Chapter XXVII

Hiram and Nettie Bartlett had been talking a good deal lately about running down to Philadelphia to see aunt Hannah and Celia. Hiram was feeling that a little ready money in his business would enable him to get through a hard time which he saw ahead. Nettie was missing aunt Hannah dreadfully, as the hot days grew longer. They had decided that it would be a good thing to forget and forgive, and open their home and as much of their hearts as was necessary to their relatives. Aunt Hannah would manage the kitchen, and Celia would manage the children, and Hiram would manage Celia’s money. Having decided matters thus, and made some changes in the arrangements of the rooms, to suit the new order of things, they began to feel very sure that it was to be. Of course aunt Hannah and Celia were thoroughly tired of living in a boarding-house by this time, and would welcome the change, and they had but to speak the word and they would fly back to Cloverdale. But before they came, it would be a pleasant change to take the children to Philadelphia for a visit.

No sooner had they decided this than Nettie wrote to aunt Hannah.

The letter reached Philadelphia in the midst of plans for Celia’s wedding. They read it together, Celia and aunt Hannah, and looked at one another in dismay. Somehow, in the joy of the life they were living, they had forgotten to write Nettie anything about Celia’s proposed marriage. Perhaps it was but natural, as Nettie very seldom answered aunt Hannah’s long letters, which had been written at regular intervals at first, until she began to feel that they were not desired. But now they both felt that Nettie must be invited.

Celia summoned all the cousinly feeling she had ever possessed for Nettie, and wrote her a nice letter, putting into it a little touch of her sweet girlish joy over the happiness that had come to her. She finished with a cordial invitation to them all to come on, though the addition to the family at this time would be extremely inconvenient.

Celia did fret a little over their coming. Hiram would be disagreeable and Nettie would want to manage everything, and the children would be always about when they were not wanted.

She was sitting one evening thinking about it, with brow knit in troubled thought, when Mr. Stafford came in. He watched her a moment, and then taking both his hands he placed them over her ruffled brow and smoothed the wrinkles out. Then he bent and kissed her forehead fondly.

“What is the matter, dearest?” he said. “I mean to make it my business always to keep that troubled look away from your dear face.”

“Oh, Horace! How can I help it? I have tried and tried, but I do not seem to be able to conquer the habit. Indeed, I am ashamed of it. Can you not tell me how I can conquer it?”

“Only by casting all your care upon him, who careth for you. Listen, Celia, have you ever heard this?

“‘Wherefore should we do ourselves this wrong,
Or others, that we are not always strong;
That we are ever overborne with care,
That we should ever weak or heartless be,
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer,
And joy and strength and courage are with thee?’”

Then Celia opened her heart to him and told him the story of her winter, beginning with her birthday and the little bookmark aunt Hannah had sent.

“And I thought then, Horace,” she went on, “after that money came to me, my ‘daily rate’ for ‘all the days of my life,’ that I would never doubt any more because I had money, and with that I would be able to relieve most of the other anxieties. But I found it wasn’t so. I began to fret about other things, and then after I got money, I wanted love, and now I have that, I find I’m still fretting.”

“It’s because you don’t remember that it’s ‘for every day,’ dear, and that means for every need of every day. You trust for one set of things, but you think you have to worry along and look out for another set. Here is a quaint old poem I came across the other day that I cut out and put in my pocketbook to read to you some time. It fits in right here, let me read it,

“‘I have a never-failing bank,
My more than golden store;
No earthly bank is half so rich,
How, then, can I be poor?

“‘’Tis when my stock is spent and gone,
And I not worth a groat;
I’m glad to hasten to my bank,
And beg a little note.

“‘Sometimes my banker smiling says,
Why don’t you oftener come?
And when you draw a little note,
Why not a larger sum?

“‘Why live so niggardly and poor,
My bank contains a plenty;
Why come and take a one-pound note,
When you can have a twenty?

“‘Nay, twenty thousand ten times told
Is but a trifling sum,
To what my Father has laid up
For me in God the Son.

“‘Since, then, my banker is so rich,
I have no need to borrow,
But live upon my notes to-day,
And draw again to-morrow.’”

Nettie Bartlett settled herself for the homeward trip from Philadelphia with a discontented look. She slapped Johnnie when he went to get a drink—which he did the first fifteen minutes of the journey—because he stepped on her toes. She jerked the baby up who was endeavoring to pick a piece of orange peel out of a pool of tobacco juice on the floor, and then settled into her discontented silence again. She was thinking about the fall sewing and house cleaning, and the endless darning and baking and cleaning, with no aunt Hannah to fall back upon. Occasionally, she reflected upon the bride’s pretty dress, or had visions of Celia in her cloud-like veil looking up with happy eyes into her husband’s face, and a half jealous feeling shot through her heart. She knew how Celia felt, or thought she did. She had felt so herself, but of course all such nonsense was passed. She looked gloomily across at Hiram, who was staring stolidly out of the window, with his inevitable newspaper lying across his knees. Then she curled her lip and told herself that Celia would soon have the sentiment taken out of her by the prose of everyday life.

“You made a great mistake by not cultivating that minister-cousin-in-law, Nettie,” remarked Hiram, snappily. “I talked to him every chance I got, but it takes women and compliments and that sort of thing to work on men, and especially ministers, I guess. You ought to have invited them to our house for part of their wedding trip. I’m dead certain he’s rich. Did you see all that furniture he’s fixed out for Celia? He’ll spoil her the first thing off.”

“You made a great mistake yourself, when you let aunt Hannah, and Celia, too, go away from our house, and you can’t ever undo it. Yes, I saw the furniture, but his mother sent it, for Celia said so. We might have had a few blessings, and our children would have been brought up right, if aunt Hannah had been with us. She always brings a blessing wherever she goes, and we’ve had nothing but ill-luck since she left us,” and Nettie put her handkerchief to her eyes and wept while the train sped rapidly through the darkness.

* * * * *

Some weeks later, Celia seated in the pleasant study of the suite of rooms which were her new home, and yet her old home, engaged in the delightful task of classifying and placing in a cabinet the various clippings which her minister husband had gathered about him during his bachelor years, came upon this poem. She paused to read it and smiled with a little echo of the peace it spoke in her heart, and bent her head to thank her Father it was true.

“The child leans on its parent’s breast,
Leaves there its cares and is at rest;
The bird sits singing by his nest,
And tells aloud
His trust in God, and so is blest
’Neath every cloud.
He has no store, he sows no seed;
Yet sings aloud, and doth not heed;
By flowing stream or grassy mead,
He sings to shame
Men, who forget, in fear of need,
A Father’s name.
The heart that trusts forever sings,
And feels as light as it had wings;
A well of peace within it springs;
Come good or ill,
Whate’er to-day, to-morrow brings,
It is his will.”

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

[The end of _A Daily Rate_ by Grace Livingston Hill]