MRS. 'A. D.T.WHITNEY JONES' BOOK STORE Los Angeles, Cat. FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD By MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY Author of "The Gayworthy's," Etc., Etc. "Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and Childhood fleet!" LONGFELLOW. A. L. BURT COMPANY, * * * * * * * PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK PREFACE. I BEGAN this story for young girls. It has grown, as they grow, to womanhood. It makes no artistic preten- sion. It is a simple record of something of the thought and life that lies between fourteen and twenty. I dedicate it, as it is, to these young girls, who dream, and wish, and strive, and err ; and find, perhaps, little help to interpret their own spirits to themselves. I be- lieve and hope that there is nothing in it which shall hinder them in what is noblest and truest. May there be something that shall lift them though by ever so little up 1 A. D. T. W. FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. CHAPTER I. " MONEY, MONEY 1 " 44 Shoe the horse and shoe the mare, And let the little colt go bare." EAST or West, it matters not where, the story may, doubtless, indicate something of latitude and longitude as it proceeds, in the city of Mishaumok, lived Hen- derson Gartney, Esq., one of those American gentlemen of whom, if she were ever canonized, Martha of Beth- any must be the patron saint, if again, feminine celestials, sainthood once achieved through the weary experience of earth, don't know better than to assume such charge of wayward man, born, as they are, seemingly, to the life-destiny of being ever " careful and troubled about many things." We have all of us, as little girls, read " Rosamond." Now, one of Rosamond's early worries suggests a key to half the worries, early and late, of grown men and women. The silver paper won't cover the basket. Mr. Gartney had spent his years, from twenty-five to forty, in sedulously tugging at the corners. He 5 (} FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. had had his share of silver paper, too, only the basket was a little too big. In a pleasant apartment, half library, half parlor, and used in the winter months as a breakfast-room, beside a table still covered with the remnants of the morning meal, sat Mrs. Gartney and her young daugh- ter, Faith ; the latter with a somewhat disconcerted, not to say rueful, expression of face. A pair of slippers on the hearth and the morning paper thrown down beside an armchair, gave hint of the recent presence of the master of the house. " Then I suppose I can't go," remarked the young lady. " I'm sure I don't know," answered the elder, in a helpless, worried sort of tone. " It don't seem really right to ask your father for the money. I did just speak of your wanting some things for a party, but I suppose he has forgotten it; and, to-day, I hate to trouble him with reminding. Must you really have new gloves and slippers, both ? " Faith held up her little foot for answer, shod with a partly-worn bronze kid, reduced to morning service. " These are the best I've got. And my gloves have been cleaned over and over, till you said yourself, last time, they would hardly do to wear again. If it were any use, I should say I must have a new dress; but I thought at least I should freshen up with the ' little fixings,' and perhaps have something left for a few natural flowers for my hair." " I know. But your father looked annoyed when I told him we should want fresh marketing to-day. He is really pinched, just now, for ready money, and he is so discouraged about the times. He told me only last night of a man who owed him five hundred dollars, FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 7 and came to say he didn't know as he could pay a cent. It don't seem to be a time to afford gloves and shoes and flowers. And then there'll be the carriage, too." " Oh dear ! " sighed Faith, in the tone of one who felt herself checkmated. " I wish I knew what we really could afford ! It always seems to be these little things that don't cost much, and that other girls, whose fathers are not nearly so well off, always have, without thinking anything about it." And she glanced over the table, whereon shone a silver coffee-service, and up at the mantel where stood a French clock that had been placed there a month before. "Pull at the bobbin and the latch will fly up." An unspoken suggestion, of drift akin to this, flitted through the mind of Faith. She wondered if her father knew that this was a Signal Street invitation. Mr. Gartney was ambitious for his children, and solicitous for their place in society. But Faith had a touch of high-mindedness about her that made it impossible for her to pull bobbins. So, when her father presently, with hat and coat on, came into the room again for a moment, before going out for the day, she sat quite silent, with her foot upon the fender, looking into the fire. Something in her face however, quite unconsciously, bespoke that the world did not lie entirely straight be- fore her, and this catching her father's eye, brought up to him, by an untraceable association, the half proffered request of his wife. " So you haven't any shoes, Faithie. Is that it ? " " None nice enough for a party, father." " And the party is a vital necessity, I suppose. Where is it to be ? " 8 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. The latch-string was put forth, and while Faith still stayed her hand, her mother, absolved from selfish end, was fain to catch it up. " At the Rushleighs'. The Old Year out and the New Year in." " Oh, well, we mustn't ' let the colt go bare,' " an- swered Mr. Gartney, pleasantly, portmonnaie in hand.' " But you must make that do." He handed her five dollars. " And take good care of your things when you have got them, for I don't pick up many five dollars now-a-days." And the old look of care crept up, replacing the kindly smile, as he turned and left the room. " I feel very much as if I had picked my father's pocket," said Faith, holding the bank-note, half ashamedly, in her hand. Henderson Gartney, Esquire, was a man of no method in his expenditure. When money chanced to be plenty with him it was very apt to go as might happen for French clocks, or whatsoever; and then, suddenly, the silver paper fell short elsewhere, and lo! a corner was left uncovered. The horse and the mare were shod. Great expenses were incurred; money was found, somehow, for grand outlays; but the comfort of buying, with a readiness, the little needed matters of every day, this was fore- gone. " Not let the colt go bare ! " It was precisely the thing he was continually doing. Mrs. Gartney had long found it to be her only wise way to make her hay while the sun was shining, to buy, when she could buy, what she was sure would be most wanted, and to look forward as far as pos- sible, in her provisions, since her husband scarcely seemed to look forward at alL FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 9 So she exemplified, over and over again in her life, the story of Pharaoh and his fat and lean kine. That night, Faith, her little purchases and arrange- ments all complete, and flowers and carriage bespoken for the next evening, went to bed to dream such dreams as only come to the sleep of early years. At the same time, lingering by the fireside below for a half hour's unreserved conversation, Mr. Gartney was telling his wife of another money disappointment. " Blacklow, at Cross Corners, gives up the lease of the house in the spring. He writes me he is going out to Indiana with his son-in-law. I don't know where I shall find another such tenant, or any at all, for that matter." CHAPTER H. SOETBS. ** How shall I know if I do choose the right ? * 41 Since this fortune falls to you, Be content, and seek no new." MERCHANT OP VENICE. u Now, Mahala Harris," said Faith, as she glanced in at the nursery door, which opened from her room, " don't let Hendie get up a French Revolution here while I'm gone to dinner." " Land sakes ! Miss Faith ! I don't know what you mean, nor whether I can help it. I dare say he'd get up a Revolution of '76, over again, if he once set out. He does train like 'lection, fact, sometimes." "Well, don't let him build barricades with all the 10 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. chairs, so that I shall have to demolish my way back again. I'm going to lay out my dress for to-night." And very little dinner could her young appetite manage on this last day of the year. All her vital energy was busy in her anticipative brain, and glan- cing thence in sparkles from her eyes, and quivering down in swift currents to her restless little feet. It mattered little that there was delicious roast beef smok- ing on the table, and Christmas-pies were arrayed upon the sideboard, while up stairs the bright ribbon and tiny, shining, old-fashioned buckles were waiting to be shaped into rosettes for the new slippers, and the lace hung, half basted, from the neck of the simple but delicate silk dress, and those lovely green-house flowers stood in a glass dish on her dressing-table, to be sorted for her hair, and into a graceful breast-knot. No, dinner was a very secondary and contemptible affair, compared with these. Ah, if people could only hold out to live, all the rest of their days, on perfume and beauty and grace and dreamy delights, that seem, in the charmed vision of youth, the essential verities of life, how the worry and care of breakfasts and dinners and butchers' and grocers' bills and the trouble of servants should be gloriously done away with! To-night, Faith's eyes shine, and her cheek glows with the mere joy of life and loveliness; but, to-morrow, she will be hungry like any other mortal ; and there must be chickens, or beef -steak, or even coarser mutton or pork, to feed the very roses that flush and crown her girlish beauty. We don't live straight from the spirit impulse yet! There were few forms or faces, truly, that were pleasanter to look upon in the group that stood, dis- robed of their careful outer wrappings, in Mrs. Rush- FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. H leigh's dressing-room; their hurried chat and gladsome greetings distracted with the drawing on of gloves and the last adjustment of shining locks, while the bewilder- ing music was floating up from below, mingled with the hum of voices from the rooms where, as children say, " the party had begun " already. And . Mrs. Rushleigh, when Faith paid her timid respects in the drawing-room at last, made her welcome with a peculiar grace and empressement that had their own flattering weight and charm; for the lady was a sort of St. Peter of fashion, holding its mystic keys, and admitting or rejecting whom she would; and culled, with marvellous tact and taste, the flower of the upgrowing world of Mishaumok to adorn " her set." After which, Faith, claimed at once by an eager aspirant, and beset with many a following introduction and petition, was drawn to and kept in the joyous whirlpool of the dance, till she had breathed in enough of delight and excitement to carry her quite beyond the thought even of ices and oysters and jellies and fruits, and the score of unnamable luxuries whereto the young revellers were duly summoned at half past ten o'clock. Four days' anticipation, four hours' realization, culminated in the glorious after-supper midnight dance, when, marshalled hither and thither by the ingenious orders of the band, the jubilant company found itself, just on the impending stroke of twelve, drawn out around the room in one great circle; and suddenly a hush of the music, at the very poising instant of time, left them motionless for a moment to burst out again in the age-honored and heart-warming strains of " Auld Lang Syne." Hand joining hand they sang its chorus, and when the last note had lingeringly died away, one 12 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. after another gently broke from their places, and the momentary figure melted out with the dying of the Year, never again to be just so combined. It was gone, as vanishes also every other phase and grouping in the kaleidoscope of Time. " Now is the very ' witching hour ' to try the Sortes ! " Margaret Rushleigh said this, standing on the thresh- old of a little inner apartment that opened from the long drawing-room, at one end; and speaking to those nearest her in the scattered groups that had hardly ceased bandying back and forth their tumultuoui " Happy New Years." She held in her hand a large and beautiful volume, a gift of Christmas day. " Here are Fates for everybody who cares to find them out ! " The book was a collection of poetical quotations, arranged by numbers, and to be chosen thereby, and the chance application taken as an oracle. Everything like fortune-telling, or a possible peering into the things of coming time, has such a charm! Especially with them to whom the past is but a prelude and beginning, and for whom the great, voluminous Future holds enwrapped the whole mystic Story of Life! " No, no, this won't do ! " cried the young lady, as circle behind circle closed and crowded eagerly about her. " Fate don't give out her revelations in such wholesale fashion. You must come up with proper reverence, one by one." As she spoke, she withdrew a little within the cur- tained archway, and, placing the crimson-covered book of destiny upon an inlaid table, brought forward a FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 13 piano-stool, and seated herself thereon, as a priestess upon a tripod. A little shyly, one after another, gaining knowledge of what was going on, the company strayed in from without, and, each in turn hazarding a number, received in answer the rhyme or stanza indicated ; and who shall say how long those chance-directed words, chosen for the most part with the elastic ambiguity of all oracles of any established authority, lingered echoing in the heads and hearts of them to whom they were given, shaping and confirming, or darkening with their denial many an after hope and fear? One only, of them all, has an interest for us that needs a record. Faith Gartney came up among the very last. " How many numbers are there to choose from ? " she asked. " Three hundred and sixty-five. The number of days in the year." " Well, then, I'll take the number of the day ; the last, no, I forgot, the first of all." Nobody before had chosen this, and Margaret read, in a clear, gentle voice, not untouched with the grave beauty of its own words, and the sweet, earnest, listen- ing look of the young face that bent toward her to take them in, " Bouse to some high and holy work of love, And thou an angel's happiness shalt know ; Shalt bless the earth while in the world above ; The good begun by thee while here below Shall like a river run. and broader flow." Ten minutes later, and all else were absorbed in other things again, leave-takings, parting chat, and a few waltzing a last measure to a specially-accorded grace 14 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. of music. Faith stood, thoughtfully, by the table where the book was closed and left. She quitely re- opened it at that first page. Unconscious of a step behind her, her eyes ran over the lines again, to make their beautiful words her own. " And that was your oracle, then ? " asked a kindly voice. Glancing quickly up, while the timid color flushed her cheek, she met a look as of a wise and watchful angel, though it came through the eye and smile of a gray-haired man, who laid his hand upon the page as he said, "Remember, it is conditional." CHAPTER III. AUNT HENDERSON. "I nerer met a manner more entirely without frill.** SYDNEY SMITH. LATE into the morning of the New Year, Faith slept. Through her half consciousness crept, at last, a feeling of music that had been wandering in faint echoes among the chambers of her brain all those hours of her suspended life, and were the first sensations to stir there, when that mysterious Life flashed back along its channels, and brought a light more subtle than the mere sunshine that through the easterly win- dows was flooding all her room with its silent arousal. Light, and music, and a sense of an unexamined, half -remembered joy, filled her being and embraced her FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 15 at her waking on this New Year's Day. A moment she lay in a passive, unthinking delight; and then her first, full, and distinct thought shaped itself, as from a sweet and solemn memory, " Rouse to some high and holy work of love, And tiiou an angel's happiness shall know." An impulse of lofty feeling held her in its ecstasy; a noble longing and determination shaped itself, though vaguely, within her. For a little, she was touched in her deepest and truest nature; she was uplifted to the threshold of a great resolve. But generalities are so grand, details so commonplace and unsatisfying. What should she do ? What " high and holy work " lay waiting for her? And, breaking in upon her reverie, bringing her down with its rough and common call to common duty, the second bell for breakfast rang. " Oh, dear ! It is no use ! Who'll know what great things I've been wishing and planning, when I've noth- ing to show for it but just being late to breakfast? And father hates it so, and New Year's morning, too!" Hurrying her toilet, she repaired, with all the haste possible, to the breakfast-room, where her consciousness of shortcoming was in nowise lessened when she saw who occupied the seat at her father's right hand, Aunt Henderson ! Aunt Faith Henderson, who had reached her neph- ew's house last evening just after the young Faith, her namesake, had gone joyously off to " dance the Old Year out and the New Year in." Old-fashioned Aunt Faith, who believed most devoutly that " early to bed and early to rise " was the only way to be 16 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. " healthy, wealthy, or wise ! " Aunt Faith, who had never quite forgiven our young heroine for having said, at the discreet and positive age of nine, that " she didn't see what her father and mother had called her such an ugly name for. It was a real old-maid's name ! " Whereupon, having asked the child what she would have preferred as a substitute, and being answered, " Well, Clotilda, I guess ; or Cleopatra," Miss Henderson had told her that she was quite welcome to change it for any heathen woman's that she pleased, and the worse behaved perhaps the better. She wouldn't be so likely to do it any discredit! Aunt Henderson had a downright and rather ex- treme fashion of putting things; nevertheless, in her heart she was not unkindly. So when Faithie, with her fair, fresh face, a little apprehensive trouble in it for her tardines^, came in, there was a grim bending of the old lady's brows; but, below, a half-belying twinkle in the eye, that, long as it had looked out sharply and keenly on the things and people of this mixed-up world, found yet a pleasure in anything so young and bright. " Why, auntie ! How do you do ? " cried Faith, cunning culprit that she was, taking the " bull by the horns," and holding out her hand. "I wish you a Happy New Year! Good morning, father, and mother 1 A Happy New Year! I'm sorry I'm so late." ft Wish you a great many," responded the great- aunt, in stereotyped phrase. " It seems to me, though, you've lost the beginning of this one." "Oh, no!" replied Faithie, gayly. "I had that at the party. We danced the New Year in." "Humph!" said Aunt Henderson. FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 17 Breakfast over, and Mr. Gartney gone to his count- ing-room, the parlor-girl made her appearance with her mop and tub of hot water, to wash up the silver and china. " Give me that," said Aunt Henderson, taking a large towel from the girl's arm as she set down her tub upon the sideboard. " You go and find some- thing else to do." Wherever she might be, to be sure, her round of visiting was not a large one, Aunt Henderson never let any one else wash up breakfast-cups. This quiet arming of herself, with mop and towel, stirred up everybody else to duty. Her niece-in-law laughed, withdrew her feet from the comfortable fen- der, and departed to the kitchen to give her household orders for the day. Faith removed cups, glasses, forks, and spoons from the table to the sideboard, while the maid, returning with a tray, carried off to the lower regions the larger dishes, and the remnants of the meal. " I haven't told you yet, Elizabeth, what I came to town for," said Aunt Faith, when Mrs. Gartney came back into the breakfast-room. " I'm going to hunt up a girl." *' A girl, aunt ! Why, what has become of Pru- dence ? " " Mrs. Pelatiah Trowe. That's what's become of her. More fool she." " But why in the world do you come to the city for a servant? It's the worst possible place. Nineteen out of twenty are utterly good for nothing." " I'm going to look out for the twentieth." "But aren't there girls enough in Kinnicutt who would be glad to step into Prue's place ? " 2 jg FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. " Of course there are. Plenty. But they're all well enough off where they are. When I have a chance to give away. I want to give it to somebody that needs it." " I'm afraid you'll hardly find any efficient girl who will appreciate the chance of going twenty miles into the country." " I don't want an efficient girl. I'm efficient my- self, and that's enough." " Going to train another, at your time of life, aunt ? " asked Mrs. Gartney, in surprise. " I suppose I must either train a girl, or let her train me; and, at my time of life, I don't feel to stand in need of that." " How shall I go to work to inquire ? " resumed Aunt Henderson, after a pause. " Well, there are the Homes, and the Offices, and the Ministers at Large. At a Home, they would probably recommend you somebody they've made up their minds to put out to service, and she might or might not be such an one as would suit you. Then at the Offices, you'll see all sorts, and mostly poor ones." " I'll try an Office, first," interrupted Miss Hender- son. " I want to see all sorts. Faith, you'll go with me, by-and-by, won't you, and help me find the way ? " Faith, seated at a little writing-table at the farther end of the room, busied in copying into her album, in a clear, neat, but rather stiff schoolgirl's hand, the ora- cle of the night before, did not at once notice that she was addressed. " Faith, child ! don't you hear ? " "Oh, yes, aunt. What is it?" " I want you to go to a what-d'ye-call-it office with me, to-day." FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. ^9 " An intelligence office," explained her mother. te Aunt Faith wants to find a girl." ' Lucus a non lucendo/ " quoted Faith, rather wittily, from her little stock of Latin. " Stupidity offices, / should call them, from the specimens they send out." " Hold your tongue, chit ! Don't talk Latin to me ! " growled Aunt Henderson. " What are you writing ? " she asked, shortly after, when Mrs. Gartney had again left her and Faith to each other. " Letters, or Latin ? " Faith colored, and laughed. " Only a fortune that was told me last night," she replied. " Oh ! ' A little husband,' I suppose, ' no bigger than my thumb; put him in a pint pot, and there bid him drum.' ' "No," said Faith, half seriously, and half teased out of her seriousness. " It's nothing of that sort, at least," she added, glancing over the lines again, " I don't think it means anything like that." And Faith laid down the book, and went up stairs for a word with her mother. Aunt Henderson, who had been brought up in times when all the doings of young girls were strictly super- vised, and who had no high-flown scruples, because she had no mean motives, deliberately walked over and fetched the elegant little volume from the table, re- seated herself in her armchair, felt for her glasses, and set them carefully upon her nose, and, as her grand- niece returned, was just finishing her perusal of the freshly-inscribed lines. "Humph! A good fortune. Only youVe got to earn it." 20 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. " Yes," said Faith, quite gravely. " And I don't see how. There don't seem to be much that I can do." " Just take hold of the first thing that comes in your way. If the Lord's got anything bigger to give you, he'll see to it. There's your mother's mending- basket brimful of stockings." Faith couldn't help laughing. Presently she grew grave again. " Aunt Henderson," said she, abruptly, " I wish something would happen to me. I get tired of living sometimes. Things don't seem worth while." Aunt Henderson bent her head slightly, and opened her eyes wide over the tops of her glasses. " Don't say that again," said she. " Things happen fast enough. Don't you dare to tempt Providence." " Providence won't be tempted, nor misunderstand," replied Faith, an undertone of reverence qualifying her girlish repartee. " He knows just what I mean." " She's a queer child," said Aunt Faith to herself, afterwards, thinking over the brief conversation. " She'll be something or nothing, I always said. I used to think 'twould be nothing." FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 21 CHAPTEK IV. GLORY MCWHIEK. There's beauty waiting to be born, And harmony that makes no sound ; And bear we ever, unawares, A glory that hath not been crowned. SHALL I try to give you a glimpse of quite another young life than Faith Gartney's? One looking also vaguely, wonderingly, for " something to happen," that indefinite " something " which lies in everybody's future, which may never arrive, and yet which any hour may bring? Very little likelihood there has ever seemed for any great joy to get into such a life as this has been, that began, or at least has its earliest memory and associa- tion, in the old poorhouse at Stonebury. A child shewas, of five years, when she was taken in there with her old, crippled grandmother. Peter McWhirk was picked up dead, from the gravelled drive of a gentleman's place, where he had been trimming the high trees that shaded it. An un- sound limb a heedless movement and Peter went straight down, thirty feet, and out of life. Out of life, where he had a trim, comfortable young wife, one happy little child, for whom skies were as blue, and grass as green, and buttercups as golden as for the little heiress of Elm Hill, who was riding over the 22 FAITH QARTN~EY'S GIRLHOOD. lawn in her basket-wagon, when Peter met his death there, the hope, also, of another that was to come. Rosa McWhirk and her baby of a day old were buried the week after, together; and then there was nothing left for Glory and her helpless grandmother but the poorhouse as a present refuge; and to the one death, that ends all, and to the other a life of rough and unremitting work to look to for by-and-by. When Glory came into this world where wants begin with the first breath, and go on thickening around us, and pressing upon us until the last one is supplied to us a grave she wanted, first of all, a name. " Sure what'll I call the baby ? " said the proud young mother to the ladies from the white corner house, where she had served four faithful years of her maidenhood, and who came down at once with comforts and congratulations. " They've sint for the praist, an' I've niver bethought of a name. I made so cer- tain 'twould be a boy ! " " What a funny bit of a thing it is ! " cried the younger of the two visitors, turning back the bed- clothes a little from the tiny, red, puckered face, with short, sandy-colored hair standing up about the temples like a fuzz-ball. " I'd call her Glory. There's a halo round her head like the saints in the pictures." " Sure, that's jist like yersilf, Miss Mattie ! " ex- claimed Rosa, with a faint, merry little laugh. " An' quare enough, I knew a lady once't of the very name, in the ould country. Miss Gloriana O'Dowd she was ; an' the beauty o' County Kerry. My Lady Kinawley, she came to be. 'Deed, but I'd like to do it, for the ould times, an' for you thinkin' of it ! I'll ask Peter, anyhow ! " FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 23 And so Glory got her name; and Mattie Hyde, who gave her that, gave her many another thing that was no less a giving to the mother also, before she was two years old. Then Mrs. Hyde and the young lady, hav- ing first let the corner house, went away to Europe to stay for years; and when a box of tokens from the far, foreign lands came back to Stonebury a while after, there was a grand shawl for Rosa, and a pretty braided frock for the baby, and a rosary that Glory keeps to this hour, that had been blessed by the Pope. That was the last. Mattie and her mother sailed out upon the Mediterranean one day from the bright coast of France for a far eastern port, to see the Holy Land. God's Holy Land they did see, though they never touched those Syrian shores, or climbed the hills about Jerusalem. Glory remembered, for the most part dimly, for some special points distinctly, her child-life of three years in Stonebury poorhouse. How her grandmother and an old countrywoman from the same county " at home " sat knitting and crooning together in a sunny corner of the common room in winter, or out under the stoop in summer; how she rolled down the green bank behind the house ; and, when she grew big enough to be trusted with a knife, was sent out to dig dandelions in the spring, and how an older girl went with her round the village, and sold them from house to house. How, at last, her old grandmother died, and was buried ; and how a woman of the village, who had used to buy her dandelions, found a place for her with a relative of her own, in the ten-mile distant city, who took Glory to " bring up," " seeing," as she said, " there was no- body belonging to her to interfere." Was there a day, after that, that did not leave its 24 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. searing impress upon heart and memory, of the life that was given, in its every young pulse and breath, to sordid toil for others, and to which it seemed nobody on earth owed aught of care or service in return? Clothed and fed, to be sure, she was; that is, she neither starved, nor went naked ; but she was barely covered and nourished as she must be, as any beast of burden must be, to do its owner's work. It was a close little house, one of those houses where they have fried dinners so often that the smell never gets out in Budd Street, a street of a single side, wedged in between the back yards of more pre- tentious mansions that stood on fair parallel avenues sloping down from a hill-top to the water-side, that Mrs. Grubbling lived. Here Glory McWhirk, from eight years old to nearly fifteen, scoured knives and brasses, tended door-bell, set tables, washed dishes, and minded the baby ; whom, at her peril, she must " keep pacified," i. e., amused and content, while its mother was otherwise busy. For her, poor child, baby that she still, almost, was her- self, who amused, or contented her? There are hu- mans with whom amusement and content have nothing to do. What will you ? The world must go on. Glory curled the baby's hair, and made him " look pretty." Mrs. Grubbling cut her little handmaid's short to save trouble; so that the very determined yellow locks which, under more favoring circumstances of place and fortune, might have been trained into lovely golden curls like the child's who lived in the tall house opposite the Grubblings' door, and who came, sometimes, to the long back-parlor windows, and uncon- sciously shone into poor, unknown Glory's life, who watched for her as for a vision,, these locks, I say, FAITH GAKTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 25 stood up continually in their restless reaching after the fairer destiny that had been meant for them, in the old fuzz-ball fashion; and Glory grew more and more to justify her name. Do you think she didn't know what beauty was, this child who never had & new or pretty garment, but who wore frocks " fadged up " out of old, faded breadths of her mistress's dresses, and bonnets with brims cut off and topknots taken down, and coarse shoes, and stockings cut out of the legs of those whereof Mrs. Grubbling had worn out the extremities? Do you think she didn't feel the difference, and that it wasn't this that made her shuffle along so with her toes in, when she sped along the streets upon her mani- fold errands, and met gentle-people's children laughing and dancing and skipping their hoops upon the side- walks ? I tell you the soul shapes to itself a life, whether the outer life conform to it or not. What else is imagina- tion given for? Did you ever think how strange it is that among the millions of human experiences, out of all the numberless combinations of circumstance and incident that make the different lives of men and women, now unfolding their shifting webs upon this earth, you your- self, and that without voluntary choice, have just one, perhaps but a very dull and meagre one, allotted yon ? With all the divine capacity you find in yourself to enter into and comprehend a life quite other than and foreign to the daily reality of your own, and to feel how it would be to you if it might become tangible and actual, did you ever question why it is that you are kept out of it, and of all else save the one small and 26 FAITH GAKTNEY'S GIRLHOOD.' insufficient history? The very consciousness of such capacity answers you why. " No man lives to himself." Out of all lives, actual and possible, each one of us appropriates continually into his own. This is a world of hints only, out of which every soul seizes to itself what it needs. This girl, uncherished, repressed in every natural longing to be and to have, took in all the more of what was possible; for God had given her this glorious in- sight, this imagination, wherewith we fill up life's scanty outline, and grasp at all that might be, or that elsewhere, is. In her, as in us all, it was often nay, daily a discontent ; yet a noble discontent, and curbed with a grand, unconscious patience. She scoured her knives ; she shuffled along the streets on hasty errands ; she went up and down the house in her small menial duties ; she put on and off her coarse, repulsive clothing ; she uttered herself in her common, ignorant forms of speech ; she showed only as a poor, low, little Irish girl with red hair and staring, wondering eyes, and awk- ward movements, and a frightened fashion of getting into everybody's way ; and yet, behind all this, there was another life that went on in a hidden beauty that you and I cannot fathom, save only as God gives the like, inwardly, to ourselves. There are persons who have an " impediment of speech," so that the thoughts that shape themselves in the brain are smothered there, and can never be born in fitting utterance. There are many who have an impediment of life. A something wanting withheld that hinders the inner existence from flowering out into visible fact and deed. Flowers it not somewhere ? Is there not building somewhere, all the while, that FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 7 which God hath reserved for them from the foundation of the world ? When Glory's mistress cut her hair, there were always tears and rebellion. It was her one, eager, passionate longing, in those childish days, that these locks of hers should be let to grow. She thought she could almost bear anything else, if only this stiff, un- seemly crop might lengthen out into waves and ringlets that should toss in the wind like the carefully kempt tresses of children she met in the streets. She imagined it would be a complete and utter happiness just once to feel it falling in its wealth about her shoulders or drop- ping against her cheeks; and to be able to look at it with her eyes, and twist her fingers in it at the ends. And so, when it got to be its longest, and began to make itself troublesome about her forehead, and to peep below her shabby bonnet in her neck, she had a brief season of wonderful enjoyment in it. Then she could " make believe " it had really grown out ; and the comfort she took in " going through the motions," pretending to tuck behind her ears what scarcely touched their tips, and tossing her head continually, to throw back im- aginary masses of curls, was truly indescribable, and such as I could not begin to make you understand. " Half-witted monkey ! " Mrs. Grubbling would ejaculate, contemptuously, seeing, with what she con- ^ceived marvellous penetration, the half of her little servant's thought, and so pronouncing from her own half-wit. Then the great shears came out, and the instinct of grace and beauty in the child was pitilessly outraged, and her soul mutilated, as it were, in every clip of the inexorable shears. Glory lived half her life in that back parlor of the Pembertons. The little golden-haired vision went and 28 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. came; it sat by its mother's side in the firelight, before the curtains were drawn down ; it had a party, now and then, of other little radiances like unto itself; and Glory, " tending baby " in Mrs. Grubbling's fusty chamber, watched their games through the long, large- paned windows, and reproduced them next day, when the chores were done, and she and baby could go up stairs and "have a party;" bidding thereto, on his solemn promise of good behavior, " Bubby," otherwise Master Herbert Clarence Grabbling; ranging, also, six chairs, to represent or to accommodate invisible " com- pany." And, for me, I can't help thinking there may have been company there. She was always glad poor Glory when the spring- time came. The water running in the gutters; the blades of grass and tufts of chickweed that grew under the walls ; the soft, damp air that betokened the mollify- ing season, these touched her with a delight, and gave her a sense of joy and beauty that might have been no deeper or keener if it had come to her through the ministries of great rivers, and green meadows, and all the wide breeze and blue of the circling sky. She took Bubby and Baby down to the Common, of a May-day, to see the possessions and the paper-crowned queens; and stood there in her stained and drabbled dress, with the big year-and-a-half-old baby in her arms, and so quite at the mercy of Master Herbert Clarence, who defiantly skipped off down the avenues, and almost out of her sight, she looking after him in helpless dis- may, lest he should get a splash or a tumble, or be al- together lost ; and then what would the mistress say ? Standing there so, the troops of children in their holiday trim passing close beside her, her young FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 39 heart turned bitter for a moment, as it sometimes would; and her one utterance of all that swelled her martyr-soul broke forth, " Laws a me ! Sech lots of good times in the world, and I ain't in 'em ! " And then she meekly turned off homeward, lugging the baby in her arms, who peremptorily declined her enticing suggestion when they passed the Common gates, that he should get down, and " go patty, patty, on the sidewalk ; " Master Herbert, who had in the midst of his most reckless escapades kept one eye care- fully upon her movements, racing after her, vocifera- ting that he would " go right and tell his ma how Glory ran away from him." Yet, that afternoon, when Mrs. Grubbling went out shopping, and left her to her own devices with the children, how jubilantly she trained the battered chairs in line, and put herself at the head, with Bubby's scarlet tippet wreathed about her upstart locks, and made a May Day ! I say, she had the soul and essence of the very life she seemed to miss. There were shabby children's books about the Grub- bling domicile, that had been the older child's Cornelia's and had descended to Master Herbert, while yet his only pastime in them was to scrawl them full of pencil-marks, and tear them into tatters. These, one by one, Glory rescued, and hid away, and fed upon, piecemeal, in secret. She could read, at least, this poor, denied unfortunate. Peter McWhirk had taught his child her letters in happy, humble Sundays and holidays long ago; and Mrs. Grubbling had begun by sending her to a primary school for a while, irregu- larly, when she could be spared; and when she hadn't 30 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. just torn her frock, or worn out her shoes, or it didn't rain, or she hadn't been sent of an errand and come back too late, which reasons, with a multitude of others, constantly recurring, reduced the school-days in the year to a number whose smallness Mrs. Grub- bling would have indignantly disputed, had it been calculated and set before her; she being one of those not uncommon persons who regard a duty continually evaded as one continually performed, it being neces- sarily just as much on their minds; till, at last, Her- bert had a winter's illness, and in summer it wasn't worth while, and the winter after, baby came, so that of course she couldn't be spared at all; and it seemed little likely now that she ever again would be. But she kept her spelling-book, and read over and over what she knew, and groped her way slowly into more, till she promoted herself from that to " Mother Goose," from " Mother Goose " to " Fables for the Nursery," and now, her ever fresh and unfailing feast was the " Child's Own Book of Fairy Tales," and an odd volume of the " Parents' Assistant." She picked out, slowly, the gist of these, with a lame and uncertain interpre- tation. She lived for weeks with Beauty and the Beast, with Cinderella, with the good girl who worked for the witch, and shook her feather-bed every morning; till at last, given leave to go home and see her mother, the gold and silver shower came down about her, departing at the back-door. Perhaps she should get her pay, sometime, and go home and see her mother. Meanwhile, she indentified herself with lost her- self utterly in these imaginary lives. She was, for the time, Cinderella ; she was Beauty ; she was above all, the Fair One with Golden Locks; she was Simple Susan going to be May Queen ; sne dwelt in the old FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. (ft Castle of Rossmore, with the Irish Orphans. The little Grubbling house in Budd Street was peopled all through, in every corner, with her fancies. Don't tell me she had nothing but her niggardly outside living there. And the wonder began to come up in her mind, as it did in Faith Gartney's, whether and when " something might happen " to her. CHAPTER V. SOMETHING HAPPENS. Athirst ! athirst ! The sandy soil Bears no glad trace of leaf or tree ; No grass-blade sigheth to the heaven Its little drop of ecstasy. Yet other fields are spreading wide Green bosoms to the bounteous sun ; And palms and cedars shall sublime Their rapture for thee, waiting one t " TAKU us down to see the apple-woman," said Master Herbert, going out with Glory and the baby one daywhen his school didn't keep, and Mrs. Grubbling had a headache, and wanted to get them all off out of the way. Bridget Foye sat at her apple-stand in the cheery morning sunlight, red cheeks and russets ranged fair and tempting before her, and a pile of roasted pea- nuts, and one of delicate molasses-candy, such as nobody but she knew how to make, at either end of the board. Bridget Foye was the tidiest, kindliest, merriest apple-woman in all Mishaumok. Everybody whose 32 FAITH GARTNP;Y'S GIRLHOOD. daily path lay across that southeast corner of the Com- mon, knew her well, and had a smile, and perhaps a penny for her; and got a smile and a God-bless-you, and, for the penny, a rosy or a golden apple, or some of her crisp candy in return. Glory and the baby, sitting down to rest on one of the benches close by, as their habit was, had one day made a nearer acquaintance with blithe Bridget. I think it began with Glory who held the baby up to see the passing show of a portion of a menagerie in the street, and heard two girls, stopping just before her too look, likewise, say they'd go and see it perform next day, uttering something of her old soliloquy about " good times," and why she " warn't ever in any of 'em." However it was, Mrs. Foye, in her buxom cheeriness, was drawn to give some of it forth to the uncouth- looking, companionless girl, and not only began a chat with her, after the momentary stir in the street was over, and she had settled herself upon her stool, and leaning her back against a tree, set vigorously to work again at knitting a stout blue yarn stocking, but also treated Bubby and Baby to some bits of her sweet merchandise, and told them about the bears and the monkeys that had gone by, shut up in the gay, red-and- yellow-paisted wagons. It was between her busy times of trade. The buzz of bigger trade and toil had long ago begun " down town," and the last tardy straggler had passed by, on his way to the day's labor of hand or brain. Children were all in school. Here, in the midst of the great, bustling city, was a green hush and quiet; and from this until noon Bridget had but chance and scattering custom. Nursemaids and babies didn't afford her much. Besides, they kept, for the most part, to the FAITH GARTNF.Y'S GIRLHOOD. 33 upper walks. There are fashions among nursemaids as among their betters. Glory had no acquaintance among the smart damsels who perambulated certain exclusive localities, in charge of elegant little carriages heaped up inside with lace, and feathers, and embroideries, in the midst of which peeped out with difficulty the wee human face which served as nucleus and excuse for all the show. So it became, after this first opening, Glory's chief pleasure to get out with the children now and then, of a sunny day, arid sit here on the bench by Bridget Foye, and hear her talk, and tell her, confidentially, some of her small, incessant troubles. It was one more life to draw from, a hearty, bright, and wholesome life, beside. She had, at last, in this great, tumultuous, indifferent city, a friendship and a resource of her own. But there was a certain fair spot of delicate honor in Glory's nature that would not let her bring Bubby and Baby in any apparent hope of what they might get, gratuitously, into their mouths. She laid it down, a rule, with Master Herbert, that he was not to go to the apple-stand with her unless he had first put by a penny for a purchase. And so unflinchingly she adhered to this determination, that sometimes weeks went by, hard, weary weeks, without a bit of pleasantness for her ; weeks of sore pining for a morsel of heart-food, before she was free of her own conscience to go and take it. Bridget told stories to Herbert, strange, nonsensical fables, to be sure, stuff that many an overwise mother, bringing up her children by hard rule and theory, might have utterly forbidden as harmful trash, yet that never put an evil into his heart, nor crowded, I dare to say, a 3 34 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. better thought out of his brain. Glory liked the stories as well, almost, as the child. One moral always ran through them all. Troubles always, somehow, came to an end ; good creatures and children got safe out of them all, and lived happy ever after; and the fierce, and , cunning, and bad, the wolves, and foxes, and witches, trapped themselves in their own wickedness, and came to deplorable ends. " Tell us about the little red hen," said Herbert, pay- ing his money, and munching his candy. " An, thin ye'll trundle yer hoop out to the big tree, an' lave Glory an' me our lane for a minute ? " " Faith, an' I will that," said the boy, aping, ambitiously, the racy Irish accent. " Well, thin, there was once't upon a time, away off in the ould country, livin' all her lane in the woods, in a wee bit iv a house be herself, a little rid hin. Nice an' quite she was, and nivir did no kind o' harrum in her life. An' there lived out over the hill, in a din o' the rocks, a crafty ould felly iv a fox. An' this same ould villain iv a fox, he laid awake o' nights, and he prowled round shly iv a daytime, thinkin' always so busy how he'd git the little rid hin, an' carry her home an' bile her up for his shupper. But the wise little rid hin nivir went intil her bit iv a house, but she locked the door afther her, an' pit the kay in her pocket. So the ould rashkill iv a fox, he watched, an' he prowled, an' he laid awake nights, till he came all to skin an' bone, on' sorra a ha'porth o' the little rid hin could he git at. But at lasht there came a shcame intil his wicked ould head, an' he tuk a big bag one mornin', over his should- her, and he says till his mother, says he, ' Mother, have the pot all bilin' agin' I come home, for I'll bring the little rid hin to-night for our shupper.' An' away he FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 35 wint, over the hill, an' came craping shly^ and soft through the woods to where the little rid hin lived in her shnug bit, iv a house. An' shure, jist at the very minute that he got along, out comes the little rid hin out iv the door, to pick up shticks to bile her tay-kettle. 1 Begorra, now, but I'll have yees,' says the shly ould fox, and in he shlips, unbeknownst, intil the house, an' hides behind the door. An' in comes the little rid hin, a minute afther, with her apron full of shticks, an' shuts to the door an' locks it, an' pits the kay in her pocket. An' thin she turns round, an' there shtands the baste iv a fox in the corner. Well, thin, what did she do, but jist dhrop down her shticks, and fly up in a; great fright and flutter to the big bame acrass inside o' the roof, where the fox couldn't get at her ? " ' Ah, ha ! ' says the ould fox, l I'll soon bring yees down out o' that ! ' An' he began to whirrul round, an' round, an' round, fashter an' fashter an' fashter, on the floor, after his big, bushy tail, till the little rid hin got so dizzy wid lookin', that she jist tumbled down off the bame, and the fox whipped her up and popped her intil his bag, and shtarted off home in a minute. An' he wint up the wood, an' down the wood, half the day long, with the little rid hin shut up shmotherin' in the bag. Sorra a know she knowd where she was, at all, at all. She thought she was all biled an' ate up, an' finished, shure! But, by an' by, she renumbered her- self, an' pit her hand in her pocket, and tuk out her little bright schissors, and shnipped a big hole in the bag behind, an' out she leapt, an' picked up a big shtone an' popped it intil the bag, an' rin aff home, an' locked the door. " An' the fox he tugged away up over the hill, with the big shtone at his back thumpiu' his shouldhers, 3(3 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. thinkin' to himself how heavy the little rid hin was, an' what a fine shupper he'd have. An' whin he came in sight iv his din in the rocks, and shpied his ould mother a watchin' for him at the door, he says, * Mother ! have ye the pot bilin' ? ' An' the ould mother says, 1 Sure an' it is ; an' have ye the little rid hin ? ' ' Yes, jist here in me bag. Open the lid o' the pot till I pit her in,' says he. " An' the ould mother fox she lifted the lid o' the pot, and the rashkill untied the bag, and hild it over the pot o' bilin' wather, an' shuk in the big, heavy shtone. An' the bilin' wather shplashed up all over the rogue iv a fox, an' his mother, an' shcalded them both to death. An' the little rid hin lived safe in her house foriver afther." " Ah ! " breathed Bubby, in intense relief, for per- haps the twentieth time. " Now tell about the girl that went to seek her fortune ! " " Away wid ye ! " cried Bridget Foye, " Kape yer promish, an' lave that till ye come back ! " So Herbert and his hoop trundled off to the big tree. " An' how are yees now, honey ? " says Bridget to Glory, a whole catechism of questions in the one in- quiry. " Have ye come till any good times yit ? " " Oh, Mrs. Foye," says Glory, " I think I'm tied up tight in the bag, an' I'll never get out, except it's into the hot water ! " " An' havint ye nivir a pair iv schissors in yer pocket ? " asks Bridget. " I don't know," says poor Glory, hopelessly. And just then Master Herbert coines trundling back, and Bridget tells him the story of the girl that went to seek her fortune and came to be a queen. FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 37 Glory half thinks that, some day or other, she, too, will start off and seek her fortune. The next morning, Sunday, never a holiday, and scarcely a holy day to her, Glory sits at the front window, with the inevitable baby in her arms. Mrs. Grubbling is up stairs getting ready for church. After baby has his forenoon drink, and is got off to sleep, supposing he shall be complaisant, and go, Glory is to dust up, and set table, and warm the dinner, and be all ready to bring it up when the elder Grub- bling shall have returned, a hungered. Out at the Pembertans' green gate she sees the tidy parlor-maid come, in her smart shawl and new, bright ribbons ; holding up her pretty printed mousseline dress with one hand, as she steps down upon the street, and so revealing the white hem of a clean starched skirt; while the other hand is occupied with the little Catholic prayer-book and a folded handkerchief. Actually, gloves on her hands, too. The gate closes with a cord and pulley after her, and somehow the hem of the fresh, outspreading crinoline gets caught in it, as it shuts. So she turns half round, and takes both hands to push it open and release herself. Doing so, something slips from between the folds of her handkerchief, and drops upon the ground. A bright half dollar, which was going to pay some of her little church dues to-day. And she hurries on, never missing it out of her grasp, and is half way down the side street before Glory can set the baby suddenly on the carpet, rush out at the front door, regardless that Mrs. Grubbling's chamber window overlooks her from above, pick up the coin, and overtake her. " I saw you drop it by the gate," is all she says, as she puts it into Katie Ryan's hand. 38 FAITH GARTXEY'S GIRLHOOD. Katie stares with surprise, turning round at the touch upon her shoulder, and beholding the strange figure, and the still stranger evidence of honesty and good-will. " Indeed, and I'm thoroughly obliged to ye," says she, barely in time, for the odd figure is already re- treating up the street. " It's the red-headed girl over at Grubblings," she continues to herself. " Well, any- how, she's an honest, kind-hearted crature, and I'll not forget it of her." Glory has made another friend. " Well, Glory McWhirk, this is very pretty doings indeed ! " began Mrs. Grubbling, in a high key, which had a certain peculiar ring also of satisfaction in it, at finding fair and obvious reason this time for a hearty fault-finding, meeting the little handmaiden at the parlor door whither she had hurried down to confront her in her delinquency, " So this is the way, is it, when my back is turned for a minute? That poor baby dumped down on the floor, to crawl up to the hot stove, or do any other horrid thing he likes, while you go flacketting out, bareheaded, into the streets, after a top- ping jade like that ? You can't have any high-flown ac- quaintances while you live in my house, I tell you now, once and for all. Are you going to take up that baby or not ? " Mrs. Grubbling had been thus far effectually heading Glory off, by standing square in the parlor doorway. " Or perhaps, I'd better stay at home and take care of him myself," she added, in a tone of super- lative irony, as suggesting an alternative not only utterly absurd and inadmissible, but actually appalling, as if she had proposed to take off her head, instead of her bonnet, and sacrifice that to the temporary amusement of her child, and the relief of Glory. FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 39 Poor Glory, meekly murmuring that it was only to give back some money the girl had dropped, slid past her mistress submissively, like a sentry caught off his post and warned of mortal punishment, and shouldered arms once more ; that is, picked up the baby, who, as if taking the cue from his mother, and made conscious of his grievance, had at this moment begun to cry. Mrs. Grubbling, notwithstanding her shaken confi- dence, put on her gloves, of which she had been sewing up the tips, just now, by the window, when she wit- nessed Glory's escapade, and departed, leaving the girl to her " pacifying " office, sufficiently secure that it would be fulfilled. Glory had a good cry of her own first, and then, " killing two birds with one stone," pacified herself and the baby " all under one." After this, Katie Ryan never came out at the green gate, of a Sunday on the way to church, or of a week- day to run down the little back street of an errand, but she gave a glance up at the Grubblings' windows; and if she caught sight of Glory's illumined head, nodded her own, with its pretty, dark brown locks, quite pleas- ant and friendly. And between these chance recogni- tions of Katie's, and the good apple-woman's occasional sympathy, the world began to brighten a little, even for poor Glory. Still, good times went on, grand, wonderful good times, all around her. And she caught distant glimpses, but " wasn't in 'em." One day, as she hurried home from the grocer's with half-a-dozen eggs and two lemons, Katie ran out from the gate, and met her half way down Budd Street. " I've been watchin' for ye," said she. " I seen ye go out of an errand, an' I've been lookin' for ye back. 40 FAITH GAKTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. There's to be a grand party at our house to-morrow night, an' I thought may be ye'd like to get lave, an' run over to take a peep at it. Put on yer best frock, and make yer hair tidy, an' I'll see to yer gettin' a good chance." Poor Glory colored up, as Mrs. Gmbbling might have done if the President's wife had bidden her. Not so, either. With a glow of feeling, and an oppression of gratitude, and a humility of delight, that Mrs. Grub- bling, under any circumstances whatever, could have known nothing about. " If I only can," she managed to utter, " and, any- how, I'm sure I'm thankful to ye a thousand times." And that night she sat up in her little attic room, after everybody else was in bed, mending, in a poor fashion, a rent in the faded " best frock," and sewing a bit of cotton lace in the neck thereof that she had picked out of the ragbag, and surreptitiously washed and ironed. Next morning, she went about her homely tasks with an alacrity that Mrs. Grubbling, knowing nothing of the hope that had been let in upon her dreariness, attributed wholly to the salutary effect of a " good scolding " she had administered the day before. The work she got out of the girl that Thursday forenoon! Never once did Glory leave her scrubbing, or her dusting, or her stove-polishing, to glance from the windows into the street, though the market-boys, and the waiters, and the confectioners' parcels were going in at the Pember- tons' gate, and the man from the green-house, even, drove his cart up, filled with beautiful plants for the staircase. She waited, as in our toils we wait for Heaven,- trusting to the joy that was to come. FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 41 After dinner, she spoke, with fear and trembling. Her lips turned quite white with anxiety as she stood before Mrs. Grubbling with the baby in her arms. The lady had been far from unobservant, on her own part, all the day, of what was going on upon her richer neighbor's premises. Her spirit was not attuned to gentle charity just then. Her mood was not that of gracious compliance. Let us be pitiful to her, also. She, too, saw " good times " going on, and felt, bitterly, that she " wasn't in 'em." " Please, mum," says Glory, tremulously, " Katie Ryan asked me over for a little while to-night to look at the party." Mrs. Grubbling actually felt a jealousy, as if her poor, untutored handmaid were taking precedence of herself. " What party ? " she snapped, nothing else occur- ring to her, in the sudden shock, to say. " At the Pembertons', mum. I thought you knew about it." " And what if I do ? Maybe I'm going, myself." Glory opened her eyes wide in mingled consternation and surprise. " I didn't think you was, mum, But if you is " " You're willing, I suppose," retorted her mistress, laughing, in a bitter way. " I'm very much obliged. But I'm going out to-night, anyhow, whether it's there or not, and you can't be spared. Besides, you needn't think you're going to begin with going out evenings yet a while. At your age! A pretty thing! There, go along, and don't bother me." Glory went along; and only the baby of mortal listeners heard the suffering cry that went up from her poor, pinched, and chilled, and disappointed heart. 42 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. " Oh, baby, baby ! it was too good a time ! I'd ought to a knowed I couldn't be in it ! " Mr. and Mrs. Grubbling did go out that night Whether it was a sudden thought, suggested by Glory's application, or a previous resolve adopted by the mis- tress that she might be out of the way of the tantalizing merriment opposite, I will not undertake to say. It is sufficient that there was a benefit play at one of the secondary theatres, and that Mrs. Grubbling there for- got her jealousies, and the pangs, so far as she had at all understood them, of Glory McWhirk. So safe as she felt, having bidden her stay, that Glory would be faithful at her post, and " mind " her children well ! Only a stone's throw from those brightly-lighted win- dows of the Pembertons'. Their superfluous radiance pouring out lavishly across the narrow street, searched even through the dim panes behind which Glory sat, resting her tired arms, after tucking away their ordinary- burden 'in his crib, and answering Herbert's weari- some questions, who from his trundle-bed kept asking, ceaselessly, " What are they doing now ? Can't you see, Glory?" " Hush, hush ! " said Glory, breathlessly, as a burst of brilliant melody floated over to her ear. " They're making music now. Don't you hear ? " " No. How can I, with my head in the pillow ? I'm coming there to sit with you, Glory." And the boy scrambled from his bed to the window. " No, no ! you'll ketch cold. Besides, you'd oughter go to sleep. Well, only for a little bit of a minute, then," as Herbert persisted, and climbing upon her lap, FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 43 flattened his face against the window-pane, to look as closely as might be at the show. Glory gathered up her skirt about his ' shoulders and held him for a while, begging him uneasily, over and over, to " be a good boy, and go back to bed." No ; he wouldn't be a good boy, and he wouldn't go back to bed, till the music paused. Then, by dint of promising that if it began again she would open the window a " teenty little crack," so that he might hear it better, she coaxed him to the point of yielding, and tucked him, chilly, yet half unwilling, in the trundle. Back again, to look and listen. And, oh, wonderful and unexpected fortune ! A beneficent hand has drawn up the white linen shade at one of the back parlor win- dows to slide the sash a little from the top. It was Katie, whom her young mistress, standing with her partner at that corner of the room, had called in from the hill to do it. " ITo, no," whispered the young lady, hastily, as her companion moved to render her the service she desired, " let Katie come in. She'll get such a good look down the room at the dancers." There was no abated admira- tion in the young man's eye, as he turned back to her side, and allowed her kindly intention to be fulfilled. Did Katie surmise, in her turn, with the freemasonry of her class, how it was with her humble friend over the way, that she couldn't get let out for the evening, and that she would be sure to be looking and listening from her old post opposite ? However it was, the linen shade was not lowered again, and there between the lace and crimson curtains stood revealed the graceful young figure of Edith Pemberton, in her floating ball robes, with the wreath of morning-glories in her hair. " Oh, my sakes and sorrows ! Ain't she just like a 44 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. princess? Ain't it a splendid time? And I come so near to be in it ! But I ain't ; and I s'pose I shan't ever get a chance again. Maybe Katie'd get me over of a common work-day though, sometime, to help her a bit or so. Wouldn't I be glad to ? " " Oh, for gracious, child ! Don't ever come here again. You'll catch your death. You'll have the croup and whooping-cought, and everything to-morrow." This to Herbert, who had of course tumbled out of bed again at Glory'a first rapturous exclamation. " No, I won't ! " cried the boy, rebelliously ; " I'll stay as long as I like. And I'll tell my ma how you was a wantin' to go away and be the Pembertons' girl. Won't she lamm you when she hears that ? " " You can tell wicked lies if you want to, Master Herbert; but you know I never said such a word, nor ever thought of it. Of course I couldn't if I wanted to ever so bad." " Couldn't live there ? I guess not. Think they'd have a girl like you? What a lookin* you'd be, a- comin' to the front door answerin' the bell ! " " Kow, Master Herbert," implored Glory, magnan- imously ignoring the personal taunt, and intent only on the health and safety of the malicious little scape- grace, who I believe would rather have caught a horrible cold than not, if only Glory might bear the blame, and he be kept in from school and have the monopoly of her t services to " keep him pacified " " do just go back to bed with you, like a good boy, and I'll make a tent over the baby, and open a teenty crack of the windy. The music's beginnin' again." Here the door bell rang suddenly and sharply, and Master Herbert fancying, as did Glory, that it was his mother come back, scrambled into his bed again and FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 45 covered himself up, while the girl ran down to answer the summons. It was Katie Ryan, with cakes and sweetmeats in her hands. " I've jist rin in to fetch ye these. Miss Edith gave J ein me, so ye needn't be feared. I knows ye're sich an honest one. An' it's a tearin' shame, if ever there was, that ye couldn't come over for a bit of diversion. Why don't ye quit this ? " " Oh, hush ! " whispered Glory, with a gesture up the staircase, where she had just left the little pitcher with fearfully long ears. " And thank you kindly, over and over, I'm sure. It's real good o' you to think o* me so oh ! " And Glory couldn't say anything more for a quick little sob that came in her throat, and caught the last word up into a spasm. "Pooh! it's just nothing at all. I'd do something better nor that if I had the chance ; an' I'd adwise ye to get out o' this if ye can. Good-bye. I've set the parlor windy open, an' the shade's up. I knew it would jist be a conwenience." Katie skipped over the street, that was scarcely more than a gutter, and disappeared through the green gate. Glory ran up the back stairs to the top of the house, and hid away the sweet things in her own room to "make a party" with next day. And then she went down and tented over the crib with an old woolen shawl, and set a high-backed rocking-chair to keep the draft from Herbert, and opened the window " a teenty crack," according to promise. In five minutes the slight freshening of the air and the soothing of the music had sent tJie boy to sleep, and watchful Glory cloaeil th 46 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. window and set things in their ordinary arrangement once more. Next morning Herbert made hoarse complaint, and was kept in from school. " What did you let him do, Glory, to catch such a cold ? " asked Mrs. Grubbling, who assumed for granted, whatever was amiss, that Glory must have done, or let be done, or left undone something. " Nothing, mum, only he would get out of bed to hear the music," replied the girl. " Well, you opened the window, you know you did, and Katie Ryan came over and kept the front door open. And you said how you wished you could go over there and do their chores. I told you I'd tell." " It's wicked lies, mum," burst out Glory, indignant. " I never said no such thing." " Do you dare to tell him he lies, right before my face, you good-for-nothing girl ? " shrieked the exasper- ated mother. " Where do you expect to go to ? " " I don't expect to go nowheres, mum ; and I wouldn't say it was lies if he didn't tell what wasn't true." " How should such a thing come into his head if you didn't say it ? Who do you suppose I'd believe first?" " There's many things comes into his head," answered Glory, stoutly and simply, " and I think you'd ought er believe me first, when I never told you a lie in my life, and you did ketch Master Herbert fibbing, jist tho other day, but." Somehow, Glory had grown strangely bold in her own behalf since she had come to feel there was a bit of sympathy somewhere for her in the world. " I know now where he learns it," retorted the mis- tress, with persistent and angry injustice. FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 47 Glory's face blazed up, and she took an involuntary step to the woman's side at the stinging and warrantless accusation. " You don't mean that, mum, and you'd oughter take it back," said she, excited beyond all fear and habit of submission. Mrs. Grubbling raised her hand, passionately, and struck the girl upon the cheek. " I mean that, then, for your impudence ! Don't answer me up again ! " " No, mum," said Glory, in a low, strange tone ; quite white now, except where the vindictive fingers had left their crimson streaks. And she went off out of the room without another word. Over the knife-board she revolved her wrongs, and sharpened at length the keen edge of desperate resolu- tion. " Please, mum," said she, in the old form of address, but with quite a new manner, that, in the little de- pendant of less than fifteen, startled the hard mistress, as she recognized it, " I ain't noways bound to you, am I?" She propounded her question, stopping short in her return toward the china-closet through the sitting-room, and confronting the enemy with both hands full of knives and forks that bristled out before her like a concentrated charge of bayonets. "Bound? What do you mean?" parried Mrs. Grubbling, dimly foreshadowing to herself what it would be if Glory should break loose, and go. " To stay, mum, and you to keep me, till I'm growed up," answered Glory, briefly. " There's no binding about it," replied the mistress. " Of course I wouldn't be held to anything of that sort. 48 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. I shan't keep you any longer than you behave your- self." " Then, if you please, mum, I think I'll go," said Glory. And she burst into a passion of tears, which she wiped first with the back of one hand, and then with the other, the bright steel blades and tines flashing up and down dangerously about her head, like lightnings about a rain cloud. " Humph ! Where ? " asked Mrs. Grumbling, sar- castically. " I don't know, yet," said Glory, the sarcasm drying her tears, as she moved on to the closet and deposited her knives and forks in the tray. " I 'spose I can go to a office." " And where'll you get your meals and your lodgings till you find a place ? " The cat thought she had her paw on the mouse, now, and could play with her as securely and cruelly as she pleased. " If you go away at all," continued Mrs. Grubbling, with what she deemed a finishing stroke of policy, "you go straight off. I'll have n dancing back and forth to offices from here." " Do you mean right off, this minute ? " asked Glory, aghast. " Yes, just that. Pack up and go, or else let me hear no more about it." The next thing in Glory's programme of duty was to lay the table for dinner. But she went out of the room, and slowly off, up stairs. Pretty soon she came down again, with her eyes very swelled and tearful, and her shabby shawl and bonnet on. " I'm going, mum," said she, as one resolved to face calmly whatever might befall. " I didn't mean it to be FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 49 sudden, but it are. And I wouldn't never a gone, if I'd a thought anybody cared for me the leastest bit that ever was. I wouldn't mind bein' worked and put upon, and not havin' any good times; but when people hates me, and goes to say I doesn't tell the truth," here Glory broke down, and the tears poured over her stained cheeks again, and she essayed once more instinctively to dry them, which reminded her that her hands again were full. " It's some goodies from the party, mum," she struggled to say between short breaths and sobs, " that Katie Ryan give me, an' I kept to make a party for the children, with to-day, mum, when the chores was done, and I'll leave 'em for 'em, if you please." Glory laid her coals of fire upon the table as she spokfc. Master Herbert eyed them, as one utterly unconscious of a scorch. " I 'spose I might come back and get my bundle," said Glory, standing still in the hope of one last kindly or relenting word. " Oh, yes, if you get a place," said her mistress, dryly, affecting to treat the whole affair as a childish, though unwonted burst of petulance; and making sure that a few hours would see Glory back, subdued, dis- couraged, penitent, and ready to bear the double task of to-morrow that should make up for the rebellion and lost time of to-day. But Glory, not daring, unbidden, even to kiss the baby, went steadily and sorrowfully out into the street, and drew the door behind her, that shut with a catch- lock, and fastened her out into the wide world. Not stopping to think, she hurried on, up Budd and down Branch Street, and across the green common- path to the apple-stand and Bridget Foye. 4 50 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. " I've 'done it ! I've gone ! And I don't know what to do, nor where to go to ! " " Arrah, poor little rid hin ! So, ye've found yer schissors, have ye, an' let yersel' loose out o' the bag? Well, it's I that is glad, though I wouldn't pit ye up till it," says Bridget Foye, washing her hands in inno- cency. Poor little red hen. She had cut a hole, and jumped out of the bag, to be sure ; but here she was, " all alone by herself " once more, and the foxes Want and Cruelty ravening after her all through tfae great, dreary wood ! This day, at least, passed comfortably enough, how- ever, although with an undertone of sadness, in the sunshine, by Bridget's apple-stand, watching the gay passers-by, and shaping some humble hopes and plans for the future. For dinner, she shared Mrs. Foye's plain bread and cheese, and made a dessert of ah apple and a handful of peanuts. At night Bridget took her home and gave her shelter, and the next day she started her off with a " God-bless-ye and good-luck-till-ye," in the charge of an older girl who lodged in the same build- ing^ and who was also " out after a place." FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. CHAPTER VI. AUNT HENDERSON S GIRL-HUHT. " Black spirits and white, Red spirits and gray ; Mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may." MACBETH. IT was a small, close, dark room, Mrs. Griggs's Intelligence Office, a little counter tand show-case dividing off its farther end, making a sanctum for Mrs. Griggs, who combined a little of the tape-and-button business with her more lucrative occupation, and who sat here in immovable and rheumatic ponderosity, de- pendent for whatever involved locomotion on the rather alarming alacrity of an impish-looking grand-daughter who, just at the moment whereof I write, is tearing in at the street door, and elbowing her way through the throng of applicants for places and servants, quite re- gardless of the expression of horror and astonishment shs has called forth on the face of a severe-looking, elderly lady, who, by her impetuous onset, has been rudely thrust back into the very arms of a fat, unsavory cook with whom she had a minute before been quite un- willingly set to confer by the high-priestess of the place, and who had almost equally relieved and exasperated her, by remarking, as she glanced over her respectable but somewhat unstylish figure and dress, that she 52 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. "guessed it wouldn't be worth while to talk about it, for she had never lived with any but fust-class ladies, and her wages was three-and-a-half." Aunt Henderson grasped Faith's hand as if she felt she had brought her into a danger, and held her close to her side while she paused a moment to observe, with the strange fascination of repulsion, the manifestation of a phase of human life and the working of a voca- tion so utterly arid astoundingly novel to herself. " Well, Melindy," said Mrs. Griggs, salutatorily. " Well, grandma," answered the girl, with a pert air of show-off and consequence, " I found the place, and I found the lady. Ain't I been quick ? " " Yes. What did she say ? " " Said the girl left last Saturday. Ain't had any- body sence. Wants you to send her a first-rate one, right off, straight. Has Care'Zme been here after me?" " No. Did you get the money ? " " She never said a word about it. Guess she forgot the month was out." " Didn't you ask her ? " " Me ? No. I did the arrant, and stood and looked at her, jest as pious ! And when she didn't say nothin'. I come away." " Winny M'Goverin," said Mrs. Griggs, " that place'll suit you. Leastways, it must, for another month. You'd better go right round there." " Where is it ? " asked the fat cook, indifferently, over Miss Henderson's shoulder. " Up in Mount Pleasant Street, Number 53. First- class place, and plenty of privileges. Margaret McKay," she continued, to another, who stood with a waiting expression beside the counter, "you're too FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 53 hard to please. Here's one more place,"- handing her a card with address, " and if you don't take that, I won't do nothing more for you, if you air Scotch and a Protestant ! Mary McGinnis, it's no use your talking to that lady from the country. She can't spare you to come down but twice or so a year." " Lord ! " ejaculated Mary McGinnis, " I wouldn't live a whole year with no lady that ever was, let alone the country ! " " Come out, Faith ! " said Miss Henderson, in a deep, ineffable tone of disgust, drawing her niece to the door, just in time to escape a second charge of Miss Melindy's, who was dashing in that direction again, to " look down street after Care'fo'ne." " If that's a genteel West End Intelligence Office," cried Aunt Faith, as she touched the sidewalk, " let's go down town and try some of the common ones." A large hall, where the candidates were ranged on settees under order and restraint, and the superintend- ent, or directress, occupied a desk placed upon a plat- form near the entrance, was the next scene whereon Miss Henderson and Faith Gartney entered. Things looked clean and respectable. System obtained here. Aunt Faith felt encouraged. But she made no haste to utter her business. Tall, self-possessed, and dignified, she stood a few paces inside the door, and looked down the apartment, surveying coolly the faces there, and analyzing, by a shrewd mental process, their indications. Her niece had stopped a moment on the landing outside to fasten her boot-lace. Miss Henderson did not wear hoops. Also, the streets being sloppy, she had tucked up her plain, gray merino dress over a quilted black alpaca petticoat. Her boots were splashed, and her black silk bonnet was 54 FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. covered with a large gray barege veil, tied d