On the third day, the little fellow"s fever went down and, peeping over the doctor"s shoulder, he smiled and chattered and asked for his "daddy" and his "mathar."
Then Big John broke down utterly and tried to speak his grat.i.tude, but the doctor abruptly told him to quit his blubbering and hitch up, for little Murdock would be chasing the hens again in a week or two.
The doctor went faithfully every day and dressed little Murdock"s wound until it no longer needed his care, remaining perfectly sober meanwhile. Hope sprang up in Mary"s heart--for love believeth all things.
At night when he went to bed and she carefully locked the doors and took the keys to her room, she breathed a sigh of relief. One more day won!
But alas for Mary"s hopes! They were built upon the slipping, sliding sands of human desire. One night she found him in the office of the hotel; a red-faced, senseless, gibbering old man, arguing theology with a brother Scotchman, who was in the same condition of mellow exhilaration.
Mary"s white face as she guided her father through the door had an effect upon the men who sat around the office. Kind-hearted fellows they were, and they felt sorry for the poor little motherless girl, sorry for "old Doc" too. One after another they went home, feeling just a little ashamed.
The bartender, a new one from across the line, a dapper chap with diamonds, was indignant. "I"ll give that old man a straight pointer,"
he said, "that his girl has to stay out of here. This is no place for women, anyway"--which is true, G.o.d knows.
Five years went by and Mary Barner lived on in the lonely house and did all that human power could do to stay her father"s evil course. But the years told heavily upon him. He had made some fatal mistakes in his prescribing, and the people had been compelled to get in another doctor, though a great many of those who had known him in his best days still clung to the "old man" in spite of his drinking. They could not forget how he had fought with death for them and for their children.
Of all his former skill but little remained now except his wonderful presence in the sick-room.
He could still inspire the greatest confidence and hope. Still at his coming a sick man"s fears fell away from him, and in their stead came hope and good cheer. This was the old man"s good gift that even his years of sinning could not wholly destroy. G.o.d had marked him for a great physician.
CHAPTER III
THE PINK LADY
When Mrs. Francis decided to play the Lady Bountiful to the Watson family, she not only ministered to their physical necessity but she conscientiously set about to do them good, if they would be done good to. Mrs. Francis"s heart was kind, when you could get to it; but it was so deeply crusted over with theories and reflections and abstract truths that not very many people knew that she had one.
When little Danny"s arms were thrown around her neck, and he called her his dear sweet, pink lady, her pseudo-intellectuality broke down before a power which had lain dormant. She had always talked a great deal of the joys of motherhood, and the rapturous delights of mother-love. Not many of the mothers knew as much of the proper care of an infant during the period of dent.i.tion as she. She had read papers at mothers"
meetings, and was as full of health talks as a school physiology.
But it was the touch of Danny"s soft cheek and clinging arms that brought to her the rapture that is so sweet it hurts, and she realised that she had missed the sweetest thing in life. A tiny flame of real love began to glimmer in her heart and feebly shed its beams among the debris of cold theories and second-hand sensations that had filled it hitherto.
She worried Danny with her attentions, although he tried hard to put up with them. She was the lady of his dreams, for Pearl"s imagination had clothed her with all the virtues and graces.
Hers was a strangely inconsistent character, spiritually minded, but selfish; loving humanity when it is spelled with a capital, but knowing nothing of the individual. The flower of holiness in her heart was like the haughty orchid that blooms in the hothouse, untouched by wind or cold, beautiful to behold but comforting no one with its beauty.
Pearl Watson was like the rugged little anemone, the wind flower that lifts its head from the cheerless prairie. No kind hand softens the heat or the cold, nor tempers the wind, and yet the very winds that blow upon it and the hot sun that beats upon it bring to it a grace, a hardiness, a fragrance of good cheer, that gladdens the hearts of all who pa.s.s that way.
Mrs. Francis found herself strongly attracted to Pearl. Pearl, the housekeeper, the homemaker, a child with a woman"s responsibility, appealed to Mrs. Francis. She thought about Pearl very often.
Noticing one day that Pearl was thin and pale, she decided at once that she needed a health talk. Pearl sat like a graven image while Mrs.
Francis conscientiously tried to stir up in her the seeds of right living.
"Oh, ma!" Pearl said to her mother that night, when the children had gone to bed and they were sewing by the fire. "Oh, ma! she told me more to-day about me insides than I would care to remember. Mind ye, ma, there"s a sthring down yer back no bigger"n a knittin" needle, and if ye ever broke it ye"d snuff out before ye knowed what ye was doin", and there"s a tin pan in yer ear that if ye got a dinge in it, it wouldn"t be worth a dhirty postage stamp for hearin" wid, and ye mustn"t skip ma, for it will disturb yer Latin parts, and ye mustn"t eat seeds, or ye"ll get the thing that pa had--what is it called ma?"
Her mother told her.
"Yes, appendicitis, that"s what she said. I never knowed there were so many places inside a person to go wrong, did ye, ma? I just thought we had liver and lights and a few things like that."
"Don"t worry, alannah," her mother said soothingly, as she cut out the other leg of Jimmy"s pants. "The Lord made us right I guess, and he won"t let anything happen to us."
But Pearl was not yet satisfied. "But, oh ma," she said, as she hastily worked a b.u.t.tonhole. "You don"t know about the diseases that are goin"
"round. Mind ye, there"s tuberoses in the cows even, and them that sly about it, and there"s diseases in the milk as big as a chew o" gum and us not seein" them. Every drop of it we use should be scalded well, and oh, ma, I wonder anyone of us is alive for we"re not half clean! The poison pours out of the skin night and day, carbolic acid she said, and every last wan o" us should have a sponge bath at night--that"s just to slop yerself all up and down with a rag, and an oliver in the mornin".
Ma, what"s an oliver, d"ye think?"
"Ask Camilla," Mrs. Watson said, somewhat alarmed at these hygienic problems. "Camilla is grand at explaining Mrs. Francis"s quare ways."
Pearl"s brown eyes were full of worry.
"It"s hard to git time to be healthy, ma," she said; "we should keep the kittle bilin" all the time, she says, to keep the humanity in the air--Oh, I wish she hadn"t a told me, I never thought atin" hurt anyone, but she says lots of things that taste good is black pison.
Isn"t it quare, ma, the Lord put such poor works in us and us not there at the time to raise a hand."
They sewed in silence for a few minutes.
Then Pearl said: "Let us go to bed now, ma, me eyes are shuttin". I"ll go back to-morrow and ask Camilla about the "oliver.""
CHAPTER IV
THE BAND OF HOPE
Mary Barner had learned the lesson early that the only easing of her own pain was in helping others to bear theirs, and so it came about that there was perhaps no one in Millford more beloved than she.
Perhaps it was the memory of her own lost childhood that caused her heart to go out in love and sympathy to every little boy and girl in the village.
Their joys were hers; their sorrows also. She took slivers from little fingers with great skill, beguiling the owners thereof with wonderful songs and stories. She piloted weary little plodders through pages of "homework." She mended torn "pinnies" so that even vigilant mothers never knew that their little girls had jumped the fence at all. She made dresses for concerts at short notice. She appeased angry parents, and many a time prevented the fall of correction"s rod.
When Tommy Watson beguiled Ignatius McSorley, Jr., to leave his mother"s door, and go swimming in the river, promising faithfully to "b.u.t.ton up his back"--Ignatius being a wise child who knew his limitations--and when Tommy Watson forgot that promise and basely deserted Ignatius to catch on the back of a buggy that came along the river road, leaving his unhappy friend clad in one small shirt, vainly imploring him to return, Ignatius could not go home, for his mother would know that he had again yielded to the siren"s voice; so it was to the Barner back door that he turned his guilty steps. Miss Barner was talking to a patient in the office when she heard a small voice at the kitchen door full of distress, whimpering:
"Please Miss Barner, I"m in a bad way. Tommy Watson said he"d help me and he never!"
Miss Barner went quickly, and there on the doorstep stood a tiny cupid in tears, tightly clasping his scanty wardrobe to his bosom.
"He said he"d help me and he never!" he repeated in a burst of rage as she drew him in hastily.
"Never mind, honey," she said, struggling to control her laughter.
"Just wait till I catch Tommy Watson!"
Miss Barner was the a.s.sistant Band of Hope teacher. On Monday afternoon it was part of her duty to go around and help the busy mothers to get the children ready for the meeting. She also took her turn with Mrs.
White in making taffy, for they had learned that when temperance sentiment waned, taffy, with nuts in it, had a wonderful power to bind and hold the wavering childish heart.
There was no human way of telling a taffy day--the only sure way was to go every time. The two little White girls always knew, but do you think they would tell? Not they. There was secrecy written all over their blond faces, and in every strand of their straw-coloured hair. Once they deliberately stood by and heard Minnie McSorley and Mary Watson plan to go down to the creamery for p.u.s.s.y-willows on Monday afternoon--there were four plates of taffy on their mother"s pantry shelf at the time and yet they gave no sign--Minnie McSorley and Mary Watson went blindly on and reaped a harvest of regrets.
There was no use offering the White girls anything for the information.
Gla.s.s alleys, paint cards or even popcorn rings were powerless to corrupt them. Once Jimmy Watson became the hero of an hour by circulating the report that he had smelled it cooking when he took the milk to Miss Barner"s; but alas, for circ.u.mstantial evidence.
Every child went to Band of Hope that Monday afternoon eager and expectant; but it was only a hard lesson on the effect of alcohol on the lining of the stomach that they got, and when Mrs. White complimented them on their increased attendance and gave out the closing hymn,