Charlotte M. Yonge

“ She considered Amy Lee quite old enough and pretty enough to have a young man, and to begin to have some fun, and she thought all the care taken of the girl by her father and aunts only so much stupid old fidget and jealousy, which it was fun to baffle and elude. Thus she was a very dangerous companion for Amy, perhaps more so than a really worse person, who would have been more shocking and startling to Amy's sense of modesty and propriety. ”

“ And Jessie, who did not feel bound to obey her sister, ran lightly off, hoping poor mother would not be very fiercely talked at by Grace. She herself was clear that work undertaken for God's sake should not be dropped when one's own gain began to clash with it; while Grace, who had always been held up as the model, helpful good daughter, plainly thought, "working for one's family," and securing something extra, was such a reason as to make it a sort of duty to throw over all she had taken up under the spur of that sermon in the spring. ”

“ It seems to me that we have had a glimpse of what the hundredfold produce may be. Think of my dear sister Edith, working away at her class when there was much less help than now, and see what some of them have grown up, especially Amy Cuthbert. I know she had a good home, and other helps; but still I heard what she said of Edith's teaching and training. It has helped her to make that young Ambrose Cuthbert what he is,—and what may not be his harvest!"
"As though a man should cast seed into the field," said Mr. Somers, thoughtfully. ”

“ Lee came in, and that kind of chatter ceased.
But Jessie's cheeks burned over her work, and she thought how foolish she had been to let her fancy for doing good, and trying to live up to the sermon, lead her where she was allowed to do nothing, but get herself teased and insulted, right and left.
Should she give up? That would look so silly. Yes, but would it not serve Miss Manners right for giving her such stupid, unspiritual kind of teaching to do, and also serve the children right for their pertness and ingratitude? ”

“ Grace can't bear to hear of anything going that she has not got."
"Any way," said Mrs. Hollis, "you shall not be put upon, Jessie, after all your work at Miss Lee's. You shall not be made to sit at your needle all the evening. It is not good for your health, and so I shall tell Grace."
Jessie thanked her mother, but had little hope that she would be able to hold out against one so determined as her sister. Neither mother nor daughter would have broken her heart if Grace's application had come too late, but no such thing! ”

“ Lee," said Florence, looking up in the droll, saucy way that served her instead of beauty, "it was only two old aunts. One always reckons it fair play by an old aunt."
"Have done with nonsense like that," said Mr. Lee. "Now, Florence Cray, mine is a girl with no mother. My sisters, and I have done our best to keep [155] her a good, innocent girl, and we can't but feel it a hard thing that you should come leading her to keep company, without our knowledge, with a fellow that you must know is not such as we would approve." ”

“ However, at last Florence came out, quite excited. "Oh, Amy, if you'll only wait a minute, you'll see him come out."
"I can't! I can't! Let us go," cried Amy, quite shocked and shy.
"Nonsense! Poor man, he need never see you. He is just going to take the horses up for his master to ride out with Miss Robson. Such sweet horses! Mr. Holdaway gave 120 guineas for his. Think of that, Amy! Here now, come round the corner of the hedge, and he'll never see you." ”

“ I wanted Jessie to walk back with me, but they are all so terrible busy over that there wedding order, that she could not come till the last minute."
"Working all through the dinner hour!" said Amy. "What a shame!"
"So I say. But that Grace Hollis is a one! I wouldn't have her for my sister. Here, come in, Amy, I must just give mother the pepper."
"No, I can't do that," said Amy, uneasily, for she knew her father would be displeased if she went into a public-house; though as Florence said, "Gracious! You needn't go near the bar. It's only the back door! ”

“ Really Amy felt as if it would have been [142] less dreadful to have been locked up in her room, or sitting sewing with Jessie in the workroom, than sitting up in the parlour with the rest, and hearing her father show his pride in her, making her fetch her prize for the religious examination, and talking of her almost as if he wanted to compare her with Aunt Amy's missionary son. ”

“ They say that little Mary Smithers has been such a comfort to her little brother, by repeating to him what she learns on Sundays, and that she has been so much more good and attentive to him of late."
"I am sure, ma'am," said Jessie, "I never thought Mary Smithers seemed to understand anything."
"We can never judge where the seed we sow will prosper," said Miss Dora, thinking within herself of the different results with Amy and Jessie. ”

“ Lee, the baker. It was the refinement, he said."
"Nonsense, Florence; don't," said Amy, blushing as crimson as the rose she tried to gather.
"I'm not talking nonsense; I never did see a poor man so smitten."
"Now, Florence, you shouldn't say such things; father and aunts would not like it. I shall go in."
"Fathers and aunts are all alike; they never do like such things. ”

“ They are dear little girls, some of them, only Susan Bray always wants a tight hand over her, Polly Smithers is so stupid, and Fanny Morris is so sly, one always has to be on the watch."
"Here she comes," said Florence, who was the nearest to the window, and the entrance of Aunt Rose, a brisk, fair little woman, young looking for her age, recalled all her "young ladies," as Florence and Jessie, and perhaps Amy likewise, preferred being called, to recollect that stitching was, at that moment at least, the first thing to be attended to. ”

“ It is the devices of our own heart that we prefer to follow, whether for good or harm, and specially when we think them good. And yet we specially pray that we may do all such good works as our Lord hath prepared for us to walk in, as if we were to rejoice in having our opportunities set out before us, yet the teaching a dull little boy of whom she had had experience in the infant school, did not seem to her half such interesting work as converting an old woman of whom strange things were said. ”

“ There's poor old half-blind Mrs. Long. She is left to herself terribly, they do [17] say, and I'll go and tidy her up, and see to her and read to her every day. I could do it before my work and after. Maybe I might get her to be a better old woman than she ever has been. Books say that nothing so softens an old woman as a nice, bright young girl coming in to make much of her, and I'm sure I'm nice and bright—not so much in myself, but compared with the whole lot of Longs."
So Amy told her plan to her aunts, as soon as Florence and Jessie had gone home to dinner. ”

“ Not that Jessie saw or thought that this had been the case. Yet if she had let herself be swept away with Grace's vehement desire to engross all the needlework, she must have given up her preparation; she would have been wearied, hurried, and very likely fretful and impatient. At any rate, there would not have been that kindness and earnestness which leads others to be good far more than the actual words of teaching. ”

“ Amy came with the tears standing in her eyes into the back kitchen, vexed, angered, and ready to be cross. Her aunt set her to prepare the dish for the Irish stew, while she said, "Father was at his jokes with me, Amy. He don't like you to be running in and out to old Sally Long by yourself; no more does your Aunt Rosy nor I; but the poor old body didn't ought to be neglected, and [22] the sermon was just as much for me as for you, so I've made up my mind to look after her a bit, and you may come in with me sometimes if you like." ”

“ To be sure, the going to some mission in a dreadfully ignorant and wicked place would have seemed more like a good work than just taking a class who would be taught and cared for even without her help. ”

“ Amy and Jessie both uttered some thanks, and Aunt Rose observed that it was very kind in Miss Dora, and that it would be very nice for the girls. Florence did not speak, but they saw her face and the gesture of her foot, and when Miss Lee walked out with the lady through the garden, Florence broke out—
"Well, how fond some folks are of being put to school, to be sure!"
"'Tisn't school," said Amy, "it is [57] reading with Miss Manners in her drawing-room."
"O yes; she makes you think yourselves ladies just to keep on grinding you at the teaching for ever; but I likes my fun when my work's done. ”

“ Then stories that she disliked were afloat about the man. He was said to be teaching the young men at the Manners Arms new gambling games, and to be putting them up to bet on race-horses; and once she heard a very unpleasant laugh about very good, closely-kept girls being as ready to carry on as other folk.
Once when she asked Amy after little Edwin Smithers, the answer was rather cross. "Oh! just as usual. He is the most tiresome fractious child I ever saw!"
"Children are often like that when they are going to be worse," said Jessie. ”

“ The two aunts looked at one another, and Aunt Charlotte said, "Did the sermon make you think of that?" in rather a doubtful tone.
"Yes," said Amy. "One seemed to long to be doing some good, not be only an empty flower, as he said."
"Mrs. Long," said Aunt Rose; "she ain't a very nice person to fix upon." [18]
"But no one wants it so much, aunt," said Amy.
"That's true," said Aunt Charlotte. "Well, Amy, we must think about it, and speak to your father. Run out now, and gather a bit of parsley for his cheese." ”

“ Then Miss Manners told the eight little girls who stood in a row that Miss Hollis would teach them, and she hoped they would be very good and steady and obedient, and say their lessons perfectly.
Jessie knew all but two who came from the other end of the parish, and were not customers of her mother—at least she knew what families they belonged to, and had only to learn their Christian names from her list.
"Collect, please teacher," said the first girl, Susan Bray, very much in the voice in which she would have said "Candles, please miss," in the shop. ”

“ It was such a new sensation altogether to be always popping about and peeping to admire the handsome stranger and his fine horses, and then to whisk giggling out of the way, in terror lest they had been seen. ”

“ It would be a real kindness to go in and see after that poor little man."
"Yes," added Rose; "you might run in at dinner time, and I'd spare you a little time then, and you might read to him, and cheer him up—yes, and teach him a bit too."
"Edwin Smithers was always a very tiresome, stupid little boy," said Amy, rather crossly, from her infant school recollections.
"Then he will want help all the more," said Aunt Rose, and it sounded almost [26] like mimicry of what Amy had said of old Mrs. Long. ”

“ Miss Manners was really coming into the shop, and her little Skye terrier was already running on into the work-room, for he was great friends with Amy; he sniffed about, sat up, and gave his paw, and let her show off his tricks while his mistress was talking to Aunt Charlotte.
Then she came on, nodded kindly a little greeting to each as they all rose, and said that she had been thinking [56] that it would be a good thing for all the teachers to meet for half an hour before evensong on Fridays and look over their Sunday work together, so as to make it chime together. ”

“ Soulsby's sermon on Friday evening. Amy came home and nearly said it all off to her Aunt Rose, and the girls were all talking about it in the workroom in the morning, full of earnestness to make some effort."
"I saw they were looking very attentive," said Mr. Somers. "Shall you accept Jessie Hollis's help?"
"I think I can make a class up for her."
"I suppose it would be a pity to check her, but do you imagine that she knows anything?"
"I don't know; but she is not at all a stupid girl, and she cannot go far wrong [30] with the questions on the Catechism and Gospels that I shall give her. ”

“ Perhaps Rose Lee, who had had her dreams and fancies like other people, was [132] thinking of the tales where some one looks in at the window and sees the good young person bending over the sufferer's couch, and reading good books to him; but it was certainly not Amy whom she saw as the door stood open. There was the little boy on the old couch under the window, moaning a little, but it was his sister who was standing by him with a cup of something, coaxing him with "Now Teddy, do be a good boy, and drink it, do'ee now."
"Why, Polly," said Aunt Rose, "are you here?" ”

“ Her nephews were both from home, one as a pupil-teacher, the other at a baker's with a superior business, and her niece, Amy, the only girl of the family, had begun as a pupil-teacher, but she had such bad headaches at the end of her first year that her father was afraid to let her go on studying for examinations, and cancelled her engagement, and thus she became an assistant to her aunt. Then Jessie Hollis, from the shop, came home from her aunt's, unwilling to go to service, and begged Miss Lee to take her and teach her dressmaking ”

“ Hollis; "'tis the very way to make her have a headache to keep her poor nose to the grindstone. The doctor, he says to me, 'She've had a shock, and she'll require care, and not to be overstrained.' And I tell you, Grace, I won't have Jessie put [83] upon, and kept muzzing over her needle like a blackamoor slave, without a taste of fresh air. So run away, Jessie, and get your walk." ”

“ Wingfield, Mr. Holdaway's head groom, who has come over with another man and a boy, and three of the loveliest horses you ever did see."
"Oh, yes, I heard," said Jessie; "and how he stared about at Church! He ought to be ashamed of himself." [102]
"Oh! that's what Grace says, of course," said Florence; "and she's a regular old maid. She needn't fear that he'll stare at her."
Wherewith both Florence and Amy giggled, and before Jessie's hot answer was out of her mouth, one of the aunts called out—
"Girls, girls, what are you doing? No gossiping there." ”