"Well, Mademoiselle, that would be different. I believe that with you to teach me I might be able to learn," and the Breton leaned on his spade for a moment.
"You are so good and kind and patient, I would not be afraid of your making fun of my stupid efforts. But there, there"s no use thinking about such a thing, for I"m sure the master would never permit it."
In fact, it did take a good deal to persuade my father, but Paula won his permission at last.
The Breton came every Sat.u.r.day night Teresa complained a bit at first, seeing her kitchen turned into a night-school for such a rough ignorant workman, but "for Jesus Christ"s sake," as Paula said, she had finally become resigned to it.
It was both pathetic and comical to see the efforts which the poor Breton made as he tried to follow with one great finger the letters which his young teacher pointed out to him. He stumbled on, making many mistakes but never discouraged. Sometimes the sweat poured from him when the task appeared too great for him. At such times he would put his head in his hands for a moment, and then with a great sigh he would start again.
At the end of a month he had learned the alphabet and nothing more, and even then he would make mistakes in naming some of the letters.
"Oh, let him go!" said Teresa; "He"s like myself. He"ll never, never learn."
But Paula"s great eyes opened wide.
"Why! I simply can"t abandon him unless he should give it up himself.
Besides, have you forgotten, Teresa, what it cost me to learn to sew? But in the end I did learn; didn"t I?"
So Teresa was silenced. But once the Breton had conquered this first barrier to learning his progress was truly surprising. In the factory his "primer" was always with him. At lunch hours he would either study alone, or he"d persuade a fellow-worker more advanced than himself to help him with his lesson. Paula was astonished to see how quickly she could teach him a verse in the New Testament or a Waldensian hymn she had learned in the valley back home.
Nevertheless a week or two later she noticed that he seemed to be a bit distraught, and she feared he was getting weary of his task.
"What"s the matter?" she finally asked him.
"Oh, nothing," and the Breton grinned rather sheepishly.
"Tell me, Breton, what"s on your mind?"
He "guffawed" loudly as he replied. "You"d make fun of me sure, if I told you--and with good reason!"
"I never make fun of anybody," said Paula reproachfully.
"No, Mademoiselle, I ought to know that better than anybody else! Well, perhaps it might be well to tell you. If you must know it, it"s this. There are many, I find, that wish they could be in my place tonight"
"In your place tonight! I"m afraid I don"t understand," said Paula.
"Well, you see, I"ve got four or five of my old comrades who also want to learn to read."
"What"s that you say?" Teresa said, leaving her knitting to stand in front of the Breton.
"It"s true enough, Mademoiselle Teresa, and when you come to think of it, it"s not a bit strange. Down at the factory they all know how different and how happy I am. And how they _did_ make fun of me when I started to learn to read; just as they jeered at me when Jesus Christ first saved me and I learned to pray. But now some of them, seeing how happy I am, also want to learn to read, and who knows but some day they will want to know how to pray to the Lord Jesus also."
Paula"s face took on a serious expression--finally, however, she slowly shook her head.
"You know, with all my heart, I"d just love to see it done; but it"s perfectly useless, I suppose, even to think of it," she said sadly.
"That"s what I thought too," said the Breton; "I"m sorry I spoke about it"
"Well, I don"t know," continued Paula. "Perhaps if uncle could arrange somehow--I remember when I was quite small, back there before I left the valley, my dear G.o.d-mother had a night-school for laboring men. It was just lovely. They learned to read and to write and to calculate. Then afterwards, each night before they went home they would sing hymns and read the Bible and pray."
"Yes, that"s all very well," said Teresa, "but your G.o.dmother was a whole lot older than you are."
Then turning to the Breton she said, "Why don"t you tell your friends to go to the night-school in town?"
"Well," said the Breton, "I know that they learn "many things there, but they don"t teach them about G.o.d. However, as I said before, I"m sorry I mentioned the thing. Let"s not speak any more about it"
"Well," said Paula, "I know what I"m going to do. I"ll speak to the Lord Jesus about it."
And Paula kept her promise.
One morning, Teresa usually not at all inquisitive, could not seem to keep her eyes off a certain little group who were engaged in moving out of one of the "Red Cottages" across the road. More than once she paused in her work of tidying up the house to peer out of one window or another.
"That"s the very best of all the "Red Cottages," and they"re moving out of it" remarked Teresa finally.
"Of what importance is that?" I said to her rather sharply. I was washing windows, and that task always made me irritable.
"I"ve got a certain idea!" Teresa said.
"Tell me your big idea," I said.
"No! You go ahead and wash your windows. I"ll tell you tomorrow."
The next day I had forgotten Teresa and her "idea." As I started for school she called after me, "Tell Mademoiselle Virtud, your teacher, that I want to see her just as soon as possible I have to speak to her about something."
In a flash I remembered what had happened the day before, and I guessed at once her secret.
"Teresa!" I cried, "I"ve got it now! You want Mademoiselle Virtud to occupy the house across the road. Oh, that"ll be just wonderful!"
Teresa tried to put on her most severe air, but failed completely.
"Well, supposing that"s not so!" she said, as with a grin she pushed me out of the door.
Mademoiselle Virtud came over that very afternoon. I hadn"t been mistaken.
She and Teresa went immediately across the road to see the empty house, the owner having left the key with us. At the end of a half-hour they returned.
"It"s all arranged," and Teresa beamed. "She"s coming to live here right across the road. I"ve thought of the thing for a long time, and now at last the house I wanted is empty. Monsieur Bouche has promised to fix the fence and put a new coat of paint on the house, and with some of our plants placed in the front garden, it will be a fitting place for your dear teacher and her Gabriel to live in."
"You"ll certainly spoil us!" said Mlle. Virtud. "What a joy it will be to leave that stuffy apartment in town. And Gabriel is so pale and weak! This lovely air of the open country will make a new boy of him!"
It was a wonderful time we had, arranging things before our new neighbors moved in. Teresa bought some neat linen curtains for the windows of the little house. Paula and I gathered quant.i.ties of flowers from our garden and placed them over the chimney-piece, and on the bedroom shelves and in the window-seats--and how the floors and windows did shine after we had finished polishing them!
When our teacher arrived in a coach with Gabriel packed in among the usual quant.i.ty of small household things of all kinds, great was her grat.i.tude and surprise to find, in the transformed house, such signs of our care and affection for her. It was indeed the happiest moving day that could possibly be imagined. There wasn"t a great quant.i.ty of furniture, and in an hour or so after our new neighbors" arrival we had everything installed in its proper place, to say nothing of the bright fire burning in the tiny grate and the kettle singing merrily above it. One would hardly have dreamed that it had been an empty house that very morning. Even Louis who had come home for a week-end holiday had sailed in and worked with us in putting the little cottage in order.
That night the newly-arrived tenants ate with us, after which Louis carried Gabriel pick-a-back to his new home across the road.
Our teacher"s prophecy regarding Gabriel was a correct one. Day by day he grew stronger. Teresa looked out for him during school-hours, and with his bright happy ways he soon became a great favorite with the neighborhood boys.