Mag and Margaret E-Book

Isabella Alden

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The subject of all these calls that needed instant attention was a girl of thirteen, Mag Jessup, little maid of all work in the boardinghouse of Mrs. Perkins. There was a time in her life, when she was called Margaret. I think her mother used that name when she first looked at her. Once, when she was a little bit of a girl, and went to a free kindergarten for a few weeks, the sweet-faced teacher called her “Maggie.” But that was ever so long ago; centuries ago the thirteen-year-old girl thought. For years and years she had been called “Mag.” So long indeed that she had almost forgotten the other names. Mag Jessup was an orphan.

Leseprobe

Copyright

First published in 1901

Copyright © 2022 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

“MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MAG”

“Tell Mag to run with this letter to the post-box, right away.”

“Mag, I want the sitting-room dusted and put in order immediately; it is nearly time for Mr. Vance to call.”

“Mag, just take a stitch in this glove for me in about a second; that is all the time I have to spare.”

“I want Mag to come and clear out my closet-shelf so I can put those boxes in as soon as possible.”

“Mrs. Perkins, can Mag run to the corner for some lemons right away? Norah is waiting for them.”

The subject of all these calls that needed instant attention was a girl of thirteen, Mag Jessup, little maid of all work in the boardinghouse of Mrs. Perkins. There was a time in her life when she was called Margaret. I think her mother used that name when she first looked at her. Once, when she was a little bit of a girl, and went to a free kindergarten for a few weeks, the sweet-faced teacher called her “Maggie.” But that was ever so long ago; centuries ago the thirteen-year-old girl thought. For years and years she had been called “Mag.” So long indeed that she had almost forgotten the other names. Mag Jessup was an orphan. Her mother had died when she was a wee girl, too young to remember her. The father had been killed when she was five years old, and the family had scattered. Mag’s sister Susan, only sixteen months younger than herself, had been adopted by a family whom Mag did not know even by name, and taken “away off.” Mag herself was taken charge of by an aunt, who had lived only two or three years after that time, and then there had come a new aunt, who had many children of her own to look after, and not much money to do it with, and when the uncle died, what more natural than that Mag, who was then ten years old, should have to earn her own living? It was about that time that Mrs. Perkins was looking for a little girl to answer her door-bell, and run of errands, and it was said by the aunt—who was really not an aunt at all—that here was just the place for Mag. So to Mrs. Perkins she went. In the spring, when the Perkins family went to the country, taking their boarding-house with them—or at least keeping boarders there—Mag went along to pick berries, and shell peas, and do a hundred other things for her board and clothes. When she returned to the city, she found that the aunt, with her family, had moved away. It came to pass, then, that the only home Mag Jessup had, was in Mrs. Perkins’s boarding-house. As for her duties, one can get some idea of them by reading over again the paragraphs with which this story began. She was to answer the doorbell, rub the silver, wash the knives and forks, set the tables, assist in waiting on one of them, keep the halls in order, dust and arrange the sitting-room, help the chambermaid with the beds and rooms, and be at the call of every boarder in the house to run of errands, sew on buttons, mend rips, and do anything else in the world that might be wanted. Cannot you imagine that Mag lived a very busy and useful life?

As for what she knew, she could read and write. She could not quite remember how she learned. She knew a little of the multiplication table, and something about addition. She had learned a little geography during the one winter in which she went to the public school. The second winter, when she was nearly ten, there had been scarlet fever in, or about, her aunt’s home during the entire season, and she had not been allowed to go to school. Since she had begun to earn her own living, of course school was out of the question. There had been some talk of sending her during the winter months, and sometimes Mrs. Perkins looked at her in a troubled sort of way and said: “Just as soon as we get all the extras done, and are settled down for the winter, that child shall go to school.” But never yet had the “extras” been all done. Mag herself had given up hope that they ever would be and was earning her board and clothes as faithfully as she knew how. Her clothes were not many and did not cost a great deal. She could not remember ever to have had any garment bought new for her in all her long life. Of course, it had been out of the question in her aunt’s family, where there were many children to think about; and at Mrs. Perkins’s there was Miss Kate, who was two years older than herself, and a good deal larger, and who grew rapidly and attended a good school; of course, she must have new clothes, and, of course, her old ones would make over for Mag, or, for that matter, do without making over. What did it matter if they were a little too long in the skirts and sleeves, and a trifle loose about the waist? She would soon grow to them. So Mag was always trying to grow to clothes somewhat too large for her, and never accomplishing it. For the rest, she was a brown haired, brown-eyed girl, too thin to look pretty, and with “eyes too large for her face,” so the few said who noticed her at all.

Do not imagine that Mag Jessup was an object of pity. Her clothes were always decently clean and whole; Mrs. Perkins wanted no “shabby-looking folks” about her; they were comfortable, too, so far as warmth was concerned. She had also wholesome food to eat, and enough of it; Mrs. Perkins starved nobody. To be sure, she locked away the cake and the sweetmeats—at least, the choice ones—before it was time for Mag to eat; but she did that for the other servants as well as for Mag. “One couldn’t expect a woman who made her living by keeping boarders, to feed her servants on the same that she did people who paid eight and ten and twelve dollars a week.” Besides, everybody knows that cake and sweetmeats are not the best food for a pale-faced, growing’ girl. It is true that it was often said to Mag about her supper-time, “Here, child, take a bite and then run to the corner with this note,” or “to the grocery with this order,” or “to the drug store with this prescription; you can eat as you run.” Nevertheless, Mag rarely went hungry, and was not often cold, except when she went to bed at night and got up in the morning. There was no means of warming the little fifth-story hall closet that held her cot; but there were clothes enough on her bed, when she was fairly under them, to stop the shivers after a while; and so, in this, as in all other respects, Mag Jessup was a great deal better off than hundreds and thousands of children in the streets of great cities.

Nobody was unkind to her or meant to be. It is true they kept her busy from Monday morning until Monday morning again. They sent her toiling up three long flights of stairs after a pin, or a newspaper, as carelessly as they would have sent a monkey or a kitten. Nobody ever seemed to remember that she might be tired, or sleepy, or busy about something important. What else could be expected? Was she not there to earn her living by doing errands, and odds and ends? I had almost said that nobody scolded her; but that would have been a mistake; Norah, the cook, scolded everybody that she dared. It seemed to be a part of her work. One would almost have supposed that her excellent pies, and delicious puddings, and delicate cake had to have sharp, cutting words for flavoring, so regularly were they used in the making. And who so convenient for scolding as Mag, whose duty it was, to be on hand when she summoned her, and to do her bidding?

Then there was Mrs. Perkins, with a large family on her hands, and some of them very “trying” people, and a hundred burdens of which others knew nothing, what more natural than that she should sometimes grow “nervous” and scold right and left? She could not scold Norah, for she would have “given warning,” and the head waiter was Norah’s cousin, and the chambermaid her friend; of course, it would not do to blame them, whatever went wrong; it was really a necessity to vent her nerves on Mag. It is also undeniable that Miss Annie Perkins was sometimes in ill humor, and Miss Kate had many school irritations, and both of them had a habit of calling Mag a “lazy little thing!” or a “horrid poke!” or a “careless dunce!” whenever anything went wrong. But, despite these, and a hundred other drawbacks, Mag Jessup had much to be thankful for. Mrs. Perkins often told her so. Many were the children who went hungry to bed; who, in fact, had no beds to go to. They had drunken fathers and cruel mothers, who knocked them down, and kicked them, and turned them out in the cold; she should think of them and be grateful.

Mag was grateful, in a way; and patient and painstaking; and always in doubt as to whether or not she earned enough to pay for her board and clothes, and whether, as she grew older and would have to eat more, Mrs. Perkins could possibly afford to keep her.

It was drawing near Christmas time. The boarders at Mrs. Perkins’s house talked incessantly, when they met, about the handkerchief-cases, and photograph-frames, and pin trays, and perfume-bags, and what not, that they were making or buying for Christmas gifts. Mag had to leave her knives, or her duster, twenty times in a day to run to the fancy counter of the great cheap store, to match “floss,” or get a spool of pink silk, or another square of canvas. From morning until night she heard nothing but snatches of Christmas talk. The kitchen was full of it. Norah was “doing” a wonderful bit of crazy work that was to decorate her cousin’s best-room sofa, and the chambermaid told her that she had been saving up money for three months to buy an elegant present for her mother. Mag listened to it all in respectful silence. She had no money to save up, and no mother to save it for, and she never had had a Christmas present in her life. Thirteen years old, and never a Christmas gift! You can scarcely believe that, but it is true. She did not go to Sunday school; the Perkins boarders liked their Sunday dinner at just about the hour for Sunday-school, and Mag could not be spared. She had gone when she was younger, a few Sundays, but had always, either on account of clothes, or illness, or carelessness, dropped out so long before Christmas-time that none of the gifts had sought her out. She wondered how it would seem to wake up in the morning and find a gift under her pillow, or on the stool beside her cot. She could not think how it would seem, but she laughed aloud over the idea.

“Fiddlesticks!” said Mr. Frederick Ainsworth, looking at the open package in his lap in great disdain, “it isn’t in the least what I thought it was, from the advertisement; not so large nor so nicely bound; it is nothing but paper covers. That won’t do for Margaret. It is babyish, besides. I might have known that from the title: ‘Little Pillows!’ Whatever possessed me to tell Ned to get it for me? How came I to forget Margaret, I wonder, when I was buying the other things? This won’t do, anyhow. I must skip out this very evening and get something more suited to Miss Margaret. She would toss her yellow curls in disdain over a gift like this. I wonder what I will do with the thing?”

“Mr. Frederick,” said a quiet little voice at his elbow. “Here is a note I was to give you as soon as you came in.”

“All right, Mag, pass it over.” As he drew the neat little note from the envelope he caught a glimpse of Mag’s large brown eyes and grave face and said to himself: “What a serious faced little mouse that is. I wonder if she ever laughs? She looks as though she did not know that Christmas was only three days off. Halloo! Why shouldn’t I give the ‘Little Pillows’ to her? She wouldn’t mind the paper cover. That’s the very thing I’ll do. Just so, my respected uncle; I shall be happy to eat my Christmas dinner with you, since I can’t eat it at home. Seems to me your invitation is awfully late, but never mind; better late than never. Now I must skip out and get Margaret something fine, certainly.”

Frederick Ainsworth, or “Ainsworth,” as the boys in school called him, or “Mr. Frederick,” as Mag had been instructed to say, was one of Mrs. Perkins’s boarders for the season. His father and mother lived in town, but had gone to Europe for a year, in search of health for the father; so the town house was closed, his sister was away at boarding-school, and he, being in his last year in High School, had been sent to Mrs. Perkins’s as the most convenient boarding-house. A merry, happy-hearted young fellow of fifteen was Frederick Ainsworth. A boy who worked hard in school and on the ball ground or, in fact, wherever else he was. A clean, wholesome, genial boy; who had hosts of friends, and missed his mother so much that he covered his face with the bedclothes every night, to hide the tears that would start at the thought of her; but he told himself cheerily every morning that father would be sure to get better fast, now that he was away from that horrid, confining business, and had mother with him all day long. Next year this time they would all be at home again, and as jolly as ever. Frederick had only been a member of Mrs. Perkins’s family since the fall term opened and knew very little of Mag save that she was always careful to dust his room neatly and would run to the post-box with a letter quicker than he could do it himself. No thought of making her a present had entered his mind until he wondered what to do with the book called “Little Pillows” that he had made a mistake in getting for his pretty cousin, Margaret.

This was the way it came to pass that Mag Jessup had a Christmas present. If she lives to be a hundred, she will never forget the excitement of that bitterly cold Christmas morning in which she sat up suddenly, rubbed her eyes to make sure that she was awake, then sprang out of bed, her face aglow with more than the cold air, and seized upon a package that lay on her stool! A package done up neatly in white paper, tied with a pink cord, and saying on its outside:

“Merry Christmas to Mag. From F. F. A.” A book! Actually, a whole clean book! Both covers on it, and a picture of green leaves and red berries on one side. And it was for her! She had a Christmas gift!

I am afraid you will almost want to cry when you hear it, but this was Mag Jessup’s first book. Not even a First Reader of her very own had she ever possessed. Was there ever anything anywhere in the world so dear and precious? She hugged it, she kissed it, she wanted to cry over it; but sharply chid back the tears lest they should fall on the precious cover.

“Mag!” called a firm voice at the foot of the second flight of stairs. “Hurry up! there are twenty errands waiting to be done. You can’t sleep all day if it is Christmas. Merry Christmas, Mr. Jones.” It was the same voice in a different key; the chambermaid’s voice, wishing “Mr. Jones,” the porter, a merry Christmas. Ah! somebody had wished her the same. “Merry Christmas to Mag.” Those were the very words. No Christmas chimes would ever sound sweeter. She had not the slightest idea who “F. F. A.” was. By and by, when she had time to think, she would try the names of all the boarders and see if they would fit. Now she must hurry into her clothes and run to do those twenty errands.

Chapter 2

ETHEL

By eleven o’clock the “twenty errands” and a hundred others were done, and Mag was ready for her Christmas. She had a delightful plan for the day. She had heard, by accident, that every boarder was going out to dinner. Surely this would make a great difference with the work; only Mrs. Perkins and her daughters at dinner. By three o’clock at the latest, possibly, if she was very smart, before that time, she could get away, and go down to the lovely lake where the skaters went and watch them fly over the ice in the way she had heard about. Mag had never seen anybody skate; her life had been spent in a city. But this lovely artificial lake, where fine ladies went, could not be more than two miles from Mrs. Perkins’s house, and she was sure she could walk that distance for

the sake of seeing the beautiful sight. Why, they actually built a bonfire on the-shore and skated by the light of it! and had hot coffee, and chocolate, and candies, for the skaters to eat. It must be such fun! Mag’s heart had been set on her plan for weeks. Alas for her! Mrs. Perkins had other plans.

“Have you finished the upstairs work, Mag, and dusted the parlors? Very well, then, you are through with work; I am going to give you a holiday. Not many girls have almost the whole of Christmas Day to amuse themselves in. My daughters and I are going to our old neighbor’s on Claremont street to dinner; and, as the girls are going to the lake, afterwards, to skate, we shall not be at home until evening. None of the boarders will be back to tea. I have given Norah and the others the rest of the day; they are going out; so you will have the whole house to yourself; see how I trust you! And I’m not going to give you a bit of work, because it is Christmas. All you will have to do is to sit in the nice warm hall and answer the door bell; and toward night open the furnace dampers so that the house will be warm, and have the tea kettle boiled, so you can make us a cup of tea when we get home. Your dinner, Norah has fixed all ready for you in the closet; a nice Christmas dinner. There is some cold chicken, and biscuits, and a dish of cranberry sauce, and a piece of mince-pie. Don’t you wish the poor little street girls could have so good a Christmas dinner as that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Mag, but her face was grave, and her voice low and almost trembling. Could it be that Mag was ungrateful enough to be almost ready to cry? Oh, you don’t know how her heart ached, and how long that Christmas Day suddenly seemed to her to grow. Alone in that great big house all day long; and to sit in the hall, which was always dark, and do nothing from morning until night! Not even the thought of the mince-pie and cranberry sauce could make such a prospect pleasant. She would rather go without a mouthful of dinner, if she could but put on her coat and hood and skip away to see the skaters! But there would be no getting away.

“Now mind,” Mrs. Perkins said, “that you don’t leave the house for a single minute; there is a message of very great importance that I expect to have brought today; and, in any case, I don’t care about having the house left alone; it isn’t safe. It isn’t every little girl I would trust; but I know you are to be depended upon.”

This was a crumb of comfort; it had a pleasant sound to Mag. Mrs. Perkins was such a busy woman that she did not often take time to say merely pleasant words.

“Mag looks very sober,” Kate Perkins said, as they were going down the steps a few minutes afterwards. “It is lonesome work, I suppose, to stay there all day with nothing to do. I should die of stupidity.”

“So should I,” said her older sister.

“Mother, I think it would have been kinder to her to have given her some sewing to do, or work of some sort. It is awfully dull business to sit and fold one’s hands and wait for the door-bell to ring.”

“I had nothing ready for her,” said Mrs. Perkins. She stopped, however, on the lower step and seemed to be considering something. “I might let her sit in the back parlor,” she said, doubtfully, “she doesn’t meddle with things, at least that I have ever discovered; and there isn’t anything there that she could hurt.”

“I think you might let her sit in the front parlor,” said Kate, “and watch the sleighs go by; that would be some comfort.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Perkins, “I will.”

She stepped back and rang the bell. Mag answered it at once, surprised to have a caller so soon. She was hurriedly brushing away the trace of a tear.

Mrs. Perkins noticed-it and was glad she had come back.

“You may sit in the front parlor today, if you want to,” she said, kindly. “There are plenty of people passing to look at. You may throw open the south window blinds, and that will give you a good view. Don’t sit in the yellow covered chair, it soils so easily; but you may draw the big willow rocker to the window and have a nice time in it.”

Mag’s face brightened. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said, speaking almost cheerfully, and Mrs. Perkins went away with a lighter heart.

To sit in the front parlor in one of the great rockers was a rare experience to Mag. Once, when she had been dusting that room, she had dropped for a single frightened minute into one of the big, upholstered chairs, to see how it would feel; and that very minute Mrs. Perkins had opened the door and asked her sharply if she expected to earn her board and clothes by-sitting in easy-chairs. Since that time Mag had not tried them; she had always the feeling that Mrs. Perkins stood with her hand on the door, and at any second might appear to chide her. What a thing it would be to sit in the parlor for almost a whole day! Not to sit there guiltily, feeling that she was doing something wrong, but to be there by permission.

I do not think Mrs. Perkins had the least idea how much difference this small thing would make to her little maid.

Mag was really so cheery that she broke into a little fragment of song as she climbed the stairs to her own room. She was going after her Christmas present. It lay, wrapped in a bit of clean paper, carefully tucked under the old quilt that covered her cot. She had meant to take her chances at peeping through it at different times during this Christmas Day. She could not look long at a time, because the room was so bitterly cold; but now she remembered gleefully that she had a lovely parlor all to herself, and could sit in an easy-chair, like any lady, and rock and read. How delightful! Wasn’t it almost better than to go even to the lake and watch the skaters?

She gathered the treasure close to her heart and ran down three flights of stairs, still humming the snatch of a song that she had caught from Miss Kate. How beautiful the parlor looked! Mag, who had never been in any other, thought there could not be a finer one. In reality, it was simply a large boarding-house parlor, with the usual number of upholstered chairs, a sofa, and two or three tables. To Mag it seemed magnificent. The carpet, a good respectable body brussels, she thought the loveliest thing that feet ever trod.

Drawing the large willow rocker to the south window, she threw open the blinds, and nestled into the chair, with a little chuckle of satisfaction. It was the nicest Christmas Day she had ever known. How splendid it was in Mrs. Perkins to let her sit in this elegant parlor.

Then she opened her book. “Little Pillows.” What a queer name. Could it be about pillows? Mag had a very little one on which to rest her head at night; she could not imagine anything very interesting to be said about it; still, there must be something, else a whole book of this kind would never have been written. Behold! it was a story. How delightfully it began: “A little girl was away from home on a week’s visit.” That was the first sentence. For a little girl to have a home of her own was to Mag the most blessed of ideas. She wondered how the little girl could bear to leave it, even to make a visit. And she went to see an auntie, besides! Mag’s experience with aunties had not led her to think this a desirable thing, but undoubtedly there was a difference in amities; this one tucked the little girl into bed and kissed her good night! And then she said: “Now I will give you a little pillow.” How funny! After that Mag became absorbed. She read slowly through the description of these peculiar pillows; after completing the chapter, she began it again, and read more slowly still; stopping at the end of every sentence to take in the wonder of it.

It appeared that the pillows were not made of feathers, nor yet of excelsior like hers—they were made of words! A little word-pillow to be read every night at bed-time. To be read before she “knelt down to say her prayers!”

This sentence required long thinking. Mag said no prayers. Once, when she was a very little girl, she had been taught a prayer. It began with:

“Now I lay me down to sleep.”

But she had not said it in ever so long; she was always so tired at night; and it was generally very cold, or else very warm, and saying over those words had never seemed to her to be interesting, so she had dropped them. But she might commence again; she sat long, trying to recall the exact words, and felt sure, at last, that she had them all. But she must wait until night to read her first “pillow.” That seemed hard to Mag. She would rather have read it then, sitting so cozily in her easy-chair. But such a habit had she of doing exactly as she was told —what a grand habit that is, by the way—that it did not so much as occur to her to do differently now; she would wait until night. She read the story over again, with which the book began; read it until she felt as though she knew the little Ethel for whom the book was written, and the wonderful “auntie” who had written it.

“I wish I did know her,” she said, aloud. “I wish she was my friend and would come to visit me. I wonder where she lives? I mean to play that she has come to spend the day with me. ‘How do you do, Ethel? You can’t think how glad I am to see you. Take a seat in the yellow chair.’ It can’t be wrong to have a play-girl sit in the yellow chair.” This was Mag’s afterthought. She considered it carefully and decided that it could do no harm.

The idea of having a friend visit her took such possession of this lonely little girl’s heart that she kept it with her all day. Persistently she talked to “Ethel.” When she went downstairs to eat her Christmas dinner, Ethel went along, and had a generous share of the chicken and biscuit and the whole of the mince pie. She came back with her to the parlor and was settled again in the yellow chair. When any unusually gay sleigh load passed the window Mag would exclaim: “O Ethel! did you see those perfectly sweet scarlet robes? Weren’t they just lovely?” About four o’clock the bell rang; Mag hastened to answer it. Behold, it was her one acquaintance, Janie Jones, whose father kept the fruit stand where Mag often went with orders. Janie and she had nodded and smiled at each other, for several months, and had had bits of talk together, occasionally. Not often, for Janie went to school, and was only occasionally at her father’s stand.

“O Mag!” she said, “I’m so glad you are here. Father is going to take me a sleighride out to the lake; he has the delivery sleigh, and he said I might have you go along. Hurry real fast, for father has got to be back in an hour.”

“Oh my!” said Mag. And, “Oh dear! I can’t. I’m all alone, and I mustn’t leave the house.”

“Lock it up,” said Janie. “We’ll be back in an hour.”

But Mag resolutely shook her head; she had not even a thought of doing such a thing. Had not Mrs. Perkins said she could trust her? Janie hurried away, and Mag went back to her rocking-chair with a sober face. If Ethel had not been there, she would have cried outright; no such lovely chance had ever before come to her.

The next bell was the basement one; Norah was the first to reach home. Mag’s long, lonely day was over; but she went back to the parlor; she had been in the midst of an interesting conversation with Ethel. Presently Norah toiled up the stairs, carrying certain Christmas gifts that had come to her, to her own room. The front stairs were much easier to climb than the back ones; and since there was no one in the house, Norah chose them. Opposite the parlor door she stopped in astonishment Mag’s voice could be distinctly heard in eager conversation with somebody.

“Well, I never!” said Norah. “I wonder what the missus will say to that.” When she came downstairs she boldly threw open the parlor door. There sat Mag alone.

“Well, young lady,” she said, “has your company gone?”

“Yes,” said Mag, with a foolish little laugh, “she has gone; she sat in that chair, Norah. She has been here all day.”

At that moment the basement bell rang, and Norah vanished. An hour later she thought of Mag’s visitor. Mrs. Perkins had just arrived and was giving directions.

“Did you give Mag leave to sit in the parlor, ma’am, and have company?”

“Have company!” repeated Mrs. Perkins, aghast. “What company?”

“I don’t know, ma’am; some girl who has been here all day, she says; sitting in the yellow chair. I heard them talking like everything; but I had my hands full, and when I emptied them and came back the girl was gone.” Said Mrs. Perkins: “Well of all things in this world! I did not think she knew a girl in this city. Whom can one trust?” Then she summoned Mag, and said this bewildering sentence:

“Mag, you may go upstairs to your room, and go to bed. Don’t let me see or hear of you tonight. You will have no supper; if I had time to attend to you, I would do it this minute; but my hands are too full. I am more ashamed and disappointed in you than I can tell. After I had been so kind to you, too! Go out of my sight.”

Chapter 3

“A GIRL OUT OF A BOOK”

Such a poor little, bewildered, discouraged girl as it was who toiled slowly up three flights of stairs to her cold room! Supperless, too, when, in spite of her elegant cold dinner and her piece of pie, she felt very hungry. She had looked forward to that supper. It being Christmas night, perhaps she would be given a piece of cake, with raisins in. They had such cake sometimes for luncheon, and there was almost never any of it left for her; but now all the boarders were gone, and she might get a piece. This thought had been much in her mind for an hour; now her hopes were blasted. But the strangest and saddest part of it was that she could not understand the reason for such treatment. Certainly she had been faithful to her trust all day. What if she had left the house to care for itself, and gone sleigh-riding with Janie? She might as well have done it; nothing worse than this could have happened to her if she had. Nevertheless, down in the bottom of Mag’s heart was a warm little feeling of joy that she had done no such thing. Whatever Mrs. Perkins thought about her, her conscience told her she had done well that day; and one cannot be entirely miserable whose conscience has no prick.

Cold as it was, Mag, as soon as she had slipped off her clothes, wrapped the little old shawl about her which served as part of her bed-clothing, and sat down by her speck of a lamp to read “Little Pillows.” The very first sentence held her; she felt that she needed it.

“‘Come unto me.’ What kind, sweet words for your pillow tonight! Jesus says them to you.” Could that possibly be true? Why should Jesus think of her? How did he know about her? But then there came a memory of a Bible verse she had once learned: “Thou God seest me.” The teacher for that day had assured her that God could see her all the time; in the night and the darkness as well as in the daytime. There was another verse, repeated during that same lesson: “The eyes of the Lord are in every place.” They frightened her a little, those Bible verses; she had tried to forget them and never quite could. Failing in that, she had tried in her humble, blundering way to act as well as she could, in the hope that God would not notice her much if she did nothing very wrong. If Mrs. Perkins had but known it, this was really what had kept her little maid so faithful that, up to the present day, the mistress had believed that she could trust her.

But Jesus was the Son of God, and the one in whose name all prayer was offered; Mag knew that much; and, if he had actually called her, she ought to come to him. People should run the minute they are called. Mrs. Perkins had taught her that. How could she do it? And how could she be sure that the words were meant for her?

As if in answer to this question, came the very next sentence: “How am I to know?”

Well, they are for every one that is weary and heavy laden. Do you not know what it is to be weary sometimes? Perhaps you know what it is to feel almost tired of trying to be good.” Behold, here was Mag’s very thought! Had she not told herself, while coming up the stairs, that she almost wished she had gone with Janie? How wonderful! It must be true that God saw her all the time and heard her thoughts. She read on, breathlessly, forgetting that she was cold. Read through the entire portion for the evening; read some of the words over two or three times, especially these:

“Suppose your mother and you were in a dark room together and she said: ‘Come to me!’ You would not stop to say: ‘I would come if I could see you.’ You would say: ‘I am coming, mother.’ And you would feel your way across the room to her side. Jesus calls you now, this very night. He is here, in this very room. Will you not say, ‘I am coming, Lord Jesus,’ and ask him to stretch out his hand and help you to come?”

When Mag had read these words for the third time the tears were rolling down her cheeks. She felt such a sense of loneliness and longing as I suppose few girls of her age would feel, unless their lives were as lonely as hers had been. She did not fully understand the thought, but certainly it seemed to mean that Jesus wanted her, loved her, waited for her. Down dropped the book from her cold little fingers, her hands were clasped and she said aloud: “l am coming, Lord Jesus; stretch out your hand and help me to come.”

After a few minutes she dropped on her knees and said the same words again. Did Jesus hear her? Did he stretch out his hand? Do you suppose one ever called to him in earnest and waited for his answer that he did not hear? “While they are yet speaking, I will hear.” God said that long ago of those who called, and God does not change. He is always the same. Never mind whether or not Mag understood it. She understood that she was strangely comforted. She did not seem to be lonely now, or even cold. She crept into bed and drew the clothes about her, and hugged her little book to her heart, and kissed it once, twice, three times. After a minute she said aloud: