title: Rue's helps.
text: r i * i . • • 4 / 5 tr* \ .1 I Kt Ip'. C- * - i+\ - ! <; t iy«l , ' K ‘J «’ rt »#?***' ••• .iOft. t < -* * 4 - 1*7 * 14 1 * « ► L.'J\ 1 V . L ill V • - •Jk? V - A ' • - •;?M 1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ! # # Y # # $ __ ^ | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. | S3 \o. 3. •.C-.'I.^.liR.U- /:• « s RUE’S HELPS. I By MISS DRINKWATER — ♦ — I. Tessa Wadsworth’s Discipline. i2mo. $1.50. “ It is a long while since we have read a story which is more thoroughly satisfactory in every respect than this. To be sure it is only a love-story, but it is a love-story of a very high order, and one to be thoroughly indorsed. The style is vigorous and animated ; the descriptions are picturesque ; the con- versations are easy, natural, and suggestive ; and the characters are drawn with great fidelity to life ” — Christian Intelligencer. “ The charm is that the people in it all seem life-like, and the reader is caused at once to feel acquainted with them and to be interested in their for- tunes.” — Congregationalist, “ One of those bright stories arousing sympathy and interest in the nat- uralness of the characters and the charming manner in which the story is unfolded to the reader.” — Evening Mail. II. Only Ned; or, Grandmamma’s Lesson. i6mo. $1.25. “ The loving old grandma, hard aunt, bright cousin, true and tough Deacon Griggs, judicious schoolmaster, and boiling, bursting Ned Arrowsmith, are all true to life. We like them all.” — Christian Advocate. III. Not Bread Alone; or, Miss Helen’s Neighbors. i6mo. #1.25. “This is a charming book, designed to illustrate the relation of prayer to every-day life. — Baptist Union. IV. Fred and Jeanie, and how they learned about God. i6mo. $1.25. “ The author, as in her previous books, shows an intimate knowledge of child life, and the children that she delights in are very engaging.” — Christian Advocate. V. Rue’s Helps. $1.50. ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS. RUE’S HELPS BY JENNIE M. DRINKWATER, y AUTHOR OF “TESSA WADSWORTH’S DISCIPLINE,” ETC. “ ©fje fotll perfect tfjat bjtjtcfc concemetfj we.” NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 530 Broadway. 1880. T ■’t&'R'*- Copyright , 1880, By Robert Carter and Brothers. University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. CONTENTS Page I. Waiting for the Mail 7 II. Accepted after All 87 III. At the Back Side of the Desert . . 122 IV. Eventide 163 V. Ever so many Things 175 , VI. Hurrying Providences 226 VII. What the Summer was to All . . . 252 VIII. To-morrows 282 IX. Paul’s Chamber 316 X. Up the Lane 329 XI. Geneva and Samokov 347 XII. Home 378 f . ' , ' * * * RUE’S HELPS. i. "WAITING FOR THE MAIL. “ I suppose that we can’t help it,” mused Rue. She was kneeling on the home-made rug, before the fire on the hearth, rubbing off the few kernels that were left on the cobs : for Paul had said, when he brought in the basket, that he had no time for such nonsense ; if he turned the corn-sheller and brought the cobs into the house, that he had done his share towards kindling the sitting-room fire. Rue did not trouble herself or any one else about her “ share ” of work ; her share had always seemed to be all that she could find to do.. There was a huge back-log behind the and- irons, with a bed of coals and a few chips be- neath it. The room was not chilly, but Rue wanted a blaze; she was a trifle sore at heart 8 RUE'S HELPS. to-night, and the fire would be companion- ship, — the kind of companionship that would give all and ask for nothing in return, and just now she was in the mood for taking and not giving. She could revel in the light while it played over her face and hair and hands : it could not read the story that her eyes and lips were telling as Grace might, and Auntie certainly would ; and if it could not read it would never tell. She was not sure that Grace never told; indeed, she was almost sure that Grace did tell, for had she not more than a dozen bosom friends, while she herself had not even one, unless it might be Auntie, or the min- ister’s sister, Mrs. Willever. “ Well, I know 1 can’t help it.” Rue ended her thought with a sigh, and piled the cobs under the log. No one besides Auntie had noticed her new habit of sighing. If you had asked her what she could n’t help, she would have said, “Wanting things.” The day just lived through had been one of her most depressing days : her mother’s head- ache had been the excuse for an endless amount of fretting and fault-finding ; Paul had WAITING FOR THE MAIL, 9 been openly disrespectful to bis father, and the full hour’s reprimand, advice, scolding, abuse, which she had been compelled to listen to (for she and Paul and her father were in the kitchen) had worn upon her and taken her strength like the physical pain of a week. Paul had spoken quickly, and was ready to apologize ; but the long, harsh tirade, in which many things were unjustly urged against him, sealed his lips and hardened his heart. The dis- couraged look in his eyes smote Rue to the heart. She had trembled and choked as she washed the dishes and skimmed the milk, but had not possessed courage to speak. “ That boy will never be a Christian,” sighed her father, as Paul rushed out slamming the kitchen door. “ Perhaps he is easily discouraged,” she had said timidly, out of her bursting heart. Another thing that had made the day unusu- ally hard was that Grace insisted upon kin- dling a fire upon the hearth in the chamber they occupied together, and sitting there to “ make over ” an old dress, instead of coming down stairs to help her about the house-work ; 10 RUE'S HELPS. and then Auntie had not talked to her, but had kept thinking silently, and she did so want to be talked to ! She was faint with hunger for a good word. The day had held a disappoint- ment beside ; for Wednesday was her day of recitation at the Parsonage, and Mrs. Willever would think it so strange that she had not come. She was studying Mental and Moral Philosophy with her, and oh, what good times they did have together! She must give her mother’s headache as the excuse ; she could not say that Grace had refused to help in the kitchen. Rue was twenty-two and a half, — old enough to bear a depressing day bravely, only that years do not seem to have all to do with brave endurance. She had borne it in outward pa- tience ; but, “ Oh, please forgive me and make me sweet and good ! ” had many times swelled her heart with penitent tears. Rue had wanted things ever since she could remember : when she was five years old she had wanted pretty shoes; indeed, one of the severest trials of her childhood was the being denied a pair of bronze gaiters that her father WAITING FOR TIlF MAIL. H brought home when her mother had asked him to buy a pair of shoes. “ They are too expen- sive,’’ her mother had said ; “ you must take them back and get black ones.” Her heart would never sink again as it had sunk over that disappointment ; she had been wishing for bronze shoes, and here they were in her hand, and she could not have them. She could not comfort herself as she comforted herself in dis- appointment nowadays ; she had to bear it and forget it. She could not smile over the trial as she recalled it; she had not learned then to pray about things she wanted : she wondered, if she had prayed, if God would have given her the bronze shoes. He would not have thought them “ too expensive.” He did not think anything too expensive. Some day she would give some little girl a pair of bronze shoes, for the sake of that disappointed little Rue. When she was ten she had wanted one of the Lucy books, and she had wanted to have a party like Nellie Hyde, and an autograph album like another girl ; but she would not ask for things : her mother always made the same reply when she did ask, — “I can’t afford it.” 12 RUE'S HELPS. It was very depressing never to be able to have things because your mother “couldn’t afford it.” It was not the going without things that hurt her ; it was the never being able to “ afford ” anything. “ I ’ll never say that to my little girls,” she had often thought. “ I ’ll say, ‘ Mother does n’t think it best.’ ” When she was fifteen her one longing had been to go to boarding-school ; at sixteen, her most intense desire was to go on a mission to India ; at seventeen, she had wanted to teach school, study Hebrew and Greek, and travel all over the Holy Land; at nineteen, she had wanted, as girls will want to the end of time, to have some one love her. She had not read many love-stories, but she read life’s true sto- ries with wide-open eyes, and it must be good to have some one love you and believe you and help you. And now, at twenty-two and a half, she wanted, — what she did not want could be more easily enumerated, — she wanted every good thing that could be had on earth ; she had not yet learned to desire most of all and first of all the good things that come to us through the intercession of Jesus Christ. WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 13 How many of those desired things she had had ! In one form or another they had come to her, all but the bronze shoes, the party, and the autograph album. She had been to boarding- school, she had crossed the ocean, she had taught school, and some one had loved her ; the grant- ing of this last desire had been greatly an annoy- ance, for he was not at all her ideal, — her ideal being a gentleman, a Christian, and a scholar. It was an experience to regret for his sake, and she sighed over it to-night, and would have wished that it had never happened, had she not felt that it was unsubmissive to wish anything changed that God had permitted to come to pass in her life. This thing she could not help ; it had been as startling to her — Well, she could not make any fitting comparison. He had gone a thousand miles away* and she had sighed and been sorry, and asked God to forgive her if she had done wrong, and then begun to think of the next thing. Her one absorbing desire now was that she might teach again, — that is, the one absorbing desire that she could put into words. There was another desire that she could not put into words; as well as she could express the 14 RUE’S HELPS. thought to herself it was like this : I want to do something and be something that shall use every faculty of my being, the best of me and the whole of me, — not anything mental, spirit- ual, physical, must be left unused ; nothing less will satisfy me. I have no idea what it is ; “ O God ! ” dropping her head into both hands, “ show me my life work, for Jesus’ sake.” “Now Jesus had compassion .” The words came as through a voice. Rising, she found the words in the little Bible that she kept in her work- basket, and wrote on the margin near them in pencil, “ Dec. 18, 18 — .” Would her heart have failed her could she have known the years and the preparation of the years before she could understand God’s hand in her life perfectly enough to write another date beneath it? She went back to the fire and piled on the cobs. “ Every man must live his own life out to the end.” That thought was all that she could remember of the last Sunday’s sermon. The knowledge that she might live her own life out to the end — her own distinct, individual life — was increasingly comforting to her. Grace lived WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 15 in other people’s lives : she had heard her say that she did not live any real life of her own, with thoughts and plans in it ; that she was noth- ing at all to herself, she never liked to be alone, she wondered how people found anything inter- esting in their own lives. “ Then I don’t see what you live for,” Rue had replied. “ I ’m sure I don’t know,” Grace had said ; “ because I am born, I suppose.” Rue wanted a life all her own, as peculiarly her own as would be the promised white stone, and something was to be written on that, — a new name, that no one would know saving he that received it. Her prayer and the date in her Bible that she had just written were a secret between her and God ; when it was answered she would tell the one that she loved best all about it. Now she loved her father and Auntie and Lou Ire ton better than any one else in the world. Whom would she love best then ? Her thoughts ran hither and thither, without any attempt at control ; she was too wearied physically to guide her reverie. Usually she forced herself to think to some purpose ; but she had had a hard day, 16 RUE’S HELPS. and would humor herself as she would humor Lou. The firelight played over a sorrowful face and drooping figure. She drew a chintz-covered foot- stool nearer, and, folding her arms upon it, laid her head within them, keeping her face toward the fire. The toes of her shoes, peeping from beneath the brown skirt, were worn and rubbed in many places ; her dress was shabby and faded ; it was partly covered by a pretty blue gingham apron, however, and the ruffle at her neck was unsoiled, and fastened by a round gold pin ; her hair was braided and wound around her head : she would have made a picture of a tired, neat little housekeeper. She was slight and not tall ; people usually called her “ little Rue Erskine.” She liked to be little and weak, if she might only be taken care of. “ People think that they know all about Rue Erskine, because her manner is so frank,” said Mrs. Willever to the minister one day; “but with that manner she throws them off. You think that she has been telling you all about herself, and then discover that she has not told you anything that you can take hold of.” WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 17 “ A bewildering set of contradictions,” an- other friend described her. But what people said concerning her she did not know nor care ; she was given to thinking thoughts, and not given to thinking about herself. She could not tell any one about the things that she was longing for, but she could muse in the light of the fire, and the sympathetic light could play over the prophecy that the longing and the prayers were writing in her face, and the fire would not tell, and no one she knew could read her face. Some one was reading her life in her face, in the changes in her voice, in her work at home and in the homes of the village, but she was not aware of that ! She would have sprung to her feet startled, bewildered, and not at all pleased, had it been revealed to her at that moment who it was that was as interested in her life as she was herself, and who it was that she would choose to tell about the prayer that she had dated. As startled and bewildered and as little pleased as you and I would be, per- haps, if God should give us a glance at a name that he has written in our lives. “ O Hue, you field-daisy ! ” Grace had exclaimed that day. 18 RUE'S HELPS. Grace was three years older, and worldly wise. The fire blazed around the chips and cobs, and curled under and over the rough back-log. “ I suppose there ’s a reason why I ’m always wanting things,” she said aloud, speaking to the bit of flame that played in and out a gnarled root. “ I hope that I ’ll live to find out what it is. Oh, how I want to find out things ! Ah, deary me ! ” Auntie, speaking of Rue to the minister that afternoon, had called her “unformed.” Auntio loved Rue so dearly that she was apt to talk about her to every one. Rue was Auntie’s heroine. “ Hardly that,” he had replied thoughtfully ; “ she is forming. Her face wi^l be worth look- ing at before she is thirty ; she is too variable and impressible now for any mood to stay long enough to mould her features. Her face is a prophecy to-day, by and by it will be a his- tory.” The minister called often ; he had told Auntie that many of his sermons were suggested by her fresh rendering of old thoughts. Very often Rue was too busy to see him; this afternoon WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 19 she had been mending bags that her father might take a load of potatoes to town, and there were so many and the holes were so large that she could not spare an hour for him. That had been another disappointment in her hard day. As soon as he entered the gate she had thought, “Perhaps he has a word for me.” “Bags ready?” her father had called out that very instant. Grace did not like to mend bags. If the minister had not had a word for her, he had had a word about her. Auntie would never repeat it, of course ; she was striving to pre- vent Rue from being self-conscious. Rue would hardly have been pleased with it ; it was equal to thinking her colorless and expressionless, and if there were anything that she hated with all her power of hatred, it was inanity. Rue was an excellent hater ; at this time I fear that she hated evil rather more than she loved good. This expressionless face was little to look at unless with the eyes of love. She was never numbered among the pretty girls of the village ; rounded, tinted cheeks, full lips, a low forehead, around which the light-brown hair grew pret- tily, large eyes, dark and very blue, with short 20 RUE'S HELPS. eyelashes, and eyebrows lighter than her hair and delicately pencilled, a fair, refined face, with some pride, and as much will as gentleness in it, womanly to those who could read, but very plain and unattractive to the many who could not read it. Auntie could read it, and the minister and his sister thought that they could. Rue was much in all their thoughts ; they looked forward to the woman that she might be if nothing and no one hindered, — if she did not hinder herself. She was herself as God had begun to make her, and as she was helping him to make her. She did not know that she was helping him to make a womanly woman out of his thoughts towards her ; sometimes she did not know that he was helping her. If she could have understood the longings of her childhood and youth, she would have under- stood that he was making her out of herself ; the seed that would, in his time, grow into per- fection was all within herself. Is not the kingdom of God within us ? If she could have understood herself to-day, she would have had a glimpse of the woman WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 21 that she would become, and the work that she was being fitted to do. She wondered sometimes to herself, “How can Jesus think about me and love me ? ” Her weary heart would have been less weary to- night, had she known that he was thinking of her, not only as she was, but as she would be- come ; the thought would have helped her bear with herself. She did not love herself, to-night. In her childhood the things that she had been most afraid of were untruthfulness and disobe- dience ; the things that she had most wanted were books, to travel, to be loved, and to be good. In her reverie an incident of her childhood floated through her mind. She was spending the day with Nellie Hyde, and, in playing tag around the woodshed, had caught the skirt of her dress, and made an ugly rent. “ Let me mend it for you,” Nellie’s mother had said ; “ your mother need never know anything about it.” “ Would n’t that be a lie ? ” she had asked. She had for- gotten the reply ; she only remembered that the lady had dropped the dress out of her hands. A scolding that her mother had given her 22 RUE'S HELPS. that morning over some trivial household task reminded her of a similar scolding in childhood. She would not have remembered it, only, be- lieving that she was in the right, she had uttered no word of self-justification. It was about such a little thing, too. Her mother, sending her on an errand, had said, “ Go out the back gate and down the hill.” She was accustomed to going out the front gate, but unquestioningly she had opened the back door, crossed the yard, and with an effort pushed at the back gate until it flew open. Her mother’s voice in harsh dis- pleasure recalled her. She remembered stand- ing silent in the middle of the room while her mother scolded her for going out that gate. She had never been forbidden to go out that way ; she could not understand how she had disobeyed ; all her thought through the flow of words was, “ I know that I heard her tell me to go that way.” Unquestioning obedience had been the habit of her childhood ; unquestioning obedience to God had become a habit thus early in her womanhood. She never wondered why she must obey him ; she never cared to know the WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 23 reason why he let so many things in her life be hard ; her only wonder was, “ What does he want me to learn by this ? ” In her love of all knowledge was the germ of her hunger to know about God. The little girl who had longed for books and travel with the same longing now yearned for the knowledge of God. Rue Erskine at twenty-two was Rue Erskine of ten grown up. She had kept the heart of her childhood, not because any one had thought of it or cared about it, but because the blessing of the pure in heart to see God had been given to her. She had seen him always, whether happy or troubled; but she did not know that the good that she saw was God. More than once she had been asked at what age she had been “converted.” She thought that it was the Sunday afternoon that her heart had glowed with love to Jesus Christ while she was reading “ Judah’s Lion,” but I think that it was in the earlier days when she had hated a lie and loved obedience. In girlhood her two most earnest prayers had been, “Make me pure,” “Make me patient.” 24 RUE'S HELPS. The latter had grown out of a remark of a teacher at school : “ Miss Erskine, you have the most impatient nature that I ever met.” In retrospect she could think of these things ; but the fears and longings of the present were too near to be handled and turned over and over. She knew that she desired to be and to do all that was within her to do and to become, and she knew that her one absorbing love at this time was love, not of children, but of child- hood, — a love, however, that held to its heart every little child in all the world. She was glad to remember a parting wish that a little fellow had written upon his slate for her in her last day in the village school-house : “ May you always have children to teach.” She had asked each of the children to write a wish for her ; all the others she had forgotten. She had not forgotten her hour there alone that afternoon, in which she had cried out with eager heart and steadfast faith, “ Oh, please let me teach again ! ” That prayer had not left her heart and scarcely her lips since, and that was over a year ago. When she read of answered prayers in the WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 25 religious papers or in the Bible, or once in a while heard some one speak of an answered prayer, or when the minister spoke of prayer, as he so often did, her one thought was of her intense prayer that she might teach again. She was working with her prayers, taking all her leisure for study, beside studying with Mrs. Willever one afternoon in every week. She had reviewed every old school-book in the house ; then, while thinking what she could do to earn new books, Mrs. Willever had offered to lend her every book in the Parsonage library. Mrs. Willever in herself was an education to Rue. Still, despite her working, her praying, and working with her prayers, increasingly dark was the prospect of a favorable answer becom- ing : her mother’s health was failing, Paul was going away from home to learn a trade, and G race — why, of course Grace would be mar- ried some day. Auntie was a comfort to them all, but she was not able to help about the house. The Lord did not seem to be doing anything with her prayer, and he must have listened to it, and have been so sorry for her every day and night through a long year. A year was a long time to Rue. 26 RUE'S HELPS. She hoped that she was not wearying him with her importunity ; as long as the desire was in her heart she must pray about it ; she would not have so little confidence in him as to keep any thought away from him. The minister had said that to Auntie one day, or if not quite that, something that suggested it to her. She did not like the minister ; she wished that she did like him. She admired the courtesy of his man- ner, his perfect refinement, and she liked his voice; it was low, sweet, solemn, and rever- ent. She liked his scholarly head ; she imagined that heads like his must have made the West- minster Catechism. He kept himself apart from his people ; she could not bring any charge against him except that he was not her ideal of a pastor. St. John and St. Paul were her ideals. One day he had made the remark, “ Since I have had the gift of faith,” and she had stood rather in awe of him since. If he had the gift of faith he must have everything he wanted ; when she could summon sufficient courage she would ask him. She had formed a wicked habit of thinking of something else while he was preaching, that is, whenever the subject did not WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 27 seem to fit into her own special need. Bnt if she did not like him she loved his three mother- less little girls as she did not love any children in the village ; they had been her pupils in day school, and the eldest was now in her Sunday- school class. Grave, studious Lou, a perfect little lady, was as shy and lovable as any child of thirteen could be ; frolicsome Persis was ten ; and plump, sturdy, conscientious Nannie was eight years of age. She had loved their mother in her short stay among them, — she had died within the first six months of her husband’s pas- torate in Geneva, four years since. A widowed sister of the pastor was housekeeper and home- maker at the Parsonage ; she had never had a child of her own until her brother’s motherless little girls became her own. All this and more beside had a place in Rue’s reverie. There may have been a thread on which her thoughts were strung, but they seemed to her confused and aimless ; it may have been that she was partly asleep, for a spark flying out and touching her dress brought her to her feet. The hearth must be swept, and the basket that had held the cobs must be taken away. 28 RUE'S HELPS. Where had she been all this time ? With a long breath, that Grace would have laughed at as sentimental, she shook the dust of the cobs from her skirt, and brushed up the hearth. “ O Rue, you are very fresh ! ” Grace often laughed, when Rue aired her opinions con- cerning life in general, and life in Geneva in particular ; “ one would think that you had been brought up in the woods.” How could Grace know that Rue’s freshness and sweetness were the answer to her prayer, “Make me pure”? She had been kept un- spotted from the world, pure from worldly aims, pure from self-seeking. As she replaced the little broom in the chim- ney closet, she caught a glimpse of the sunset over the village. “ Rue’s Parish,” Grace called Geneva. It was a winter sunset, but the day had been unusually mild. The long golden belt of light shone through hazy air; there was a bank of dense clouds above the golden belt that might betoken rain ; above the dense clouds arose waves of palest light. In the hazy distance she could discern only the outlines of the village WAITING FOR THE MAIL ,. 29 buildings ; the square tower of the church stood out against a patch of brightest gold ; roofs, chimneys, a network of bare branches, against the background of ever-brightening gold. She knelt in the broad window-seat, watching the brightening and fading of the belt of gold, until nothing was left of brightness, nothing left but the dark clouds, the indistinct outlines, and the haziness over the brown fields. “ Dear little Geneva ! ” she exclaimed, “ I am glad that the sun sets over you.” “ Come along here ! Hey ! you there,” cried a voice behind the white cow, the cow without horns, and the three red cows that were walk- ing leisurely into the cow-yard from the road. Paul had been driving them down to the brook. He had been looking at the sunset too. He and Rue were very much alike ; Paul was what Rue would have been without study and dis- cipline. Many of life’s hard lessons they had learned from the same book ; not together, for both were reticent, and each lived within them- selves. They had a way of understanding one another that puzzled Grace ; neither ever 80 RUE'S HELPS. needed any explanation of the other’s mood or course of action. When Rue said, “ Paul is thinking to-day, he can’t decide,” or “ He feels better now that he has decided,” Grace would look at him, and, observing no sign of conflict or evidence of peace, would wonder what Rue could mean. Often when he was quietest, Rue would say, “ He is happy to-day,” and when he was in his wildest gale of nonsense, she would say, “ The boy is troubled to-day.” Grace had come to believe that Rue had a sixth sense ; it was queer about Rue. She often reminded her- self of the first time that the new schoolmaster called, and seemed taken with Rue, that Rue had laughed as soon as he was gone, saying, “ It is n’t that he likes me, but I look or talk like some one that he does like,” and “Sure enough,” Grace would say, “ in less than a year he brought a wife from out West, the very pic- ture of Rue ; people all said so as soon as they saw her.” Grace had another story to tell about Rue. After having received five letters from a stran- ger, in which the lady said nothing about her- self, she asked Rue to write her impressions of WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 31 her unseen correspondent. Rue was willing to try to write a description of the picture that she had formed ; describing color of hair, color of eyes, manner, voice, way of talking. “You are a witch, are n’t you ? ” the letter in reply began ; “ you have made but one mistake, — you called me sallow, I am fair.” “ How did you do it ? ” Grace had asked curiously. “ I did n’t do it,” laughed Rue ; “ she could n’t be anything else ; I found it all in her letters.” Paul put up the bars while Rue was looking out, and came through the yard around to the kitchen for the milk-pails. His step was slow and heavy, and he was not whistling, as usual ; if Paul could have known what a difference his whistling made in Rue’s life, he would have whistled whether he felt like it or not. The sunset having gone, she came back to the fire ; the blaze had died down, the bright- ness in fire and sky had left her. The room was not cheery when the light of the fire was away ; it was not cheery now. Rue could not think of anything cheery anywhere. When her father was stern, her mother low- spirited, Grace selfish, and Paul sullen, Rue 32 RUE'S HELPS. wished that she could run away ; that would be so much easier than staying at home and bear- ing it. She stood on the rug before the fire, not trying to stir it into a blaze, and looked around the room. It was a long, narrow, low room, containing three small windows cur- tained with white dotted muslin fastened back with scarlet cord ; the floor was covered with a dingy rag-carpet ; the dark paper upon the walls was as dingy as the carpet ; there were two pictures in cheap gilt frames, — one an engrav- ing of a scene in the life of Napoleon, with a paragraph in French printed beneath; the other a ship under full sail, with gold letter- ing beneath : “ Ship Peerless, of Boston, Paul Erskine, Commander, passing Flushing, May, 1843.” An extension-table stood in the centre of the room ; under the looking-glass was set a round table covered with a crimson cloth, on which books and newspapers were piled; a faded lounge occupied the space under one window, and in the recess where the broad window-sill was, stood a small rocker and a wicker work- table ; several cane-seated chairs and a side- % WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 33 board completed the furniture. On the centre of the mantel stood a clock, and on either end a large pink-lined shell. The bit of plaster in the fancy box had been taken from the room in which it was said that Columbus was born ; the box itself had been purchased in Austria. It held, also, a piece of lava that her father had picked up on Mt. Vesuvius. The bits of brim- stone were from Sicily ; and the two hideous little iron figures were gods, that a missionary in Burmah had given to her father. “ The man who brought them to me,” said the missionary, “ told me that his grandfather worshipped them.” Under one end of the mantel hung the Farmer’s Almanac ; under the other end an ironing-holder, made of red flannel with a black flannel kitten stitched upon it. Over the looking-glass Rue had twisted, in and out over the cord, arbor-vitse and the red berries of the burning-bush. When her father was gentle, her mother placid, Grace full of life, Paul contented, and Auntie as sunny as she always was, this room was the very heart of home to Rue. It needed, also, that her own heart should be at rest, as it 3 34 RUE'S HELPS. was not often nowadays. She felt as if some- thing were wrong somewhere, because God had not given her a school in answer to her praying. Would fasting help along any? She had tried it more than once, and then, out of sheer faint- ness and discouragement, betaken herself to her food. A week ago she had decided to fast in part, and as butter was the thing she could least comfortably do without, she had not tasted butter since. She was not strong : hard work and repeated disappointments, as well as anxiety, were taking her strength ; the days in which she could not eat bread without butter were physically and therefore mentally exhausting. The fasting was a forlorn hope ; but Christ had said, “ When ye fast,” taking it for granted that his disciples did fast, and she had read of fasting in religious biographies. Auntie had known an old lady who had twice fasted forty days, and had once become so low that her life was despaired of ; her only food during this time having been warm water and a cracker once in a while. Rue had eagerly asked if she received the thing that she had prayed for. “No: she was praying that her WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 35 brother’s mind might be restored ; but he died in the Asylum, notwithstanding her water and crackers.” God did not accept water and crackers then ; what else could she do ? The sigh would have ended in tears but for the opening of a door- Auntie always opened a door softly. “ Oh, Auntie, coming for a talk, I know,” ex- claimed Rue, feeling as if the sunset were still in the sky and the fire blazing. “ Now talk to me, and help me not to be wicked.” She moved the rocker to the fire for Auntie, and seated herself upon the footstool at Auntie’s knee. “ You remind me of Hannah,” said Auntie ; “ she always liked to cry in my lap.” Hannah was not crying anywhere now ; all her tears were wiped away. Rue and Rue’s father were all that Auntie had left to love very much. She was a tall, straight old lady, near- ly fourscore, with the whitest of white hair brushed smoothly back under the plainest of widow’s caps ; her dress was ever the same, some black material, and she always wore a gingham apron, every Sunday morning and 36 RUE'S HELPS. every Wednesday morning putting on a clean one. Paul said that he knew when it was Sun- day, because Auntie put on the apron with pockets on Sunday, — one pocket to hold her spectacles, the other her lumps of loaf sugar. “ Your burning-bush is almost faded, child,” said Auntie, unrolling her long blue knitting- work. “ Yes,” said Rue, glancing through the win- dow at the crooked tree. “ I had a whim about that burning-bush ; in the spring, when the leaves v r ere coming, I said often to myself, ‘ When the berries are red and the green leaves fallen off I shall have my school ; ’ and now it seems as far off as when the buds were green. Oh, Auntie, I can’t see why ; can you? ” % Auntie stooped to toss a chip into the fire. “ I do not always see why, my dear, but I always try to.” “ Oh, do see why for me, then. I am as blind as blind can be.” “I was thinking this morning — ” Auntie’s voice had a long thought in it. She brushed the dust off her fingers and took up her knit- ting ; she could talk more easily w T ith busied WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 37 fingers, even as Rue could listen more easily with idle fingers. “ I was thinking this morning,” she repeated, “ that it requires a long preparation to make us ready to receive the knowledge of God’s will. I confess that I was thinking of your several dis- appointments, and I thought by your face at breakfast that you were not taking his prepara- tion kindly.” “ I want to take it kindly,” said Rue, ear- nestly. “ You are very fond of learning and study ; now tell me what you care most to learn about.” Rue hesitated. Her latest reading had been Geology. “ I asked myself that question sixty years ago, and decided that I cared most for the knowl- edge of God’s will, and for sixty years he has been showing it to me.” “ How ? ” asked Rue. “ By his Word, his Spirit, and his providences.” “ His Word,” repeated Rue ; “ that is what he says to just me in the Bible. I am not so sure about his Spirit ; how am I to know when I am guided by his Spirit? ” 38 RUE’S HELPS. “ His Spirit could not tell you to do anything contrary to his Word or his nature ; his Spirit would not bid you to do anything that it would be sin to do, that it would be wrong for J esus Christ to do if he were living in your home here in Geneva. You know what the fruits of the Spirit are ; any action or thought that har- monizes with the fruits of the Spirit must be dictated by the Spirit. If you pray that you may not grieve the Spirit, be sure that he will never let you. Every suggestion must come from one of three sources, — from Satan, from your own heart, or from the Spirit. Satan cannot suggest good ; your own heart, of itself, cannot suggest good ; ‘ Out of the heart comes evil,’ the Lord said. If the suggestion be in accordance with what you know of God’s heart, it must come from him. There is a way of finding out. God does not speak in an unknown tongue to his little children. Mr. Ireton does not speak in Greek to Nannie when he bids her do some- thing for him.” “ But, Auntie, I don’t know whether my panting a school is from the Spirit, or not,” said Rue, looking troubled. WAITING FOR THE MAIL. 