"Yes," said Grace, "I remember it all. There is the post-office, and Doremus" store, and the little inn, the church with the white spire, the school-house, and the Manse. Drive faster, please, Mildred. I want to see my mother. Just around that fir grove should be the old home of Wishing-Brae."
Tears filled Grace"s eyes. Her heart beat fast.
The Wainwrights" house stood at the end of a long willow-bordered lane.
As the manse carryall turned into this from the road a shout was heard from the house. Presently a rush of children tearing toward the carriage, and a chorus of "Hurrah, here is Grace!" announced the delight of the younger ones at meeting their sister. Mildred drew up at the doorstep, Lawrence helped Grace out, and a fair-haired older sister kissed her and led her to the mother sitting by the window in a great wheeled chair.
The Raeburns hurried away. As they turned out of the lane they met Mr.
Burden with his cart piled high with Grace"s trunks.
"Where shall my boxes be carried, sister?" said Grace, a few minutes later. She was sitting softly stroking her mother"s thin white hand, the mother gazing with pride and joy into the beautiful blooming face of her stranger girl, who had left her a child.
"My middle girl, my precious middle daughter," she said, her eyes filling with tears. "Miriam, Grace, and Eva, now I have you all about me, my three girls. I am a happy woman, Gracie."
"Hallo!" came up the stairs; "Burden"s waiting to be paid. He says it"s a dollar and a quarter. Who"s got the money? There never is any money in this house."
"Hush, Robbie!" cried Miriam, looking over the railing. "The trunks will have to be brought right up here, of course. Set them into our room, and after they are unpacked we"ll put them into the garret. Mother, is there any change in your pocketbook?"
"Don"t trouble mamma," said Grace, waking up to the fact that there was embarra.s.sment in meeting this trifling charge. "I have money;" and she opened her dainty purse for the purpose--a silvery alligator thing with golden clasps and her monogram on it in jewels, and took out the money needed. Her sisters and brother had a glimpse of bills and silver in that well-filled purse.
"Jiminy!" said Robbie to James. "Did you see the money she"s got? Why, father never had as much as that at once."
Which was very true. How should a hard-working country doctor have money to carry about when his bills were hard to collect, when anyway he never kept books, and when his family, what with feeding and clothing and schooling expenses, cost more every year than he could possibly earn?
Poor Doctor Wainwright! He was growing old and bent under the load of care and expense he had to carry. While he couldn"t collect his own bills, because it is unprofessional for a doctor to dun, people did not hesitate to dun him. All this day, as he drove from house to house, over the weary miles, up hill and down, there was a song in his heart. He was a sanguine man. A little bit of hope went a long way in encouraging this good doctor, and he felt sure that better days would dawn for him now that Grace had come home. A less hopeful temperament would have been apt to see rocks in the way, the girl having been so differently educated from the others, and accustomed to luxuries which they had never known.
Not so her father. He saw everything in rose-color.
As Doctor Wainwright toward evening turned his horse"s head homeward he was rudely stopped on a street corner by a red-faced, red-bearded man, who presented him with a bill. The man grumbled out sullenly, with a scowl on his face:
"Doctor Wainwright, I"m sorry to bother you, but this bill has been standing a long time. It will accommodate me very much if you can let me have something on account next Monday. I"ve got engagements to meet--pressing engagements, sir."
"I"ll do my best, Potter," said the doctor. Where he was to get any money by Monday he did not know, but, as Potter said, the money was due.
He thrust the bill into his coat pocket and drove on, half his pleasure in again seeing his child clouded by this encounter. Pulling his gray mustache, the world growing dark as the sun went down, the father"s spirits sank to zero. He had peeped at the bill. It was larger than he had supposed, as bills are apt to be. Two hundred dollars! And he couldn"t borrow, and there was nothing more to mortgage. And Grace"s coming back had led him to sanction the purchase of a new piano, to be paid for by instalments. The piano had been seen going home a few days before, and every creditor the doctor had, seeing its progress, had been quick to put in his claim, reasoning very naturally that if Doctor Wainwright could afford to buy a new piano, he could equally afford to settle his old debts, and must be urged to do so.
The old mare quickened her pace as she saw her stable door ahead of her. The lines hung limp and loose in her master"s hands. Under the pressure of distress about this dreadful two hundred dollars he had forgotten to be glad that Grace was again with them.
Doctor Wainwright was an easy-going as well as a hopeful sort of man, but he was an honest person, and he knew that creditors have a right to be insistent. It distressed him to drag around a load of debt. For days together the poor doctor had driven a long way round rather than to pa.s.s Potter"s store on the main street, the dread of some such encounter and the shame of his position weighing heavily on his soul. It was the harder for him that he had made it a rule never to appear anxious before his wife. Mrs. Wainwright had enough to bear in being ill and in pain.
The doctor braced himself and threw back his shoulders as if casting off a load, as the mare, of her own accord, stopped at the door.
The house was full of light. Merry voices overflowed in rippling speech and laughter. Out swarmed the children to meet papa, and one sweet girl kissed him over and over. "Here I am," she said, "your middle daughter, dearest. Here I am."
CHAPTER III.
GRACE TAKES A HAND.
"Mother, darling, may I have a good long talk with you to-day, a confidential talk, we two by ourselves?"
"Yes, Grace, I shall be delighted."
"And when can it be? You always have so many around you, dear; and no wonder, this is the centre of the house, this chair, which is your throne."
"Well, let me see," said Mrs. Wainwright, considering. "After dinner the children go to Sunday-school, and papa has always a few Sunday patients whom he must visit. Between two and four I am always alone on Sunday and we can have a chat then. Mildred and Frances will probably walk home with Miriam and want to carry you off to the Manse to tea."
"Not on my first home Sunday, mamma," said Grace. "I must have every littlest bit of that here, though I do expect to have good times with the Manse girls. Is Mrs. Raeburn as sweet as ever? I remember her standing at the station and waving me good-bye when I went away with auntie, and Amy, the dearest wee fairy, was by her side."
"Amy is full of plans," said Mrs. Wainwright. "She is going to the League to study art if her mother can spare her. Mildred and Frances want to go on with their French, and one of the little boys, I forget which, has musical talent; but there is no one in Highland who can teach the piano. The Raeburn children are all clever and bright."
"They could hardly help being that, mamma, with such a father and mother, and the atmosphere of such a home."
All this time there was the hurry and bustle of Sunday morning in a large family where every one goes to church, and the time between breakfast and half-past ten is a scramble. Grace kept quietly on with the work she had that morning a.s.sumed, straightening the quilts on the invalid"s chair, bringing her a new book, and setting a little vase with a few late flowers on the table by her side. Out of Grace"s trunks there had been produced gifts for the whole household, and many pretty things, pictures and curios, which lent attractiveness to the parlor, grown shabby and faded with use and poverty, but still a pretty and homelike parlor, as a room which is lived in by well-bred people must always be.
"Well, when the rest have gone to Sunday-school, and papa has started on his afternoon rounds, I"ll come here and take my seat, where I used to when I was a wee tot, and we"ll have an old-fashioned confab. Now, if the girls have finished dressing, I"ll run and get ready for church. I"m so glad all through that I can again hear one of Dr. Raeburn"s helpful sermons."
Mrs. Wainwright smiled.
"To hear Frances" and Amy"s chatter, one would not think that so great a privilege, Grace."
"Oh, that amounts to nothing, mamma! Let somebody else criticise their father and you"d hear another story. Ministers" families are apt to be a little less appreciative than outsiders, they are so used to the minister in all his moods. But Dr. Raeburn"s "Every Morning" has been my companion book to the Bible ever since I was old enough to like and need such books, and though I was so small when I went that I remember only the music of his voice, I want to hear him preach again."
"Grace," came a call from the floor above, "you can have your turn at the basin and the looking-gla.s.s if you"ll come this minute. Hurry, dear, I"m keeping Eva off by strategy. You have your hair to do and I want you to hook my collar. You must have finished in mother"s room, and it"s my belief you two are just chattering. Hurry, please, dear!"
"Yes, Miriam, I"m coming. But let Eva go on. It takes only a second for me to slip into my jacket. I never dress for church," she explained to her mother. "This little black gown is what I always wear on Sundays."
"I wish you could have a room of your own, daughter. It"s hard after you"ve had independence so long to be sandwiched in between Miriam and Eva. But we could not manage another room just now." The mother looked wistful.
"I"m doing very well, mamma. Never give it a thought. Why, it"s fun being with my sisters as I always used to be. Miriam is the one ent.i.tled to a separate room, if anybody could have it."
Yet she stifled a sigh as she ran up to the large, ill-appointed chamber which the three sisters used in common.
When you have had your own separate, individual room for years, with every dainty belonging that is possible for a luxurious taste to provide, it is a bit of a trial to give it up and be satisfied with a cot at one end of a long, barnlike place, with no chance for solitude, and only one mirror and one pitcher and basin to serve the needs of three persons. It can be borne, however, as every small trial in this world may, if there is a cheerful spirit and a strong, loving heart to fall back on. Besides, most things may be improved if you know how to go about the task. The chief thing is first to accept the situation, and then bravely to undertake the changing it for the better.
"Doctor," said the mother, as her husband brushed his thin gray hair in front of his chiffonier, while the merry sound of their children"s voices came floating down to them through open doors, "thank the dear Lord for me in my stead when you sit in the pew to-day. I"ll be with you in my thoughts. It"s such a blessed thing that our little middle girl is at home with us."
The doctor sighed. That bill in his pocket was burning like fire in his soul. He was not a cent nearer meeting it than he had been on Friday, and to-morrow was but twenty-four hours off. Yesterday he had tried to borrow from a cousin, but in vain.
"I fail to see a blessing anywhere, Charlotte," he said. "Things couldn"t well be worse. This is a dark bit of the road." He checked himself. Why had he saddened her? It was not his custom.
"When things are at the very worst, Jack, I"ve always noticed that they take a turn for the better. "It may not be my way; it may not be thy way; but yet in His own way the Lord will provide."" Mrs. Wainwright spoke steadily and cheerfully. Her thin cheeks flushed with feeling. Her tones were strong. Her smile was like a sunbeam. Doctor Wainwright"s courage rose.
"Anyway, darling wife, you are the best blessing a man ever had." He stooped and kissed her like a lover.
Presently the whole family, Grace walking proudly at her father"s side, took their way across the fields to church.
Perhaps you may have seen lovely Sunday mornings, but I don"t think there is a place in the whole world where Sunday sunshine is as clear, Sunday stillness as full of rest, Sunday flowers as fragrant, as in our hamlet among the hills, our own dear Highland. Far and near the roads wind past farms and fields, with simple, happy homes nestling under the shadow of the mountains. You hear the church bells, and their sound is soft and clear as they break the golden silence. Groups of people, rosy-cheeked children, and st.u.r.dy boys and pleasant looking men and women pa.s.s you walking to church, exchanging greetings. Carriage loads of old and young drive on, all going the same way. It makes me think of a verse in the Psalm which my old Scottish mother loved:
"I joyed when to the house of G.o.d "Go up," they said to me, "Jerusalem, within thy gates Our feet shall standing be.""