Chapter 1 Comfortable Troubles
Chapter 1
Comfortable Troubles
“The baby’s crying, Lucy. Won’t you come down and take him for a few minutes?” said a voice from the foot of the stairs. Lucy sighed heavily, and with a gesture of impatience threw a book she had been intent on reading down on the table.
“He’s always crying, I do believe,” she said to herself, as she slowly went to soothe the cries, casting a farewell glance at her books and papers. Her sensitive ear shrank from the crying sound as if it were the sound of a trumpet.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, dear,” said her mother, “but Baby will not be still any longer, and here are my hands in the bread dough. Just take him a minute, and I’ll be ready for him soon.”
Lucy took the child and as his cries of discontent gave way to a smile of delight, she put down the ungracious feeling that struggled for the victory. She kissed his round, rosy cheek more than once.
“I can’t help loving you, though you are such a little torment,” she said. “People call children troublesome comforts. I can see why.”
“I call them comfortable troubles,” replied her mother, glancing fondly at them both. “We all have trouble of some kind, and this is the best of all.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Lucy, “but we have a great many other troubles too.”
“What, for instance?” asked her mother, whose energies were not all concentrated on the bread.
“Oh dear! There are plenty of them,” replied Lucy. “First, you and Father have to work so hard.”
“And?”
“And we are so poor, and the boys are so noisy, and I can’t go to school, and a new baby comes so often. It tires me when I think it will always be this way.”
The mother sighed and kneaded the dough with a wearied hand.
“Yes, it’s all true,” she said. “It’s all true. I wish I could shield you from these troubles, my child, but I can’t. Eventually, as the children get older—then—I don’t know, I can’t see far ahead myself.”
“As fast as the children get older, more keep coming,” said Lucy, despondently.
“Yes, I know,” said her mother, “but eventually that will end; you’ll have more time to study than you’ve had lately. Rebecca will stay home and help me.”
“That won’t do,” returned Lucy. She walked to the window and stood looking out in gloomy silence.
Her mother finished her work in silence equally profound, took off the clean checked apron, and approaching the window, offered to take the child.
“Now, dear,” she said.
But the child, pleased with his new position, hung back smiling and clasping his little arms closer around Lucy’s neck.
“How the little fellow loves you,” cried her mother. “It’s such a pity he isn’t fond of Rebecca. I wonder where she is, and Hatty too. It’s high time they were all here.”
“It’s five-thirty,” said Lucy, “and they ought to be home, I’m sure. But this is always the way just because I want to study.”
“You can study now,” said her mother gently, taking the baby from her.
“No, I can’t, it’s time to get tea,” returned Lucy. “And it’s Rebecca’s week to get tea, but she’s taken off, nobody knows where.”
Ungracious in word, but not in deed, Lucy went and filled the teakettle, and arranged the fire.
“I wouldn’t do that, dear,” said her mother. “If Rebecca finds she can depend on you to do her work for her, there’ll be no end to the trouble.”
“But Father will be in soon wanting his supper. Besides, I see the boys coming up the road, and they’ll be hungry too.”
She rushed around cutting bread, skimming milk, and arranging plates and knives with neatness and precision.
“She’s worth a dozen of Rebecca,” thought her mother. “Where can that child be? It’s too bad! ”
“Now Baby, you must sit in the cradle awhile and let Mother help sister Lucy.”
She seated the child snugly amid pillows, gave him a tin plate and pewter spoon for his amusement, and hurried to relieve Lucy. Baby immediately began to make a noise thumping the spoon on the plate in no particular rhythm. While he played with great energy, the boys rushed in from school.
“There you go!” shouted John to his books as he threw them down, “And good riddance, you old plagues! Is supper ready? I hope so. I’m as hungry as three bears.”
“One bear will do,” said his mother, smiling and patting his shoulders. “But where are the girls?”
“Rebecca is strolling along the road somewhere. She’ll get here by midnight, I’m sure. And Hatty had to stay in school. She blotted her writing book and then got angry about it, and so she has to stay in until she’s learned a chapter in the Bible.”
“Why Rebecca!” said her mother, as Lucy’s older sister came leisurely in. “Where have you been?”
“Nowhere, Mother! I came straight home from school.”
“But you should have been home in time to get tea. Lucy had to do it for you.”
“I came as fast as I could, Mother,” said Rebecca. “Susan Turner and I came along together. I couldn’t come running up the hill as the boys did. And Lucy needn’t have went and got tea. She knew I was coming.”
“Needn’t have went!” laughed John. “Let’s hear you parse that!”
“I wish I could shake you and Lucy up together,” said her mother, as she contrasted Lucy’s hurried, rather excited step, with Rebecca’s slow pace. “It would improve you both. But run now and call Father. Tell him tea is on the table. And come here, all of you, and wash your faces,” she added, as the boys prepared themselves for an attack on the table. But at this auspicious moment, the baby’s energetic spoon flew up with great force on his fair, high forehead instead of the plate at which the blow was aimed.
Down fell the spoon and plate, and up went shout after shout of baby terror and pain. Everybody ran to see what was the matter; everybody tried to catch up and appease the poor little victim. Yet somehow it was in Lucy’s arms that he was carried off, and it was Lucy’s hand that bathed the aching head, and Lucy’s voice that melted into the tones of tenderest love and pity, and finally soothed and hushed those pitiful cries.
“Oh, what a bump there is on his forehead!” said Rebecca, who, as usual, arrived at the scene too late to offer anything more than an exclamation of horror.
“I’ll keep him while you have supper, Mother,” said Lucy, now quite over thoughts of herself, in sympathy for the child. “He’ll soon get over it. I’ll take him outside.”
She went out, kissing him as she went along, and as soon as they reached the open air, found herself repaid by the brilliant smile that lit up the teary blue eyes.
“There ought to be a rainbow somewhere,” she said, holding the baby up to the window where they could see him inside, and pointing out his tears and smiles. “It rains and shines at the same time.”
“You’re the rainbow yourself,” said her father, giving her one of his own rare precious smiles. Lucy turned quickly away, with a blush of shame on her cheek that no reproof could have burned there.
“He didn’t hear me fussing when Mother called me,” she thought. “He doesn’t know how cross and selfish I was. If he had, he wouldn’t have called me a rainbow. He’d have called me a thunder cloud!”
And the “thunder cloud” relieved itself of a few large, heavy drops, and grew lighter. She went inside to supper, giving the baby to her mother. They had all left the table, and as she sat down she noticed that not a bit of bread was left for her.
“I should think somebody would have saved a slice of bread for me,” she thought. “But it’s always the way. Nobody cares whether I eat or not.”
Just then her brother Arthur came running up to her, holding a huge loaf of bread in his arms.
“It’s for you,” he said. “I got it myself. And I picked a few strawberries for you on the way to school.”
“Why didn’t you give them to Mother?” she asked.
“Oh, I did give her half,” he said.
“But why didn’t you give her all of them?” she asked, knowing full well the reason, yet wanting to hear it.
He only looked up, however, and smiled. Yet the smile answered and cheered her, and again she felt humbled and reproved.
“Oh! I do wish I were good!” she thought.
She finished her supper in silence and then helped her mother get the little ones off to bed. During their labors, Lucy’s younger sister Hatty came running in, tired, flushed, and out of breath.
“Oh dear!” she cried. Have you all finished supper? That’s too bad! I hate to eat all by myself! I would think somebody might have waited for me. Where’s the milk? Oh! Here it is. Where’s Mother? Mother, Mother! I need a new pair of shoes. There’s a hole in the side of one of mine, and the heels are all worn out so that little stones get in and half kill me.”
“You’ve only had them a month,” said Rebecca, reproachfully.
“Well, so what?” retorted Hatty.
“Nothing. But if we are all going to get a new pair of shoes every month, I wonder where the money is to come from.”
“Who said you were all to have a new pair?” asked Hatty, laughing and gulping down milk as fast as possible. “If I went creeping along like a snail, as you do, maybe my shoes would last longer; but I’d rather die than go crawling about like that. How cross Miss Wheeler was this afternoon! Well! I don’t care. I feel as well as ever, now that I’ve had my supper. And I was glad I kept her in, at least. And now I’m going down to Mary Johnson’s.”
She grabbed her bonnet and was hurrying away when her mother detained her.
“Have you finished those socks, dear?” she asked.
“No, mother, not quite. I’ll finish them tomorrow. I’m going to Mary Johnson’s now.”
“I’m afraid Arthur’s socks won’t fare very well in your hands,” said her mother.
Hatty wavered a little between Mary Johnson and Arthur. “Tomorrow is Saturday,” she said, “and I’ll have time to sew his things then.” And satisfied with her mother’s half consent, away she flew.
“Lucy, dear, hadn’t you better go too?” asked her mother.
“I thought I would study a little now,” she answered.
“Oh, go out and get refreshed first. You’ve had no relaxation today.”
“It relaxes me to study,” said Lucy.
“Just to please me!” urged her mother.
Lucy took down her bonnet and stood hesitating a moment, then slowly left the house and turned toward a neighboring grove. She was soon lost to her mother’s anxious eye among the shadows.
“She hasn’t gone with Hatty after all,” she thought. Her hopeful heart was heavy with care this night, and she looked down with a troubled face at the baby who lay half-asleep in her arms. He opened his eyes and seemed to catch the shadow from hers, for he curled up his lip with a pitiful, grieved expression, very touching to behold. She reassured him with a smile, and began to sing, “There is a Land of Pure Delight.”
The baby lay quiet and soon fell asleep, and the heavy heart lay quiet too, for there was comfort for it in that good old hymn.