackroyd. On the day of your papa's death, I saw the same young man in company with the Mr. Bentley who had preached that beautiful sermon. So you may be sure he is his son, and a heartbreak to him. I see AN ANN1 VERSAR Y. 215 him sometimes now, and he is fast sinking into an utter reprobate. And oh ! Miss Chrissy, I don't like that Mr. Ackroyd. We poor outcast wretches know the truth of many a one that their better neighbours think fairly good and respectable ; and there's nothing makes us feel more bitter and lost, than to see how some who are as bad as we are, but better hypocrites, and maybe richer and better born, are tolerated and accepted, while we are scouted and rejected. We get to blame Christianity for it ; but I own I've always felt that if there is anything ivhich is not Jesus' way, it is just this.' Perhaps Chrissy did not hear all "Esther's words. She sat silent and absorbed. But Esther was now too assured of her real sympathy to mistrust this silence. Of what was Chrissy thinking ? She was thinking that she had found the clue to the one question which had puzzled her and Hans Krinken how Mr. Ackroyd had acquired informa- tion which had led him to rid himself of his Great Metropolitan shares. What more likely than that, knowing this poor prodigal lad in the confidence of the Bank, he had taken advantage of his intoxi- cation to worm its secrets from him ? When Chrissy returned to Miss Griffin's apart- ments she found supper awaiting her, and also a letter from Hans Krinken. It was not the first, the second, nor the third which had arrived since his departure, but it was by far the bulkiest. CHAPTER XV. TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS. EAR MISS CHRISTINA/ wrote Hans Krinken, ' I have already told you of our voyage and our arrival, and our journeying onward, drop- ping first one and then another group of our party at their chosen destinations. I have told you in other letters about the country and its people and their ways. But this time I am going to write a letter about ourselves and our own business. ' I shall begin with yours. I have sold every one of your beautiful careful little studies of English places. I have kept an exact account of the money I have received for each, which you will find enclosed. The whole amounts to the sum of twenty-five pounds. I have sold them in out-of-the-way places, where few pictures are ever seen to homely farmers and 216 TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS. 217 rough miners and shrewd housewives. And you should have heard the talk over them, and seen the looks which husbands and wives and parents and children exchanged when they saw your representa- tions of places they had once known so well, and will never see again. And they whispered together, and tears came into their eyes, and I think their voices were softer, and I was treated like a friend who had brought back a bit of the past. And, better than this sale, I have a great order for work of yours. The proprietor of a paper here wishes you to do for him two pictures in every month, of London houses famous in fiction, anecdote, or history.' And here Hans enumerated the length of the engagement and the terms offered. And Chrtssy jumped up and danced about the room, crying 'And I shan't even have to give up the shop the dear old shop for early morning will be the quietest and best time for sketching, and a little of " early to bed and early to rise " will do it all, and I can sketch just as I always did, as if it was for pure love, and all the extra money can go to paying off that terrible Metropolitan.' ' And now I will go on to some affairs of my own,' wrote Hans, 'and they are not so altogether sun- shiny as yours, at least not to my mind. You remember my German schoolfellow, to whom I wrote 2 i8 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION, some time ago, and who answered me, after a long delay, from America, and related that some stranger had put in an appearance in my native village, and had been making inquiries about me. ' Well, during my travels, I found, by referring to my schoolfellow's letter, that I must be rather near his home, and so, for the sake of old times, and because my grandfather had rather liked the lad, in spite of his wild ways, I made up my mind to pay him a visit. ' I found him in a beautiful lonely district in the Canadian backwoods. He is married already. Miss Christina, it is strange to see the first married among one's contemporaries ; it reminds one that one has reached the foremost rank of life ! Besides his wife, he has her sister with him, and they all live in a little wooden house, whose timbers he cut down and sawed himself. They have made the furniture too, nearly everything. The little piece of land on which they live is entirely their own, and yields them all their sustenance, with enough over for exchange for clothing, and for little savings. It seems to me a good way of life a safe road to real prosperity, with peace and pleasure all the way along. ' Well, my old friend was very pleased to see me. He had been very glad indeed to hear of me when I wrote to him from Shield Street, and had written back to our old neighbourhood, saying that he had TWE-NTY-FIVE POUNDS. 219 heard from me, and that I was in London and doing well. But he did not give anybody my address, having a feeling that if I wanted that done, I ought to do it myself. ' And so, only two or three days before I suddenly appeared at the door of his shanty, almost making him think that he beheld a ghost, he had had another letter from Germany, asking definitely for my address, as there was important news for me. ' Miss Christina, you are the daughter of a good man. I find I am the son of a very bad one. Your father died ruined. My father has died as he was born rich and honoured. I would not say one word against him, but that he deceived and deserted my mother, and left her to die of a broken heart while I was in my cradle. My grandparents her father and mother asked nothing from him for me; they asked only to rear their daughter's child in their own godly fashion. My poor father had no legal claim on me : the same artifice by which he gave my mother no legal claim on him, served at least to set me free from his authority; but the terror of my grandparents' life was, lest it should please him, as I grew up, to assert his relationship to me, exert its natural influence over me, and lead me into paths which they knew could only end in ruin both for this life and the next. This was why they desired me to leave Germany. 220 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. It appears that it was my father himself who came in his carriage to our village, asking after me. Pro- bably he came directly he heard of my grandparent's death. I can well understand that he must have shrank wealthy and well-born as he was from meeting my poor honest old grandfather, whose only daughter he had cruelly deceived and heartlessly disgraced. I can't help hoping that it was some feeling of regret for her sake which made him think of seeking me out. It seems his health had been failing for some time, though he died suddenly at last ; so perhaps he had had quietness and leisure to think over the past, and see it in its true light, and be sorry for it. In those last days he made a will, and though, of course, his estates and revenues go to those to whom they justly belong to those who bear his name he has yet remembered me. ' For his own sake, I am glad he did so. 'Of course I shall never touch a farthing of his money. To me, it is tainted with the blood of my mother's broken heart. My old schoolfellow here thinks me Quixotic in this, but my mind is made up. I am sure even you could not change it. I believe I am sure of this, because I am certain you will never try. ' I have written to Germany, and as soon as my first sojourn here is over, and I return to England, I shall go on to the Continent and get this little TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS. 221 matter settled, and pay a farewell visit to the graves of my mother and my grandparents. c My old schoolfellow fancies I am making a great sacrifice. But really I don't feel it to be so. I am enamoured of the thought of hammering out my own fortune from the rock of circumstance. One does not want much for true happiness. One wants only clean hands and a brave heart and a bright hope ; and these one must have, and it is the worst of follies to risk any of these for something else which can never supply its place. ' Perhaps it is easier for me to think thus because I feel sure you will agree with me/ And then the letter closed with a few inquiries after ' Miss Helen,' and some affectionate messages for ' Miss Griffin.' Chrissy dropped the letter on her knee, and sat thoughtful. What a strange world it was ! How singular it was that this new possibility of her pay- ment of her father's innocent liabilities, and setting his name free from casting any shadow over other lives, had come to her by the hand of the worse than fatherless youth, whom her father had clothed and sheltered, and started in prosperous ways ! And how strange it was that her father, who had given her everything else love and joy, sweet memories and inspiring hopes had left her, for her portion in this world, a burden to lift and carry for his sake ; 222 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. while Hans Krinken's father, who had given his boy nothing who had, indeed, given him all that was evil, if that evil had not been wrought into good by other hands had yet endowed him with a share, be it small or great, of this world's wealth ! At first there was a little bitterness in the thought ; but that was soon past, for Chrissy could not hesitate for a moment which lot was to be chosen. Nay, she could rejoice with Hans that his poor father had given this one possible sign of some remembrance and regret ; though she could fully sympathise with the son's feeling, that he must not soften the condi- tions of his own life by accepting a gift from one who had embittered his mother's existence, and driven her into an early grave. And Hans himself needed no pity. Chrissy would not have liked to have to pity Hans. We may pity those whose losses and trials have made them less than they might have been ; we may rather envy those whose losses and trials have only raised them higher. In heaven we shall not pity those who wear the martyr's crown ; we shall keep our pity for those who builded the martyr's pile. Hans had never known a father, but the very lack of the earthly type seemed but to have taught him the directness of his relation with the Father-God. If we weighed the realities of loss and gain, we might mete out the indignity of pity in far different quarters; and if we sometimes said TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS. 225 'poor millionaire/ 'poor spoilt child,' 'poor glutton,' instead of ' poor struggler,' ' poor orphan/ or ' poor invalid/ we might set up a more wholesome state of feeling among those who profess to believe that this life is only the beginning of life. Something of all this floated through Chrissy's mind that night as she lay sleepless in her little bed. For though pain and sorrow are often slumbrous, a rapid current of new ideas and fresh images bears sleep away. Chrissy could not rest until her mind settled on one certain duty, to be instantly discharged. To-morrow she must take her newly acquired twenty-five pounds to the office of the trustees of the Great Metropolitan Bank. Only how little it seemed now ! and yet yesterday, as she had walked home, forlornly, from that dreary cemetery, it would have seemed so much as to be incredible. It was true, it did not much reduce the deficiency left by her father's ' estate ; but when we have set our shoulders to push forward some heavy weight, the first sign of movement thrills us with an ecstasy of hope and joy, which can scarcely be matched on that day of triumph when the burden is finally shifted to its place and left at rest for ever. Chrissy and her errand were somewhat pheno- menal in the dry business office where she presented herself with her twenty-five pounds. There was some little difficulty as to what ledger should 226 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. be brought into requisition, or what form of receipt employed. 'Was the sum something farther realised from Mr. Miller's estate ? ' asked an incredulous clerk, half wondering whether he might not hint to the pretty girl that if she kept the matter quiet, nobody was likely to trouble her about it. ' No,' Chrissy said. ' From whom did it come, then ? ' ' From Mr. Miller's daughter, Christina Miller,' she answered simply. She did not even add, ' That is me.' The clerks whispered together, and went to an inner office and fetched out a superior. He looked sharply at Chrissy, and by a few well-aimed questions elicited the fact of the case, on which he made no comment, only wrote out a receipt, and walked across the office before her and let her out himself. ' What a strange world it would be if everybody did business in that way ! ' he mused as he returned to his sanctum. ' But I think it would be a better world. I even think we should all be richer in the long run.' CHAPTER XVI. THE TWO SISTERS. STHER GRAY remained firm to her purpose. It puzzled Miss Griffin somewhat. That good woman's calm innocent con- sciousness could scarcely fathom the troubled waters which seethe about a never - to - be forgotten history of sin and crime. Why could not Esther Gray find con- solation in helping her with her work in the offices? Esther had proved herself steady and reliable, * and Esther might not realise the trouble which unsteady and unreliable workers sometimes give,' said Miss Griffin, almost reproachfully. ' Oh, I am not ungrateful, ma'am,' said Esther ; 'but there's better people than me fit for your work. There's a dock-labourer's widow I know of, a nice decent young woman, with two little children. She 227 228 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. can't be a nurse in the small-pox hospital, ma'am, and I can. And that will leave my place for her.' And Esther had her way. And when Miss Griffin found how pleasant it was to see the little widow brighten under the same kind words and services which had seemed but to gall and torture Esther's sore soul, then she began to think that Esther and Chrissy had been right. Hans' return to England was delayed much longer than had at first seemed likely. Yet those were happy days for both him and Chrissy. Labour in the hands and love in the heart make about the best which life has to give. And Chrissy was indeed very busy. All that autumn she rose with the dawn, that she might get far ahead with her sketch- ing work before the tardy light and hastening gloom of winter should make it impossible, except during those hours which she intended to keep for Mr. Bisset's service. She must adhere to her mechanical labour at counter and desk to secure her own honest maintenance ; her talent her bright little genius, if she had any should toil for pure love in the service of her dead father. In those sweet silver-grey mornings, when she trotted forth with camp-stool and portfolio, the sky above her clear from smoke, the pavement beneath clean and white, all sounds hushed except the hastening steps of some early workman, and the THE TWO SISTERS. 229 twitter of the awakening sparrows, did it ever cross Chrissy's mind that, but for human fraud but for a neighbour's treachery her toil might have been still for pure love, but for love living in joy and hope, for love in the present, love in the future ? It did. Once or twice, she even wondered to her- self how a girl might feel whose labour was to help to rear a new home to plenish a household nest. But a voice within her answered that God's days are long, that He has His own appointed times and ways, and that He will not mock His children who trust in Him. One thing remained clear. Without dojng the right there could be no blessedness ; the best blessedness was in the very doing of the right ; and the Almighty Power who makes so clear the way to the best blessedness, will^ not readily grudge us aught else that is good for us. Yes, in those days Chrissy was happy, except that there was somebody who did not seem so, even her sister Helen. Helen came oftener to visit Miss Griffin's home, but she never seemed to take any happy interest in anything she found going on there. When she heard of Chrissy's drawings, she only wondered why Chrissy need burden herself with so much work. ' There was no good in money- making of that kind,' she said, ' there was so little to show after years of it just a few hundreds of pounds at most and one's youth and good looks worn out 230 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. into the bargain.' Chrissy scarcely liked to tell her sister to what object she was devoting all her extra earnings, past and future. To her delicate conscious- ness, to state her sole undertaking of such filial task seemed like conveying a reproach to Helen. But it had to be told, sooner or later. And Chrissy need not have shrunk from the telling. Helen regarded her sister's ambition only as the fond whim of a harmless kind of lunatic. 'Nobody expected such Quixotic honesty, even from men,' she said. 'And from women, it was absolutely absurd. Why, marriage settlements were an invention to save women from being compelled to share the losses and misfortunes of even their husbands.' 'But because law furnishes possible protection against those who may have become our enemies, and from whom our only wish might be to detach ourselves, we are not compelled to use its protection against our friends against those with whom our one ardent desire is to be united for ever,' said Chrissy. 'Oh, well,' said Helen, 'each can do as each likes, but women have quite enough to do for themselves, and can scarcely provide for their own old age, except by scrimping themselves all their lives, of all that makes life worth having.' ' Is that the duties of love and honour, or a few silk dresses?' asked Chrissy, a little mischievously. THE TWO SISTERS. 231 But she looked up at Helen's face as she spoke, and its expression checked her. It was not sad it was scarcely what one would call suffering it ' was rather the face of one weary, defeated ; above / all, embittered. There comes a thrill of self-reproach to loyal hearts like Chrissy's when first they realize that sense of separation which separate duties and separate aims are sure to bring, sooner or later, to those born beside one hearth. How had she and Helen got so far apart, that she could not even guess whence fell the shadow which darkened her sister's face ? She had a vague intuition. Standing sideways at her little toilet-table, so that she could not watch Helen's face, and allow her sister to betray herself by any unguarded expression, she asked, ' Do you see the Ackroyds often now ? ' ' No/ said Helen sharply. There was a pause ; then Helen asked, ' Do you see much of them in Shield Street? ' ' Very little indeed,' answered Chrissy. ' I have an impression that both James and Sophia have been visiting from home a great deal.' ' Oh, yes,' said Helen, with a rasping torture-tone in her voice ; ' Sophia told me they were going away, the last time she saw me. They go to stay with the people who have taken James into the stockbroking firm. As soon as he is competent 232 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. to be a partner, he is to marry the daughter of the house.' So this was the end of Helen's advice to the youth as to the line of life he should choose ! Chrissy did not know what to say. It was not the time for moralizing, and there was no appeal for sympathy. Chrissy said nothing. ' They say she is very ugly,' observed Helen, with an unhappy laugh ; ' and I suppose it is true, since Sophia admitted that she was not pretty, but was rather distinguished-looking, and, though very reserved, was truly charming to the few people who ever really got to know her. Poor James ! I don't blame him ; only it does seem hard that beauty and loveliness and one's own inclination should be so seldom on the side of fortune.' ' I do blame James, if he is to marry without love,' said Chrissy ; ' and I pity the poor girl if she is deceived into believing herself beloved.' ' Probably she herself is agreeable enough to the match,' returned Helen, 'and so needs no pity. Everybody does not see things with your eyes, Chrissy. See what a different standpoint Aunt Kezia takes ; and I believe there are more people in the world like her than like you. I think Aunt Kezia has made her will lately, Chrissy,' she added, after a pause. ' Has she ? ' said Chrissy calmly. THE TWO SISTERS. 233 ' And I don't believe she has put down your name,' Helen went on. ' She said to me there would be no comfort in leaving Chrissy anything ; it would be sure to go on some queer idea. And besides, she had heard of the pictures you had sold and were to sell, and she said, " Chrissy will be able to get for herself as much as is good for her." ' ' I hope it is true,' said Chrissy quietly. 'My name is down, I know,' Helen went on ; 'but I do not know for how much or even for what. I hope it is not for her cumbrous old furniture, which she thinks so much of, and values at three times what it would really fetch. And I'm sure if it came to me I should sell it off at once, for I couldn't bear the sight of the old things. I wish I did know what Aunt Kezzy means to give me the expectation of it might make more difference to me now than the possession of it when I am an old woman. She may live for years and years yet till I'm too old to get married, and when I might be shelved as comfortably in a workhouse almost as Aunt Kezzy herself is now in her own establishment.' Chrissy could bear it no longer. Was this Helen ? sister Helen, whose old faults of thoughtlessness and carelessness had seemed to have a wild beauty of their own ? Sister Helen, who had always been so lavish of her kisses and soft words and gifts whose chronic difficulty had been that her pocket- 234 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. money would burn a hole in her pocket ? Chrissy had not had a long experience of life, or she would have known that thoughtlessness and carelessness, thriftlessness and extravagance, are the very blossoms which presently develop into selfishness and sordid- ness and greed, whether such development takes place slowly under the influence of advancing years, or swiftly under the pressure of the stresses and storms of life. ' Helen,' she cried, ' I cannot hear you talking thus ! What are you living for ? Are not the service of our God and the love of our fellow- creatures before these things ? We do not live by bread alone, Nellie. I think the text might come more home to us if we took out the simple symbolic word " bread," and put in literally some of the things we make too much of. We do not really live by dainty raiment, or grand rooms, or legacies, or pro- visions for our old age, but by every word of God ; that is, by every true thought and every generous deed which urges ourselves and helps others towards Him. We have souls as well as bodies, Nellie, and there is generally no need that either shall be starved for the sake of the other; but if one or the other must suffer, let it be the temporal, and not the eternal that which is sure to die, not that which must live for ever.' Chrissy caught her sister's hands, and looked THE TWO SISTERS. 235 yearningly into the familiar face. There were already one or two lines which had not been there in the old days lines which brought out something which had not been visible before. Yes, Helen was going to be like Aunt Keziah Daffy ! Helen looked down into Chrissy's face, for she was much the taller of the two, and her lips parted with a smile which did not mount to her eyes. Chrissy's heart sank within her, for she knew what was coming, and she would have infinitely preferred if her sister had argued against her arguments, or even been angry with her for urging them, or had said or done anything except meeting her, as she did, with the sweet soothing indifference of one astonished and amused to see energy thrown away for inadequate reasons ; such a manner as mothers or nurses might use to tumultuous children or deluded invalids. ' People see things differently, Chrissy,' she said, 'and I daresay you would be as glad as anybody to be comfortably off, if you could see your way to it. I am sorry to have to fancy that you rather grudge me Aunt Keziah's possible bequest. Console your- self ; it is far off, and uncertain into the bargain.' CHAPTER XVII. A LOAN AND A LEGACY. ANS KRINKEN'S absence was prolonged far beyond expecta- tion ; more than two years passed before he came back. If he and Chrissy had known how long it would last when they parted from each other on the crowded dock it might have seemed too hard to bear, and courage and faith might have failed them. It did seem very hard, often ; but all the sicken- ing hope-deferred, all the fears, and all the pain, only made their joy the greater on that evening when a strong manly step was heard hastily mounting Miss Griffin's staircase, and she dropped her work, and Chrissy suspended her pencil for just one moment till the door opened, and Chrissy sprang up with the cry 236 237 2 3 8 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. 'It is Hans!' ' Chrissy ! ' They were Hans and Chrissy ever after. They had lost nothing in that long parting ; they had been growing nearer all the while. There came a time when they talked it over together. ' Everybody says I am so changed,' said Hans. ' You are not changed one whit/ said Chrissy ; ' you have only gone on into more of all you used to be. I expect that is how we shall feel when we meet those whom God has called home before us. I have often felt that I have grown to know my ( father better since he went away.' ' Ah ! you loved each other so/ said Hans ; ' and love is but the prisoner of these mortal bodies ; and on your father's side, you see, the prison-house is already broken down. Love is beyond time and space. But me ! I believe you like me ; but liking is not love. And can love on one side onlyj still conquer time and space, Chrissy? I shall have to call you "Miss Chrissy" again, I suppose/ ' You can't be quite sure it is only on one side, Hans/ whispered Chrissy. Never mind what he said next, or what she answered him, or what he said in reply. Only, when the little dialogue was over, the two were seated hand in hand, and there were roses and dew on Chrissy's face. A LOAN AND A LEGACY. 239 But all of a sudden the fingers lying in Hans' hand tightened their clasp, and the girlish face grew still and strong. A little pain was on it too. How had she let herself forget, even for a moment? If she had been loyal to her duty, then she would not have touched this treasure of love and happiness, and so would not have needed to lay it down again. And O how hard this was to do when one had caught such a glimpse of what might have been ! ' Hans,' she said hastily, ' this will not do. Don't you remember all I wrote you about my father's debt to the Metropolitan Bank, and how I was pay- ing the bank all I get for my drawings. It will take me all my life to do that task. And I must do it, Hans.' ' I know you must,' said Hans. * I'm not sure I'd have found out that " must " for you. It makes me feel like a savage when I think of it, while I know other people are securing themselves every comfort by all sorts of assignments and settlements and valuations, and then paying compositions of half-a-crown in the pound, and getting so much help and pity for their " misfortunes " that they are as good as a fortune ! But then, they are they, and you are you, and that is_ all the difference. And I like you, and I'd rather stand on your side of the matter. Whatever you mean to do, I mean to help in, Chrissy.' 2 4 o EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' Oh, Hans ! ' she cried, ' I could not weight your life with this burden to begin with. It is my father's burden, and I have no right to impose it' ' Hush, dearest,' said Hans, ' or I shall think this is a hint that I have no right to ask your saintly father's daughter to share the lot of my unhappy father's nameless son. If you won't let me share your father, Chrissy, I shall really have had no father. My father gave me physical life, which, but for the care of others, must have grown into a curse and misery to myself and the world. Your father took rne in, a stranger, and cared for me, and spoke good words to me, and started me in the ways of honour- able life.' ' You would have found them somehow for your- self,' pleaded Chrissy. ' My father said so : he told me so.' ' Then God bless him for the prophecy ! ' returned Hans. ' God bless all good souls who make happy prophecies, and then work for their fulfilment ! ' A glad smile was certainly lighting up behind Chrissy's tears, but still she whispered ' A charge like this at the beginning of your life will weigh you down and keep you down, and I shall have to see you careworn and weary, and to know it is all through me.' ' Chrissy,' said Hans, with manly calmness, ' I have something to say to you, and I want you to A LOAN AND A LEGACY. 241 hear me out altogether, before you raise any objec- tion to what I say. Will you promise ? ' She looked up at him with gentle assent There was such re-assurance in the knowledge that under this burden of hers he would at least stand beside her, whether she would let him share its load or no. ' You were told by me that my poor father had left me a legacy,' said Hans ; ' and I added that after all that had happened to my mother, I could not take his money to soften or sweeten my own life. And you believed me so implicitly, my Chrissy, that you never even asked what that legacy was, feeling that it signified nothing more to you or me.' ' I thought there might be pain for you in the very mention of it,' whispered Chrissy. ' I think I told you that when I should come back to Europe I should go over to Germany and make arrangements about it,' Hans went on. ' Well, when I found that my return was so long delayed, I opened a correspondence with my father's lawful heir his nephew. I found him to be an excellent man, who fully entered into my feelings on my own side, but on his side was equally determined that the money should not return to his coffers. He wrote me that my father had spoken with much remorse concerning my poor deceived mother, and with much regret concerning myself, and that my rejection of the little gift by which he had striven to 242 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION, express his repentance, might seem like the rejection of his repentance itself. " The money is yours," he wrote, "yours to do with as you will. I can under- stand your shrinking from devoting it to selfish purposes ; "but is there no good work you would like to forward, no wrong you would like to mitigate ? If there is none such within your ken at present, keep this money until the time comes. To let your poor father's gifts aid you in making the rough smooth, or the crooked straight, will be the noblest form of retributive justice a sweet vengeance of forgiveness, in which your mother in heaven, herself, will be able to join." Chrissy, I saw there was wisdom in his words. I shall set my father's legacy to pay your father's debt It shall be my father's thankoffering to those who befriended his child.' ' Oh, Hans ! ' cried Chrissy, springing up and clasp- ing her hands in ecstasy of delight ' Oh, Hans ! all my life I shall never have ended my thanks to you ! ' ' A great deal of thanks for a very small matter, little lady,' smiled Hans. ' Only I should have liked to have paid that debt myself almost,' said Chrissy wistfully, and yet aware that possibly a little subtle selfishness lurked in the wish. 'Perhaps you will have had more to do with the pay- ing of it than you think just now,' answered Hans ' My father's legacy is only five hundred pounds.' A LOAN AND A LEGACY. 243 Chrissy stood still, serious. But the sunshine did not fade from her face. It was more than money which had been devoted to her father's service. ' But that is a great deal ! ' she said. ' Father's estate left fifteen hundred owing to the Bank I have paid off about ninety this money of yours will bring it up to nearly six hundred there will remain only nine hundred. Oh, Hans ! if I could have only imagined this a year ago !' 'But gently,gently,'said Hans. ' Has it ever occurred to you that if sickness, or misfortune, or death occurred to you (and to me also, now that we are to be one), then this debt must remain for ever unpaid ? ' ' Oh, Hans !' she cried. ' You ask if this has ever occurred to me ! Why, I have had to try to forget it, lest it should bring on the evils I feared. But we can but do our best, and, if God's will crosses that, then I think He takes our duties upon Himself.' ' True, my darling/ answered Hans ; ' but suppose we had it in our power to secure that the whole of this money shall be certainly paid not very soon, perhaps, but certainly paid, whether we prospered or not. Would you not think it was a wise and right course which could insure that ? ' ' Of course I should,' said Chrissy, with attentive eyes ; ' but how could that be done ? ' ' Listen,' returned Hans. And then he expounded to her the mysteries of life insurance, and how, by 244 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. the immediate payment of some such sum as his father's legacy, they could secure that the whole of Mr. Miller's debt to the Metropolitan Bank should be paid at a certain given date, or on the occasion of Chrissy's death, should that happen before such date. 'And you will have had a greater share in paying your father's debt than may seem to you just now,' Hans went on, ' for I should never have known how this could be done but for something you did. You remember the ten pounds you lent me when I first went into Mr. Bilderdyk's service?' And then he told her the story of how that gentle- man had overcome his scruples about taking the loan by showing him how he could protect its lender from loss. And he showed the deed of assignment and the pathetic little will, both of which he had that morning taken into his own possession out of the custody of Dr. Julius. ' I shall never return you that ten pounds now,' he said, sagely shaking his head. ' That ten pounds ! ' cried Chrissy. ' How absurd to mention them when you have given me five hundred!' ' I have given you myself and all that I have or shall have,' said Hans playfully. ' I hope you will not find you have made a bad investment.' Let us leave them. There are moments on which even that dear friend 'the courteous reader' should not intrude. CHAPTER XVIII. WHERE THE SERMON ENDED. T was soon decided that Hans must presently return to America, to take charge of a branch establish- ment which Mr. Bilderdyk was about to start in one of the new western cities. The worthy mer- chant, who had not forgotten the pretty wistful face of her whom he had set down in his mind as ' Miss Miller's young friend,' began to throw out hints to his protegt that a young man in a new country was the better for a settled home, and that the salary Hans was to receive, though modest, was sufficient, and would be always on the increase. So, when Hans blushingly announced that 'Miss Miller' had promised to take upon herself the part of helpmeet in the new Eden of the West, the old gentleman exclaimed, in dismay ' Miss Miller ! But isn't she quite an elderly lady ? 246 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. Did I not see her saying good-bye to you when you left England two years ago ? ' 'An elderly lady?' said Hans, forgetful of Mr. Bilderdyk's former blundering, and so for one moment puzzled. 'An elderly lady? Oh, I see. That, sir, was our dear friend, Miss Griffin. The young lady with her was Miss Miller.' ' O oh ! ' was Mr. Bilderdyk's prolonged excla- mation. ' So it was the young lady who lent you the money. Indeed ! Were you engaged then ? ' ' No, sir,' said Hans proudly. ' No, sir, I had to become in some way worthy of her before that could happen. She helped me for her father's sake.' ' Well, her little dowry will do you no harm,' said Mr. Bilderdyk. ' I remember you said she had not much. I don't like mercenariness, but prudence is an excellent quality.' 'She has no dowry but herself,' returned Hans, prouder still. 'When she lent me that ten pounds, it was almost all she had in the world.' He said it as a man might announce that he had received knighthood. 'Well, well,' said Mr. Bilderdyk, 'it has turned out fortunately as yet, I will say. I do believe there is something beyond prudence sometimes.' And he cast a thought back over certain incidents in his own life, and wondered whether he might not have dared where he had hesitated. And there WHERE THE SERMON ENDED. 247 came something very like a sigh. ' It is so hard/ that one sees things when it is too late ! ' As if it / were ever too late ! Young people talk about ' too l late ! ' much oftener than older folk do, and possibly old folk say it much oftener than do the angels, and l none of us all need believe it till we hear God say it. ' Of course, there was some pain in the young people's preparation for their wedding and their going away. There always is. There was the parting from Helen, and from Miss Griffin, and from the old associations and ambitions gathered round the old home in Shield Street. But it was wonderful how difficulties solved them- selves. Chrissy had felt quite remorseful about leaving her old friend once more to that solitude whose dreariness Miss Griffin had frankly confessed, and perhaps even overrated in her delight in Chrissy's companionship. What was Chrissy's surprise, when Mr. Bisset, the bookseller, said to her 'As you are going away, my wife and I are thinking of rearranging our household. My wife thinks that nobody we could hire could replace you, and she thinks of taking your place in the shop. Miss Miller,' he went on, looking gravely at the young girl who had earned his respect and con- fidence, ' I feel it will be best so. Life is uncertain with all of us, and I, in particular, am not a strong man. I have seen distinctly, that if you had been 248 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. a little older, and a little better off when your father died, you could have carried on his business suc- cessfully, and maintained your entire independence. Why should not I train my little wife, so that she could do likewise if I was taken from her ? Until I saw this escape from my anxiety about her, I have never ventured to own how much my concern for her possible future has weighed me down. If I am relieved from foreboding on that score, I believe it will do more to lengthen my life than anything else could. But we must have some thoroughly trustworthy person, above the rank of a servant, to look after house matters and domestic comfort in Mrs. Bisset's stead. And neither I nor my wife has any available aunt or cousin.' And Chrissy joyfully suggested Miss Griffin ; and after the Bissets and the good old maid had mutually said that the arrangement was too good to be true, it was finally made. As for Helen, a new plan was formed for her life about this time, with which, however, Chrissy and her movements had nothing to do. Aunt Daffy had a slight shock of paralysis, nothing which endangered her life, or even seriously affected her comfort, but quite sufficient to shake her nerves severely, and make her dread her isolated position, and long for something more than the careless attentions of the temporary hirelings of her kitchen. WHERE THE SERMON ENDED. 249 She invited Helen to take up her abode with her, no longer making it a secret that if the girl 'showed her good sense,' and devoted her time to her till the end, she would find it had been 'worth her while.' Aunt Daffy did not ask or expect love or duty, and Helen did not shrink from the thought of rendering such service without them. ' Aunt Daffy will live for ever ; those chronic cases always do ; it means that I shall give up all thought of marriage,' she said drearily. ' Well, if I stay in Madame Vinet's showroom, nobody whom I should care to marry would be likely to give me the chance. So it comes to the same thing either way, only by taking Aunt Daffy's offer, I shall have ease and comfort and a secure provision. And if a woman has these things, she hasn't very much reason to wish to marry. Marriage cannot give her more. It is not likely to give you so much, poor Chrissy. I expect you will be a hard -worked slave to the end. I always said that no good would come of my father's taking in that Hans Krinken.' Despite these dismal auguries, Helen intended to be at her sister's wedding. ' It is a good chance for getting Aunt Kezia to give me a new silk dress,' she said. And as she did get this silk dress, it is possible that she was not too much disappointed when, on the marriage day, Aunt Kezia suddenly fancied herself rather worse, and forbade her niece 2 50 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. to leave her. ' It will be a little awkward if she wants to shut me up entirely/ Helen mused, as she folded away her finery ; ' but if I manage prudently, I'll get the upper hand of her by-and-by.' And so Hans and Chrissy were quietly married in the Church of St. Cecilia-in-the-Garden, with Dr. Julius to give away the bride, and Mr. Bilderdyk and Miss Griffin for witnesses, and the Bissets for wedding guests. It was a very quiet wedding, of which few of the neighbours were much aware, most of them being much more interested in another event taking place in Shield Street at the very same hour to wit, the removal of the Ackroyd family from their old house to a grand mansion near the West End parks Mr. Ackroyd having had a run of luck in speculation ever since the smash of the Great Metropolitan Bank, and more especially since his son's initiation into the mysteries of a stockbroker's office. Chrissy now Chrissy Krinken went up to her Aunt Daffy's house to say good-bye to her aunt and sister there. And Chrissy felt that the sadness and the parting were not in the going away not in the thousands of miles which would divide them but in the great gulf which yawned between them, as they stood hand in hand. Chrissy even hoped forlornly,, that the silent thoughts which grow in separation \ might somehow bridge that gulf. WHERE THE SERMON ENDED. 251 One visit to the father's lonely grave, one look at the tiny granite cross which now marked it possibly for some reverent pilgrimage to be made by Chrissy's unborn children or those children's children and then the last day came, and there was the crowded dock once more, and the little group of kindly kenned faces, half- tearful, half-smiling. One face which Chrissy would have liked to have seen at the very last was amissing, and many were the kind messages for poor Esther Gray, with which Miss Griffin was charged by the happy young wife. For a terrible epidemic was lurking just then in the by-ways of London life, and Esther could not be spared from her labours in the sad lazar-house, even if it would have been safe for her to risk bring- ing infection into the spheres of health and joy. Then the good ship moved off with her precious cargo of new life for a new land. And at last, waving handkerchief and hand faded indistinct and disap- peared, and the young pair sat side by side, in the first sacred solitude of a double existence. The crowded deck, the river banks, familiar to Chrissy from her earliest childhood, floated unseen before her eyes. Her heart was busy with those she had left behind. She could fancy what they were doing, She could hear the tones of their voices as they spoke of missing her. But in reality there was one picture she could 252 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. not see one scene her fancy could never have filled up. In a darkened room, in the awful abode of terrible suffering and death, sat Esther Gray, watching by the side of one who would be soon past all human help. In that shadowy room she could not see his face, even if it had not been marred beyond all recognition by the ravages of disease. There was no name or description on the doctor's memorandum at the head of the bed ; only the note, ' Brought in from a common lodging-house unknown name refused.' It was one of the worst cases that had ever been in the hospital, and therefore it fell to the share of Esther Gray. The agonies would be soon over now. Speech might return for a little, just at the last; and Esther Gray sat ready for some sign which might comfort sore hearts somewhere. The hoarse question came ' Sure to die ? ' ' You are in God's hands,' whispered the nurse. The poor head was shaken. ' I had just begun to be better, and then this stopped me.' ' Nay, nay,' said Esther Gray. ' It did not stop the dying thief from being better, when Christ Jesus took him out of the world at the same time as Himself.' 'I didn't expect to be worth much; only I'd WHERE THE SERMON ENDED. 253 stopped drinking, and got work. But I'm not fit for heaven.' 'You're fit to be where Jesus is why, God Him- self is with you now here,' said Esther. 'You think so, because you have been always a good woman yourself.' ' I know it, because I have been a great sinner a greater sinner than it is likely you have been ; and yet God has forgiven me, and even lets me work for Him. Our Brother Jesus will never turn us away. Our Father cares for us all the while, even while we are with the swine and the husks.' 'You don't know what I have sinned against what I have thrown away.' 'God 'does, and He can put all the sins away, as far as the east is from the west. -We can't forget them ourselves, but He can.' ' If I got better, I can hardly believe of myself that I should keep on trying to be straight.' ' Never mind that, if God believes it.' ' Do you believe I should go on to do well ? ' One moment's pause. But it only served to give emphasis to Esther's solemn ' I do.' ' That makes it easier to believe that God does.' That whisper came very low; and there was a brief silence. ' Oh, sir ! ' said Esther, ' for I'm sure you're a 254 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. gentleman, is there nobody to whom you should send a message? We don't even know your name here.' Again the dying man shook his head. ' No,' he whispered ; ' it is too late to see them now too late to show them all I mean ; and if I sent them any message, they would find out all about the last few months, and their hearts would break with sorrow and shame. By the last they heard of me, they will think I have gone abroad, and they will hope for the best for me. Father and mother are growing old it can't be long before they die and then ^perhaps it may give them a pleasant surprise to meet me.' He turned his face on the pillow. ' I don't think you're right, sir,' said Esther gently. ' I can see your point of view, but I can feel theirs. And I'm sure you're not right.' ' Ah, poor father and mother,' he said. ' Yes but then my brothers and sisters, I mustn't disgrace and hurt them.' 'Can't we think of anyway to send some kind message ? ' mused Esther. Oh, she knew how she had longed for any sign, any single word to break the awful doubt, the frozen fear, in which the fierce passion of her own life had ended ! ' You could do it,' he said brokenly. ' Tell me what I could do,' she asked. ' You could write a slip of paper so that those at WHERE THE SERMON ENDED. 255 home should not know where it came from. Will you do it? ' 'Yes,' said Esther, ' but you must tell me what to say.' ' Say only, " Harold is dead. He told me to send his father and mother this word, and to ask them to see what the prodigal son said to his father, and what the father answered. And to tell them Harold had a good friend at the last." Write that, and send it directly I am gone. And they'll thank God for it.' ' I will,' said Esther. ' But where am I to send it ? ' ' To the Vicar of St. Magnus, Manchester,' he murmured after a pause. Esther wrote it down. The name ' Harold ' had never impressed her. It did not occur to her that the vicar could be the young man's own father. She thought he was probably a stray sheep of the flock, and that the vicar was chosen as a fit person to break the blow to the bereaved parents. It was not long before word went down to the hospital office that No. 52 was dead, and that evening, while the sunset was still red, the strange quiet nurse, Esther Gray, asked for an hour's leave of absence. She spent it in a walk to the General Post Office. Hans and Chrissy sat on deck and watched that same glorious sunset. Said Chrissy suddenly 256 EQUAL TO THE OCCASION. ' All this afternoon I have been thinking of the clergyman who preached in St. Cecilia's the night before my father died. I owe a great deal to that sermon.' 'You have often told me about it,' answered Hans. ' And I have been thinking over all that has hap- pened since then,' Chrissy went on, ' and noticing 1 how little things grow into unexpected importance, and how one action or incident develops into quite i unforeseen results. And I see plainly enough, that ) to do each little bit of duty that comes before us, / and to choose what seems right in every tiny choice , we have to make, is the only way by which we can hope to be " Equal to the Occasion " in the great ' events of life.' ' Amen,' said Hans heartily. Morrison and Git>l>, FJi'iinrgh, Printers to Her Majesty's Stationery OJfict. . '