Chapter II: Eliza

"IF you please, ma'am, mother says if 'Liza Brown isn't going to be nursemaid at the Vicarage, couldn't you send our Polly? She's bigger than 'Liza," added the girl, looking up at her former teacher as if to challenge any contradiction of this assertion.

Miss Martin, the teacher of the National School, was silent with amazement as she listened to the proposal. But she had long wanted to have a word with her former scholar, Jessie Collins, and this was too good an opportunity to be lost, and so, instead of expressing the surprise she felt, she simply looked the girl over in her shabby fine frock, and said—

"Surely your mother must know that I do not choose the Vicarage servants, Jessie? And I have not heard that Eliza Brown was going for more than a month, to help with the children while they are away at the seaside."

Jessie nodded. "Yes, that's it," she said. "But 'Liza can't go; her mother can't afford to buy her the new frocks. But mother will get Polly a nice lot of new things!" and Jessie glanced complacently at her own fine frock as she spoke.

"I have not heard anything about this, Jessie!" said her teacher; "but I am sure of this, that the question of new frocks would be of far less importance to the Vicar and Mrs. Parsons, than the character of the girl they chose to be with the children," said Miss Martin, looking earnestly at Jessie as she spoke.

"Well, nobody can't say a word against our Polly!" said Jessie, in a defiant tone.

"Polly is a quiet, steady girl; and I wish you were like her," said her teacher. "Are you in service now, Jessie?" she suddenly asked.

"No, ma'am, I ain't; and I don't think I shall go again."

"Why not? The place I recommended you for was a nice comfortable one, I know."

"Well, I wasn't treated fairly, and I didn't stop," said Jessie, in a sullen tone.

"Not treated fairly?" repeated her governess.

"Well, no," asserted Jessie; "mother bought me a new frock when I had been there a month. I chose it myself, mother said I might; and the missis said it was not at all suitable for a servant, so I just give notice and left."

"But you have had another place since?" said the teacher, in a questioning tone.

"Yes, but it was just about the same; she said I thought more about finery than I did about my work; so I'm going to the new blacking factory as soon as it opens."

"Oh, Jessie, I am very sorry to hear this, because you are placing yourself in the way of temptations you may not be able to resist, and may be sorry for it all the rest of your life."

"I don't like service," muttered the girl.

"My girl, everybody, in every station of life, has to endure things they do not like, it is the way God teaches and trains us all, and it would be much better for you to be in a respectable, comfortable home, learning to be useful, than playing about the street as you have been lately."

"Who said I ran the streets?" demanded the girl.

"I have seen it for myself, and I feel very sorry that a bright, clever girl like you, who could be such a useful woman in the world by-and-by, should just throw away all her chances which she will never have again."

"What chances?" asked Jessie, in a more gentle tone.

"The chances to learn all sorts of useful things; how to cook in the most economical way. How to make a house clean and neat. A mistress is always ready to teach her young maid these things, and while she is learning them she is earning a character for herself too, that is of more value than anything else, if she only does her work faithfully and truly, as God's servant, as well as a household servant."

Jessie was evidently touched by the kindly tone in which these words were spoken.

"Thank you, ma'am. I didn't know you cared about me now," she said.

"But I do care for you, and want to see you grow up a happy useful woman, of whom I can be proud to say that she was one of my scholars when she was a girl."

Tears had filled Jessie's eyes while her governess had been speaking.

"If it wasn't so hard," she murmured, "I'd like to please you like that," she said.

"Nothing that is worth having is gained without hard work. Before I could be a teacher, I had to learn many hard lessons, not from books only; although I had to sit learning from books when I would gladly have gone out for a walk, or to see my friends; so that I know what hard work is better than you do."

"But you didn't have to go to service," muttered Jessie.

"No, God had fitted me to be a teacher, and opened the way for me to learn to do my work properly. He has placed you where you can learn to be useful by helping others to make their home nice and neat and comfortable. Your strong, young arms can move a brush and broom much better than some who are older and weaker, while they can teach you many things you need to learn, if you are to be a capable, useful woman by-and-by. Try to think of going to service in this way. We all have to help each other in some way, and God wants many of the young girls to use their strength to help those who are weaker and less able to do housework. In doing this, you are helping mother and father too, as well as yourself. Now, think over what I have said, and I hope you will soon get another place. But if you should not do that just now, remember that your old governess is always your friend, and ready to help you whenever she can. Now, tell mother I hope she won't want to take Polly away from school yet. She is a year younger than Eliza Brown, although she is a bigger girl."

"All right, teacher," said Jessie, with a nod, "Polly shall stop at school just as long as you want her to," she added, as though she had the ruling of all such matters in her home.

Miss Martin looked after her, and sighed as she went out of the school, for she feared that the influence at home was not likely to help the girl to a right decision in the ordering of her life. And then her thoughts turned to her other scholar, and she decided to send for Mrs. Brown, and find out what truth there was in Jessie's report.

She knew the Browns had had a good deal of trouble. The father had been ill, and out of work for some time, and she knew that Eliza was delicate, and often under the doctor's care; but surely a managing woman like Mrs. Brown, with the help she would get now from Fanny's wages, would be able to get the girl decent clothes, so that she might have the benefit of the Vicar's kind offer; and she called Selina from her class, and told her to run home and ask her mother to come to the school at four o'clock, as she wanted to speak to her as soon as the girls were dismissed.

"I wonder what it can be!" said Eliza, anxiously, when she heard the message. "I hope it isn't to say I am not wanted, now we have got such a lot of things ready."

"You haven't got any new frocks," put in the chatterbox Selina.

"Never mind, they are coming, mother says," answered Eliza.

"Oh yes, they are coming!" said Mrs. Brown.

"The stuff will be here, I dare say, by the time I have finished all I have got to do. Now, run back and tell your governess I will come at four o'clock; and don't you chatter among the girls about things you hear at home," added Mrs. Brown, as Selina went out.

Mrs. Brown reached the school just as the girls came trooping into the playground, and she went on as soon as the crowd had passed, and Miss Martin placed a chair for her near her own, for she thought she looked very ill, and she said so.

"No, ma'am, I am not ill, but I think I got a bit overtired the day Fanny came home for her holiday;" and she sighed as though the memory of that day had a pain in it that could not be forgotten.

"It is about Eliza that I want to see you. I heard this afternoon that you would not be able to let her go to the seaside after all," said Miss Martin; and she looked as though she thought Mrs. Brown ought to do anything rather than let her child lose such a chance as the Vicar had offered.

Mrs. Brown coloured. "I wonder who could have said such a thing!" she exclaimed. "We are working away—Eliza and I—to get her things ready, and I hope we shall get the new frocks as well by the time they are wanted," she added.

"Has there been any difficulty in this matter?" said the governess. "I thought Fanny would be able to help you a little, for she told me what nice new clothes you were making for her to take with her to her first place; and, of course, she has her first month's wages now, and very little use for the money."

The governess echoed exactly what her own thoughts had been, until she saw Fanny and that watch. But however much Mrs. Brown might have been pained by her daughter's behaviour, she did not wish the governess to know anything about it, and so she made some confused allusion to her husband's long illness, which left Miss Martin in doubt as to whether Fanny had helped her mother or not; but at the same time the general character of the family was so good, that she said—

"Now, Mrs. Brown, you must not let Eliza miss this chance of going to the sea, and so I will ask you to accept the loan of five shillings for a few weeks. You can repay it a shilling a week, as you can spare the money; but I want you to get all Eliza will need to make her tidy and comfortable. There is a warm woollen dress of my own that does not fit me since I had it washed, but would, I think, make a nice one for the seaside, if the weather should happen to be too cold for cotton frocks. If you will come home with me, you might take it back with you."

"Oh, thank you, ma'am! Indeed, I shall be very glad to accept your kind offer," said Mrs. Brown; and as she spoke, the tears filled her eyes, and she looked up so gratefully at Miss Martin that the lady felt quite glad she had remembered the old dress that had been a source of vexation to her lately.

To Mrs. Brown it was a splendid gift. Just what Eliza needed, for her own winter frock she had outgrown, and it was very shabby and threadbare, while this was soft and warm, and just the colour suitable for a seaside frock, and she carried home her parcel, feeling so thankfully delighted, that she might have been walking on air rather than common earth.

"More work, Eliza," she said, holding up her parcel as soon as she went in.

"What is that?" asked little Selina, curiously. Mrs. Brown had not noticed that the child was in the room.

"Now, Selina, was it you that told some of the girls at school that I could not get new frocks for Eliza? I was very vexed to hear about this to-day; and if ever you talk about home affairs at school again, I have asked your teacher to punish you. Now you can go out to play," she added. And the little girl, with drooping head, opened the back door and went into the garden.

"Miss Martin has been very kind indeed, but she does not wish it to be known, and so the girls must not go to school and chatter about it." And then she opened the parcel, and showed Eliza the soft, warm dress that would make her such a beautiful frock for the seaside.

"Oh, mother, it is too good for every day!" said the girl.

"Well now, I had a talk about that with Miss Martin, and she told me to tell you to let Nurse decide when you ought to wear a warm frock. You are not very strong, and the frock is to be worn when the days are chilly; so remember to ask Nurse to tell you when you had better wear it. And the next thing for us to do is to make it."

"Oh, mother, what a good thing it was we began to mend up Fanny's old things!" said Eliza, as she turned over her governess's discarded dress with a view to decide how much alteration would be required to make it fit her. And when tea was over the dress was tried on, and then the unpicking began, and everybody was busy doing something to make ready for Eliza's visit to the seaside.

Her father was putting new thick soles on her boots, and Jack new hinges to a small wooden box that would just hold her clothes, when the postman's sharp rat-tat at the door startled them, and he brought a parcel from Aunt Mary—"material to make Eliza a new best dress," she said, in the letter that came with it. "You will be sure to get her suitable cotton frocks," she wrote; "but the girl will want a new best dress, I am sure, and as I sent Fanny one last year, it is Eliza's turn now."

"Well, I am afraid I shall not be able to make it for you before you go away," said her mother, with a sigh of relief, as she thought how all their fears had been dispelled and Eliza provided for. The cotton frocks would be bought the next day; but mother and daughter both decided that the best dress could not be made until the others were finished and everything else got ready. "I may not be able to make it before you go," said her mother; "but you could wear one of your new cotton frocks for the first Sunday, and I will let you have the best one for the Sunday after, for you will want to go to church."

"Yes; I dare say I shall have to take that dear little Master Eustace," said Eliza. "He looks such a darling, sitting in the Vicarage pew, that I shall like to have him sitting next to me at church."

"All right, my girl; there is nothing like being in love with your work, whatever it is," said her father. "But you need not expect the little chap is always going to behave like an angel; there will be squalls sometimes, I dare say, and you will have to be patient and gentle when you would like to scold and be angry. But you must just think of mother, and what a deal she has to put up with from one and the other of us here, and what a different home it would be if she got angry and lost her temper every time we vex her."

Eliza nodded. "I will try to think of it, daddy, and think of how you are all helping me to go away, and—"

"I don't know so much about that," interrupted her brother. "We shall miss you more than we do Fan, I know, because you are always ready to help anybody when you can; and so I'm not so glad you are going away, I can tell you. Only I want you to have everything nice and comfortable when you do go," added Jack.

They laughed at Jack; but there was no doubt he expressed the general feeling of the family in what he said, for Fanny had always considered herself first in anything she was asked to do for anybody else. If it suited her mood just at the time, she would do what was asked of her; but it she had to sacrifice any ease or pleasure, then she would refuse, though it might be plainly her duty to do what was required.

Mrs. Brown had noticed this trait in Fanny's character before she left home, but hoped that the discipline of being in service would help her to overcome it; and it was this hope, so cruelly disappointed, that had made Fanny's behaviour so deeply painful to her mother the day she came home for her holiday, and she feared that nothing less than a very severe lesson would be sufficient to teach Fanny what a mistake she was making in choosing to gratify herself rather than seeking to be helpful to others.

She made no remark about this when Jack was speaking, but she could not help thinking of it, and could not contradict the children when, one after the other, they each in their own way said that Fanny always took care of herself first.

"Wait a bit, wait a bit, Jack," said his father, at last. "I like fair play, and Fan isn't here to defend herself, and she hasn't been tried yet, and so we can't say what she may do." Brown was very fond of his elder daughter, and could not bear to hear her blamed. "What do you say, mother?" he suddenly asked, turning to his wife.

"I am too busy to talk to-night," she said. "I want to get on with Eliza's frock, for we cannot tell when she may be wanted to pack up and be off," and so Mrs. Brown evaded saying one word about Fanny either of blame or defence; but Jack held to his own opinion, and said it was a good thing for the Vicarage children that it was Eliza instead of Fanny who would look after them under Nurse's direction during their stay at the seaside.

"They'll have a jolly time with Eliza, if the Nurse will only give her a chance," said Jack. And as no one attempted to contradict this assertion, the discussion dropped, and was apparently forgotten by all but the girl's mother and father.