"I reckon not; but they're enough sight cheaper, especially when they work for nothing. Tailors is awful dear."

"I want the clothes to look nicely. I will pay the tailor."

"We can make the vest and pants well enough if he cuts 'em and makes the coat. S'pose we call and see him on our way home?"

I complied with her request, and found the tailor's establishment a very humble affair on the Mill Road. Mrs. Blake negotiated with him entirely, but he always directed his remarks to me.

"If I hadn't a family of my own to support these hard times, I'd do it for nothing," he a.s.sured me, over and over; "but I'll do it for half price. My time, you know, is all the money I have, and one must look out first for their own."

I found he was a prosy, weak-minded creature, who, although time was so precious, would have stood talking to me of its great value by the hour, if I had patience to listen. I thanked him for his offer, but a.s.sured him I would pay his usual price for the work. Mrs. Blake, however, stipulated that she and her neighbors would relieve him of all but the coat, and I could see he was not pleased with her interference. This matter settled, I hastened home, very uncertain how Mr. Winthrop would regard so much of my time being spent on the Mill Road, if he should discover I had been there twice that day. When I got home Mrs. Flaxman told me he had asked for me each time that I was there, but he did not say anything to me.

CHAPTER XV.

A PLEASANT SURPRISE.

"It would do you good to come to our meeting some Sunday, just to see Mr.

Bowen's face," Mrs. Blake remarked to me one day, some time after the tailor and women folk had completed very satisfactorily their work.

"I would like to go for other reasons than that. One is to hear your minister pray once more, and also to hear him preach."

"Can't you come next Sunday morning?"

"Our service is at the same hour. I do not think Mr. Winthrop would like me to leave our own church. He is very particular about such things."

"I don't see why he should; for he don't set much store by religion."

"He may give me permission to come some time."

"I wish he would come too. Our meetings are so good now. Daniel has perfessed religion."

She spoke in such subdued fashion I looked at her in surprise, thinking she might soon follow his example. I think she was waiting for me to say something; but I felt myself so ignorant on this great subject, I knew not what to say.

"I've wished often of late that I'd never been born. Where I'm to go to once the breath leaves my body, is an awful thought." She burst into a fit of bitter weeping that frightened me.

"Christ is very merciful," I faltered, not knowing what to say.

"I've read that and heard it many a time; but we've been such a heathenish lot, I'm afraid He's left us to ourselves."

"If He has remembered Daniel, that should encourage you."

"He's not lived without thinking of Him as many years as I have."

She sat with bowed head, quietly weeping, the picture of despair. I touched the hard, wrinkled hand that had so often generously ministered to the wants of others.

"Have you asked Christ to forgive you?"

"Asked Him?" she sobbed, "I've been crying day and night for weeks; but I'm only getting further away all the time."

"Does your son, or Mr. Lathrop know?"

"I reckon they don't. I was ashamed for any one to know; but I couldn't help telling you."

"I think it is because you are ashamed that Christ don't bless you."

"I've felt I ought to get up and tell them in meeting what a sinner I've been; but I've always prided myself on being as good as them that's made a perfession, and they all know what a hard, proud wretch I am. I expect they'd say I was a hypocrite."

"I think if you confessed to your church what you have just told me, and asked them to pray for you, G.o.d would make you His child. It seems to me any pet.i.tion Mr. Lathrop and Mr. Bowen would dare to present would be received and granted."

"It's hard on flesh and blood," she moaned.

I saw she was in deep distress and could not understand why she was unwilling to make the confession that might bring peace.

"I wish I'd tended to this when I was young and my heart was easier made new. It's next to impossible to make a crooked old tree turn and grow straight."

"With G.o.d nothing is impossible," I whispered encouragingly.

"Yes, the minister said that last night, and looked straight at me. Maybe he saw trouble in my face, and wanted to help me in spite of myself."

She grew calmer at last. "Now I won't worry you any longer, and I believe I feel better for telling you. I mean to tell them to-night what a proud, stubborn wretch I've been, and ask them to pray for me."

She got up and put on her shawl with a resolute air as if her mind was fully made up, no matter how hard the task might be.

"We'll step in and see the Lark.u.ms. You'll hardly know them now, they're so perked up and tidy. Deary me! how far a little help goes sometimes when folks have a mind to help theirselves."

On our way she said, with matter-of-fact calmness, at the same time setting my blood thrilling through my veins: "I want you to talk with the doctor. I just seen him going to see Mrs. Lark.u.m, and that's what made me hurry you off so soon from my place."

"What do you want me to talk about?" I asked, with some surprise.

"Well, he was looking at Mr. Bowen's eyes the other day, and he says they can cure him up in New York, so he'll see just as well as ever."

I stood perfectly still in the road, my surprise and gladness making me forgetful of everything. "Can this be really true?" I gasped.

"It's a fact; he told me so himself the last time he was there, all about it. I can't just mind all the long words, 'twould take a dictionary to follow him; but the long and the short of it is that he can go into a big hospital, mostly for such things; and there's a great doctor there 'll do it for nothing, provided Mr. Bowen lets a lot of students come and watch.

I guess that's the way the doctors gets their pay from poor folks; and then, if they die, they have their bodies to cut and hack into. But Mr.

Bowen says they may bring all the people in the city if they want to. He don't mind how many looks at him while they're fixing his eyes."

"When will he go?"

"I'm afraid that depends on you. We told the doctor so, and he asked what made a young lady like you set such store by them?"

"What reply did you give?"

"Oh, Mr. Bowen answered for us. He said 'twas because you were one of the Lord's children or was soon going to be; and one of them rare ones we read of in books."

"Mr. Bowen is too partial to be a correct judge, I am afraid."