Chapter III: Using Opportunities

"AND you going out alone, Miss Tracy! And the Colonel that particular! As he wouldn't hear of you crossing the road by yourself."

Mrs. Stirring was manifestly uneasy, counting herself in some sort responsible. She looked upon this motherless young lady as a charge upon her conscience,—otherwise, as one of the many burdens in her life. Mrs. Stirring was a person who professed to carry a great many burdens. She always had been, and always would be, laden with cares; not so much because she had really more cares than other people, as because she had less pluck and endurance for the bearing of them. Where Dorothea would have looked up and smiled, Mrs. Stirring looked down and sighed. The difference was in the individuals themselves; not in the weight of the burdens laid upon them.

To be sure, Mrs. Stirring was a widow, which sounds sad. There are women, however, to whom widowhood comes as a merciful release from unhappy wifehood, and Mrs. Stirring was one of these. She had married in haste, and had repented at leisure. When her husband was taken from her, she had been conscious in her heart of relief from a bitter thraldom, though much too correct a little person to let any such feeling appear through her showers of weeping,—for Mrs. Stirring was a person who had always tears at command. Still—there the consciousness was.

Now for years, she had been a successful lodging-house keeper, and was not only paying her way, but was laying by a nice little sum for the future. She had one child, a pretty winning little girl, and one faithful though uncouth domestic. This was not altogether a bad state of things. Nevertheless, Mrs. Stirring talked on plaintively of her trials and burdens, making capital of the widowhood which had been a release.

"And you going out alone, Miss!" she reiterated, coming upon Dorothea dressed for walking. Mrs. Stirring was apt to be untidy at this hour, and her cap had dropped awry; while Dorothea was the very pink of dainty neatness, in a costume of dark brown, with brown hat to match, relieved by a suggestion of red, the glasses over her happy eyes balanced as usual over the little nose.

"To Church," Dorothea said, smiling. "I wish you could go too."

Mrs. Stirring shook her head dolorously.

"There's the turkey and plum-pudden, Miss," she said, in unconscious echo of the Colonel. "Dear me! Why if I was to leave them to Susanna, I don't think your Pa 'd stay a day longer under my roof; I don't, really. He's that particular about the roasting. I'm all of a quake now with the thought of it—if I shouldn't do it right. And there's the stuffing, and the gravy, and the sauce! And the pudden, as I've boiled six hours yesterday, and it's been on again these two hours. Dear me! No; I couldn't go to church! A poor widow like me 's got to stay at home and mind the dinner."

"I wish my father could dine late," said Dorothea.

A scared look came into Mrs. Stirring's face.

"Now don't you put him up to that—don't you, Miss Tracy. Late dinner means a deal of work. If your papa dined late, he'd dine early too—that's what gentlemen come to. No, I wouldn't wish that. But if I was a lady—like yourself, Miss—and hadn't to be at work all the morning, why I'd be glad enough to put on my best, and go off to Church with the rest of the folks. And take Minnie too."

"Minnie! O I never thought of that! Why should not Minnie go with me?"

"It's like you to think of it, Miss." Mrs. Stirring was evidently gratified. "And I'm sure she'd have been glad enough, for she does fret, being kept in. But the bells 'll stop this minute, and she's in her curl-papers."

"Curl-papers. Can't you pull them out, and smooth her hair, and put on her hat and jacket?"

Mrs. Stirring was injured.

"Dear me! No! My Minnie don't go to Church without she's dressed suitable. I couldn't get her ready under twenty minutes. She's in her oldest frock, and not a tucker to it; and I wouldn't have her go without—not for nothing. And them curls do take a lot of time. Not as I grudge it, if it's a duty."

"A duty! But what do curls and tuckers matter?" cried Dorothea. "What does it matter how she is dressed, if only she is there? We don't go to Church to show off our best dresses. At least, I hope not. Let me have Minnie as she is, only with her hair smooth. If I don't care, who else will mind? Curls don't signify. Do let her come! It seems so sad to stay away for nothing on Christmas Day."

No; Mrs. Stirring scouted the proposal. Minnie to go to Church in an old frock and uncurled hair! She was scandalised. What would the neighbours think? Dorothea had to give in, and turn away.

"As if it mattered how one is dressed—there!" she thought.

Shutting the hall door, she went briskly down the street, with a delicious feeling of freedom. She would not have felt so free, perhaps, if even Minnie had been her companion.

It was a sharp day, and for London tolerably clear. Something of wintry haze hung overhead, of course; but a red sun made efforts to pierce it. Puddles in the road were frozen, and here and there a slippery slide might be seen upon the pavement, perilous for elderly people.

The parting interview with Mrs. Stirring had almost made Dorothea late. As she drew near the bells stopped, and her pace became something like a run. She gained the nearest side-door and went softly in.

The Church, a large red brick building, was already crowded, and Dorothea, glancing round, saw no vacant seat; but somebody beckoned to her, and room was made. Almost immediately the choir burst into the old Christmas hymn, "Hark! the herald angels sing," and the congregation joined with heartiness.

Among all that mass of people, Dorothea knew not a single person, and not a single person knew her. She was a stray unit from a distance dropped into their midst.

Yet the lonely and forlorn sensations which had so often assailed her during the past week did not assail her here. Strangers though these people were to her, and she to them, they were one in a Divine fellowship, they served the same Master, they prayed the same prayers, they sang the same hymns; nay, with many of the throng, she would soon be united yet more closely, for they would "partake" of the same "holy food."

How could she be lonely? A realisation of this union, and a glow of happy love, crept into Dorothea's heart, as she lifted her eyes from the hymn-book and looked around. The angelic message of "Peace and good-will" had been to all of them alike.

"If only I could do something for somebody—not live for myself alone," was the next thought.

Then just across the aisle she saw a little old lady in mourning, distressfully fumbling for something which she could not find. Dorothea's quick glance detected a pair of glasses lying on the floor. In a moment she had stepped out of her place, picked up the glasses, and given them to their owner.

"Thanks," came in a whisper of relief, with a very sweet smile. Dorothea stepped back, blushing slightly to feel that she had done a rather prominent thing; yet she would have done it over again, if required.

The sermon was short, earnest, spirited, mainly about the duty of rejoicing. Not rejoicing only on Christmas Day, only when things seem cheery and to one's mind, but always,—on dark days as well as bright ones, amid anxieties as well as pleasures.

"That is for me, I am sure," Dorothea told herself, looking back to some troubled hours in the past week.