Chapter XIII

The minister was very weary when he went up to his new room that night, and he put down his satchel and looked around him hoping the bed would be more inviting than when last he saw it, though he had grown accustomed to sleeping soundly on any bed no matter how hard or uneven. He drew a long sigh of relief. It looked clean anyway. He turned down the covering and smoothed the sheets. They had no appearance of having been slept in before. He drew another sigh. That was one fear off his mind. He noticed next the table with its pretty cover. He was not accustomed to fancy work. He did not know whether this was done by hand or machinery. He only knew that it was a touch of beauty in his dreary room and he felt gladdened by it. He went over to the table and awkwardly felt of the material, passed his hand over the embroidery and smiled. He said to himself he would write to his mother about it and she would be pleased. Then he knelt down beside the table and bowed his head in prayer upon it asking that he might receive and give a blessing in that house where he had come to take up his abode, and that if possible, it might be such a place that he would feel it was right and best that he should remain for a time.

About that same time Harry Knowles stood before the bureau in his room and looked at his mother’s picture. His face was grave and sad. He looked into the pictured eyes with a questioning longing as if he would have her with him again that he might ask her advice. He looked into her face till the tears started in his own eyes. He let them drop unheeded on the bureau and on the little velvet frame. She seemed to him to be looking into his life, and asking him what he had done with his time since she left him. At last he turned away his head and said aloud, “Well, I’m glad I didn’t go to-night anyway. I s’pose the boys’ll give me no end of chaff about backing out, but I’ve proved to myself that I can stay at home _once_ when I say so. I wish mother _was_ here. I’d tell her all about it, I believe, and promise her to start over again. I wonder if ’twould be any use! If a fellow only had some one to help him!” and he sighed and went to bed.

It is not quite certain what time Molly Poppleton arose the next morning. Celia told her if she had only gotten up a very little earlier, she might have met herself going to bed. The range unused to such treatment brightened up early too, and was soon baking and boiling away to please the most fastidious cook. The oatmeal had been cooking slowly all night, and was getting ready to be a delicious porridge, such as is found in its perfection only in the land of Scotland. Molly had coaxed the milk by all the arts she knew, till it actually gave forth a thin yellow cream for the oatmeal. True, she scoffed at it and said it wasn’t as rich as skim milk in Cloverdale, but then the boarders were not used to Cloverdale milk, and they called this cream. She picked and shredded the codfish to a degree of fineness that would have made the departed Maggie stand in amaze at such a waste of labor, and then with all the skill of long experience, she mixed just the right proportion of potatoes for the most delectable codfish balls, when they should be browned to a crisp, that ever any one tasted.

“Codfish balls are good, and anybody that doesn’t like ’em when they are made just right doesn’t know, that’s all. Besides one can’t have beefsteak every day and there’s plenty else to eat.” So said Molly.

Then she tested the buckwheat cakes to be sure there was exactly the right amount of soda and enough milk to make them brown on both sides, and set the coffee where it would get its finishing-off, and rang the bell. Just one minute ahead of time that bell rang. Molly Poppleton did love to get ahead of time, even if it was but one minute.

“I say,” said Harry Knowles, holding a golden-brown fish-ball up on his fork and admiring it, “if that is a fish-ball, then I never saw one before. It is a libel on that pretty thing to call it by that name, or else all the ones I ever tried to eat were very poor imitations.” Molly, coming in just then with a generous supply of hot buckwheats heard the remark, and her soul swelled with joy and pride, and thereafter Harry Knowles was her favorite of all the boarders unless it was the minister who grew into her good graces by another way not long after. He had come in just a moment before, and was enjoying his dish of oatmeal and wondering what made the difference between it and all the other oatmeal he had tried to eat in the weeks since he came to Philadelphia to live. Was it possible that he had at last found a place where things were really good to eat, or was he getting a good appetite from working so hard? He resolved, at any rate, to ask the cook, sometime when he was well enough acquainted, if he might take a dish of this to the old Scotch woman who was lying sick in an attic and longing for her dear home across the seas.

* * * * *

That breakfast was a pleasant surprise to more than one of the boarders. The brakeman, coming in a little late from his all-night run, having taken his dinner the night before at the other end of his line, and therefore not being prepared for changes except the mere fact that Mrs. Morris had gone away, and some one else was to supply her place for a while, was dumbfounded. He drew his chair up to the table with his usual familiar assurance, and then looked around in almost embarrassment a moment. He was not quite sure what made him feel so. Was it the pleasant-faced, white-haired woman at the head of the table, who smiled a good-morning to him in a tone which was cordial and yet had a note in it that made him feel she was from another world than his own? Or was it the few flowers in the tiny vase in the centre of the table? Or? But he was unable to detail the rest of the changes, they seemed to him so subtle. He turned his attention to the breakfast which certainly was good. Maggie had improved, evidently.

In short, those boarders went to their day’s work well fed and comfortable for the first time in many weeks, and were therefore better workers, and better human beings in every way, because they were not all day troubled by the demands and complaints of nature in consequence of what they had eaten, or what they had not eaten.

Just as Celia was going out of the door, Miss Hannah, who had followed her, put her hand on her arm and drew her into the parlor for a moment.

“Celia, dear,” she said, “we must have a talk to-night as soon after dinner as possible, and find out how this house is to be run and decide some questions. You know we cannot go ahead blindly and get into debt as Mrs. Morris did.”

“I’ll risk you, auntie dear,” Celia said, as she kissed her behind the red chenille curtain. “But we’ll have our talk, and I’ll get home just as early as I can to help, if you need me. Then after dinner we’ll have a cozy time and do a lot of figuring. I’ve done some already. Good-bye. Don’t try to reform everything to-day, leave just a little for to-morrow. Do you want me to stop at some employment office and get another servant?”

“No, not yet, dear. There’s too much to be done before we introduce any new elements, and besides we don’t know yet whether we can afford another servant. We mustn’t run behind, you know.”

Then they parted with a smile of perfect understanding, and aunt Hannah went to her new duties with enthusiasm. There were a few things she meant to have radically different in some of her guests’ sleeping rooms before that day drew to a close, and there was much planning and marketing to do. Molly Poppleton was in her element in the kitchen. Miss Hannah could hear her voice singing above the clatter of pots and pans,

“What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile;—”

Molly was cleaning out the departed Maggie’s kettle closet under the back stairs, and stopped occasionally in her singing to express her mind as to some dirty corner and then went on—

“In vain with lavish kindness
The gifts of God are strewn;
The heathen in his blindness,
Bows down to wood and stone!”

Aunt Hannah smiled as she went upstairs. She knew that the good-hearted Molly was mingling the theme of her song with her own thoughts about the dirty house and the need of the boarders and that she would work it all out by and by.

“Shall we whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,—
Shall we to men benighted,
The lamp of life deny?”

went on the singer, and Miss Hannah knew the hard working singer’s thought was that she would make a cheerful, clean house and good food, and give the rest of them a chance to try and help save the poor city heathen boarders, for Molly Poppleton looked upon all native city boarders as heathen in the truest sense of the word, and she had taken with joy the few words Miss Hannah had spoken to her about the mission they were going to try to start, the mission of making one bright little clean home spot for a few people who had hitherto been in discomfort.

The dining-room windows were washed that morning, and several other windows, and Molly Poppleton sang a great many of Isaac Watts’ hymns through before she prepared lunch for herself and Miss Hannah. She did not remember when she had been so happy. Neither, indeed, did Miss Hannah.

It had been the one great ambition of Hannah Grant’s life, since she had lost the love of her youth, and been made to see that hers was not to go on the great mission of salvation to the heathen of other nations, that she should have some spot which she could call her own, where she might exercise her powers of helping people. And now it seemed as though she was to have opportunity. She thanked her heavenly Father every hour, even for the dirt and desolation of the place, because he had given to her the sweet privilege of brightening a place that had hitherto been dark.

It was after dinner. The minister was in his room writing to his mother, before he went out to a meeting at the mission. Down in the parlor the brakeman sat at the organ accompanying himself as he sang in stentorian voice the touching ballad of

“Granny’s only left to me her old armchair.”

Celia smiled as she ran upstairs where her aunt was waiting for the conference.

“Just listen, auntie dear, did you ever hear the like,” she said, putting her head in at the door, and the words of the chorus in decided nasal twang floated up the two flights of stairs:

“How they tittered, how they chaffed,
How my brothers and my sisters laughed,
When they heard the lawyers declare,
Granny’s only left to me her old armchair.”

“Do you really think, aunt Hannah, that it’s any use to try to reach and help people who have that sort of taste in music, even if you try through their taste in buckwheat cakes?”

Celia’s face was gay with laughter, but there was an undertone of trouble in it which Miss Hannah detected and understood.

“Dearie, Christ died for him, even if he does seem to be too coarse-grained to understand the little refining influences you are trying to weave around him. Yes, of course it is worth while. You can’t expect him to turn into a person with the tastes of a Beethoven. You are not that yourself, remember, and it’s all in the scale of life. But I know what you mean, and I do think it’s worth while to try. You see if it wasn’t, God wouldn’t have put him just here for us to try on. You mustn’t expect the same result as you would from——”

“From your new boarder, auntie? The gambler with the smile you mean?” Celia was laughing now, for both had seen with the morning light that whatever else their new boarder was, he was a man to be trusted.

“Yes,” said aunt Hannah. “You mustn’t expect the same results from trying to help this man that you would the other, but you’ll find he will have a depth to his nature which you don’t suspect, if you look for it. Listen! He is singing something else. It may give you a clue.”

Again the voice rang out deeply, pathetically and nasally,

“Lost on the Lady Elgin,
Slumbering to wake no more,
Numbering about three hundred,—
Who failed to reach the shore.”

“Oh, auntie, I can’t stand another line,” said Celia rushing into the room and throwing herself on the bed in a paroxysm of laughter. “To have those awful words in that ludicrous song roared out in that dramatic way is too, _too_ funny. And he asked me if I would sing ‘Where is my wandering boy to-night?’ with him. How _could_ I?”

“How, dear girl,” said aunt Hannah sitting down on the bed beside her, “perhaps that is just your chance. Sing ‘Where is my wandering boy to-night?’ with him some time. You may be able to help him to higher, more refining things in some way, even if he does continue to amuse you with his music. If you want to help all these people, you will have to do as Paul did and be all things to all men, that you may by all means save some.”

Celia sobered down at once.

“Yes, I know, aunt Hannah, but somehow I never could be that, unless I was interested in people. It troubles me sometimes, but this black-eyebrowed, smiling, conceited brakeman isn’t in the least attractive. Now that boy Harry Knowles is. I feel sorry for him. He misses his mother, and I’m afraid he goes with a wild set. I got him to fix some chairs last night and he seemed interested and stayed at home. But to-night he slipped out just before I came up, and looked the other way when I came down the hall, as if he didn’t want me to see him and ask him to stay in, at least I fancy that was the reason, because I’ve asked him to stay once or twice. It worries me to think he is going wrong, and I feel as if I could pray all night that God would save him. I can’t get away from that look in the eyes of his mother’s picture. He brought it down to the parlor one night and showed it to me. And he is so young, only just eighteen. Auntie, I want to do so much for the people, do you suppose God will let me do something at least?”

“Dear child,” said aunt Hannah as she bent over and kissed her, “I feel sure he will, and he will hear your prayers and help you to work in the right way and to be interested in the uninteresting, too. And now get your pencil and paper and let’s go to work.”

Celia sprang up and soon they were hard at work.

“What I want to do is this, aunt Hannah,” said Celia. “I want to make this as pleasant a home for us all, as it can be made on the money that we all pay in for our board. You and I will pay ours too, you know, that is if it can’t be run without that, and then we’ll just have things as nice as we can on that. If we need anything extra, why you and I can count that a gift, you know, from our allowance. But to be strictly honest as a boarding-house, and not a charitable institution, we ought to run it on what is paid in, oughtn’t we? I would like to prove that a boarding-house can be comfortable as well as cheap. Do you think it can be done?”

“I do,” said the elder woman, thoughtfully. “I have done some careful thinking myself, and I think it can. I shall enjoy trying, anyway.”

“And auntie, there’s another thing; this allowance of mine is half yours you know. I won’t have it any other way. You and I have nine hundred dollars a year to live on, besides what is now in the bank in cash, and we can do what we please with it, give it away if we want to. If we can make this house pay our board, then we will have the rest to live on. But if we can’t, we’ll run the house up to the full extent of what we can afford to put into it, for a few months at least, just to give these poor souls a taste of something like home. I would rather do that than give my money somewhere else, for I think they all need it. Do you think, auntie, we have enough money to start on to hope to make things go nicely at the beginning? Nine hundred dollars a year seems to me a great deal of money, but people say that money doesn’t go far in the city.”

Celia’s brow was clouded as she spoke.

“There goes my girl down into her cellar of despair over a thought,” said aunt Hannah, leaning over to smooth the pucker out of her niece’s brow. “I wish you would get just a little more trust in your heavenly Father, that he will take care of the work he has put into your hands, and see that it prospers in spite of your worries. Now tell me everything you know about this house and the way it is run.”