CHAPTER XIII.

_A NEW FRIEND._

RHODA did not know for a long time how near she had been to the accomplishment of her wishes. She took a tearful leave of Mrs. Ferrand and Isa, and went back to 'The Home' feeling sadly enough.

She was mortified at being dismissed and ashamed at the circumstances which led to the dismissal, and she was broken-hearted at parting with Isa, whom she had learned to love with all the intensity of a school-girl's affection. She had never been much given to striking up those sudden and violent intimacies common among girls, and which are often as short-lived as fervent. She had been a favourite with all the girls at Boonville, but she had been specially intimate with none of them except Alice Brown, who had gone away to the far West a year before. But she loved Isa Ferrand with all her heart, and none the less that she was not insensible to Isa's faults and weaknesses. And now they must part, and would probably never see any more of each other. They might sometimes meet in the street, but there could be no visiting and no correspondence—they could hardly even stop to talk, because Isa would be disobeying her father. It was very, very hard.

Rhoda fell easily enough into her old life at "The Home." Neither Miss Carpenter nor the good managers were disposed to be hard upon her, considering the temptations to which she had been exposed.

"You should not have done it, of course," said Mrs. Mulford. "Deceit is and must be always wrong. But I think Mr. Ferrand made a very unnecessary fuss about the matter. I dare say you would have felt twice as penitent if he had given you permission to practise every day."

"I don't know. I was very sorry as it was," said Rhoda. "But I did feel a great deal more so that day he talked so kindly to me."

"How was that?" asked Mrs. Mulford.

Rhoda repeated the substance of the conversation which had taken place in the library.

"He was just so kind, and even kinder, all that week, till the afternoon Mr. Weightman called, and after that he never spoke to me again till he paid me my wages when I came away. I can't help thinking Mr. Weightman set him against me. He has always been my enemy. I am quite sure that Mr. and Mrs. Bowers would not have sent me away but for him."

"It hardly seems as if any one could be so meanly spiteful as that, and toward a young girl," remarked Mrs. Mulford. "And yet I know narrow-minded, ignorant people will carry enmity to great lengths sometimes."

"I know he does. There was a woman lived next him with whom he had a quarrel. She was an ignorant, hot-tempered woman, and used rather hard language sometimes, but that was the worst of her. Well, he got angry at her for something about a grapevine, and he went to the man whose house she lived in and told him such stories about her that he got her turned out of her house. I don't really think, either, that he means to tell downright lies, but he thinks that any one who opposes him must be everything that is bad."

"He must be a nice person. Well, Rhoda, you did right to come back here, and you are come in very good time too, for several of the old ladies are ailing and need a deal of waiting on. Just take hold and help Mrs. Lambert whenever you see a chance. I suppose you don't give up your idea of getting an education?"

"No, ma'am. I don't think I can give it up so long as there is any 'me,'" said Rhoda, smiling somewhat sadly. "But the time is getting on very fast."

"Yes, and you are getting on too. Well, study as much as you can, my dear; and if you want any help in the way of books, come to me about it. Don't be discouraged. I shall try to find you a place where you can work for your board and go to school, and in the mean time just make yourself useful here. This will always be your home, you know."

Rhoda was very willing to make herself useful. She waited on Granny Parsons, now sick and confined to her room, and did errands for the house, and made caps and aprons for the old ladies, and read aloud to Mrs. Carson, the blind woman, and whenever she had a little time practised scales and exercises diligently on the little old piano, compared to which even the school-room piano at Mr. Ferrand's was a fine instrument.

One day, as she was coming home from executing multifarious commissions, with her hands full of little bundles, she saw Isa crossing the street, and waited for her to come up. Isa was thinner and more languid than ever. She had her arms full of books, and seemed so occupied with her own thoughts that she hardly recognized Rhoda, even when she spoke. Then, with a cry of joy which made two or three people look round, and dropping a shower of books, she threw her arms round her friend's neck and kissed her.

"Oh how glad I am to see you!" she exclaimed. "I have watched and watched for you every day since I began to go to school again, but I never could see you."

"To school!" said Rhoda, picking up Isa's books with some trouble, for her own hands were full. "You don't mean to say you are going to school again, after all the doctor said? I do think your father is crazy."

"I don't know whether 'he' is crazy, but I know who will be," said Isa.

"But when the doctor said so much about it—"

"Oh, pa thinks the doctor was mistaken," said Isa. "He went over and talked to the teachers, and Miss Black—just like her, the cross, meddling old thing!—told him that I was always going into Palmer's and buying ice cream and cake and candy, and that was what made me sick. I have done it sometimes when ma gave me money because I got so faint and hungry. So pa believed it all, of course, and here I am grinding away again. I declare, Rhoda, there isn't a day that I don't wish I was dead."

"Oh, Isa! You shouldn't!"

"I can't help it. I do, and so would you in my place. No, you wouldn't; you would like it, for you are not a dunce and a fool, as I am."

"You are not a dunce, nor a fool either," said Rhoda, warmly. "It doesn't follow that you are a dunce because you can't learn music. A great many people can't. But how do you get on in school? Can you learn your lessons?"

"Yes, some of them. We are reviewing, and the girls help me. But you don't know how my head feels. There is a place up the back of it that feels perfectly numb and dead, and some days the feeling goes down my spine and all over me, and I can't sleep at night. I am just doing lessons, lessons all the time. Oh, if I could only run away or do something!"

The girls had turned into a shady, quiet street by this time, and were walking slowly along together.

"What are you thinking about, Rhoda?" asked Isa, a little impatiently, after a minute's silence. "Why don't you speak?"

"Because I want to say something, and I don't quite know how," answered Rhoda. "I am afraid you will think it odd, coming from me, after all that has happened."

"I shall think it is just right, whatever it is, I know."

"Well, then, Isa dear, you know who it was that said,—

"'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'

"Why don't you go to him?"

"I don't know; I never thought I could. How?"

"Don't you know the Bible says—

"'...he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him'?

"Nobody loves us as our heavenly Father does and if you ask him, I am sure he will find some way to help you."

"I shouldn't dare, I am so wicked," said Isa. "I suppose that is only meant for very good people."

"No, indeed," answered Rhoda, earnestly. "If it was, I don't know who in all this world would ever dare to come. Why, Isa, don't you read your Bible? Don't you know that Jesus Christ came into the world on purpose to save sinners? Don't you know what he said when the Pharisees found fault with him for eating with them? I thought you read your Bible every night."

"Well, I do, but I am so tired and stupid I can't take any sense of it. But, Rhoda, the Bible says very hard things about liars, and I do tell fibs and cheat in my lessons. I should be in disgrace all the time if Kate Collins and Mary Pomeroy didn't do my sums for me or let me copy theirs."

"Then I'd be in disgrace," said Rhoda, undauntedly. "Perhaps that would be the best way to make your father understand that you can't learn. Anyhow, Isa, I would pray. I would tell God all about that too, as well as the rest, and ask him to take you out of temptation. He will find some way, I know. He isn't like an earthly friend that can only do very little or perhaps nothing at all."

"But, Rhoda—"

"Well, what?"

"I suppose you must have asked him a great many times to let you get an education?"

"Yes, and I am sure he will, if it is best for me," said Rhoda.

"Yet he let you get found out and sent away from our house."

"Yes, and good reason why—because I had forgotten him, and was trying to help myself in my own way. I was like Jacob in the Bible. God had promised him the birthright, but he wasn't contented to wait. He went to work to get it in underhand ways—by cheating and deceiving his old father, and taking a mean advantage of his brother; and just see how much trouble he made himself. But come now, Isa dear, promise me you will pray."

"Well, I will, Rhoda, I truly will. I am sure I 'labour and am heavy laden' enough, if that is all. I know that it isn't right to cheat, and it makes me ashamed and miserable all the time; but if I don't bring home a good report, pa is so mortified and scolds so and ma is so miserable. But I will try, and you will pray for me, won't you?"

"Indeed I will! Oh, Isa, you don't know how I miss you and want to see you."

"And I am sure I miss you. Have you got a place yet?"

"No. Mrs. Mulford says I am not to be in a hurry about one, because I am really needed at 'The Home,' and she does not think they can spare me just yet."

"What do you do? Tell me."

"Oh, a great many different things," said Rhoda. "I carry up breakfast to Granny Parsons and Mrs. Josleyn when they can't come down; I make and do up caps, and go on errands; and sometimes I keep the books for Miss Carpenter. They are talking about having a school in the house again, when the new wing is done, and perhaps they may let me teach if Miss Wilkins is not able. And I practise an hour every day—sometimes more than that. I have plenty to do and plenty of variety, you see."

"I should like just such a life as that," said Isa. "Well, good-bye, dear; don't forget me."

"There is no danger," said Rhoda. "I haven't so many friends that I can afford to lose any."

"Oh, I forgot to tell you that Aunt Harriet is coming to make us a visit," said Isa, turning back. "I wish you could see her. She is perfectly lovely. I think I should be happy if I could only go to school to Aunt Harriet Hardy."

"She has a school, has she?"

"Yes, a boarding-school in Cohansey—not a large one: she has only about twenty-five girls; and oh, they do have such good times! I was there visiting once with mother, and if I didn't envy those girls! But I mustn't stop another minute, or pa will ask me where I have been. Good-bye."

"You are rather late, Isabella," said her father as she entered. "What detained you?"

"I walked round with one of the girls. Pa, I'll tell you the truth," said Isa, with a spasm of frankness, but trembling as she spoke. "I met Rhoda Bowers and walked part of the way home with her. Now, don't be angry, please don't."

"I am not angry, Isabella, but I am grieved and surprised. Why should you wish to associate with such a girl as that?"

"Why, pa, you said yourself that Rhoda had an uncommonly clear mind."

"She is not deficient in intellect," said Mr. Ferrand—"nay, I will go farther, and say she has an unusually good mind; but she is not trustworthy. She deceived me here, and the person who has called to see me on business two or three times lately tells me that she made great trouble in the family of her adopted parents."

"I don't believe it," said Isa, boldly, "and I wonder, pa, that you should let yourself be influenced by such a common man as that, especially when you said yourself that he tried to take the advantage of you."

"There is something in that view of the case, certainly," said Mr. Ferrand, "and I must say the young person expressed herself very becomingly in regard to her conduct here. But, Isabella, remember that I do not wish you to associate with her. You need not mortify her by refusing to speak when you meet,—we should be courteous to persons in every position in life; but you must not walk in the street, or stop to converse, with her. You had better go and dress for dinner, my daughter. Your aunt Harriet is here."

"Oh, is she? How glad I am! When did she come?"

"By the five o'clock train," said Mr. Ferrand, thinking, with a little something like a pain at his heart, that his daughter had never greeted his coming with any such show of warmth.

But he was altogether too well satisfied with himself—too well balanced, he would have said—to permit himself to be jealous. An affectionate and faithful father should, of course, have the first place in his child's affections. He was affectionate and faithful, therefore it must follow that Isabella loved him better than any one. He did not care very much for demonstrations of feeling, and it would certainly have annoyed him very much if Isabella had rushed into his room, thrown her arms around his neck, and hugged and kissed him as she did her aunt Harriet.

Aunt Harriet, however, did not seem to be in the least disturbed, even though Isa's embrace distressingly crushed her illusion ruffles and tumbled the rich soft black silk which was her favourite wear. She was a delicate little woman, well on in the thirties at the least, yet not old enough to account for the fact that her soft wavy hair was quite gray. She had clear gray eyes,—the colour of a shaded pond,—eyes not at all subdued in their expression by a life of school-teaching, but which could dance with glee or soften with affection or pity, or on occasion flash alarmingly with indignation. She was always elegantly and rather richly dressed, and was, on the whole, one of those persons of whom you naturally say, on seeing them, "Who is that?"

"There! Sit down and let me look at you," said she when Isa's raptures were a little calmed down. "Why, child, how thin you are! And how tired you look! I should not allow you to look like that if you were one of my girls."

"Don't you let your girls look tired, Aunt Harriet?"

"No. When they begin to have that sort of look, I carry them off for a row up the race and a pic-nic, or some such nonsense."

"Then I wish I was one of your girls, for I am tired all the time," said poor Isa. "I am so tired now I should like to go straight to bed."

"Go to bed, then," said Aunt Harriet. "Lie down here on my bed and sleep till dinner-time."

"I can't," said Isa. "I must dress for dinner, and then look over my Latin. I wish there had never been any ancient Romans, or else that I had been born one."

"Then you might have been obliged to learn Greek, and that would have been worse."

"Pa says I have got to begin Greek next year," said Isa. "Oh dear! If I could only see any end to it, I shouldn't mind so much. But I must go and dress, or I shall not dare to show myself at the dinner-table."

"Oh dear!" she said to herself as she went to her own room. "I do wish pa would go away, and then ma and I could have Aunt Harriet all to ourselves. Pa will be wanting to talk education all the time. I never was so sick of anything. If I ever have any children, they shall never be educated at all."

Miss Hardy was no very great favourite with her brother-in-law; and, as old-fashioned people say, "there was no love lost between them." Miss Hardy was by no means one of those vine-like, submissive women who were Mr. Ferrand's standards of excellence. She had been at the head of an establishment of her own ever since she was three-and-twenty—an establishment in which her will was law. She had had great experience of all sorts of people. She had formed her own opinions and was prepared to defend them, and she did not defer to Mr. Ferrand's superior claims in point of intellect, family, and social position so much as that gentleman thought his wife's sister should have done.

On the other hand, Miss Hardy thought her brother-in-law conceited and disposed to be tyrannical both to his wife and daughter, and perhaps she hardly did justice to his good qualities. However, she was incapable of treating him with disrespect in the presence of her sister, and Mr. Ferrand, on his part, could not be rude to a lady in his own house. Nevertheless, Mrs. Ferrand always felt a secret uneasiness when the two were together, and it was with a feeling of relief that she heard her husband apologize to her sister for the necessity which existed of his leaving town to-morrow to attend to some property he was about to sell at Hobarttown.

"So you mean to sell that mill?" said his wife.

"Yes, I think so. I have a good opportunity, and I prefer to invest the money where it will take care of itself. You had better take the carriage and give your sister a view of the different places in the city. Probably she will like to visit 'The House of Refuge' and 'The School for Truant Children.'"

"I want to see your old ladies' 'Home,'" said Miss Hardy. "They are thinking of getting up a similar institution in Cohansey, and I have heard this one highly spoken of."

"I believe the old people are made very comfortable," said Mrs. Ferrand. "Of course they grumble more or less; but from all I can learn, I think they must be well cared for."

"At the same time, there is a lamentable want of system in the arrangements," remarked Mr. Ferrand. "Their hours are very late, and there seem to be absolutely no rules about exercising and diet. It cannot be proper that any persons should have tea three times a day, and I am credibly informed that several of the old people are allowed to take snuff."

"I suppose they have been used to it all their lives, pa," Isa ventured to say.

"Do you consider that any argument for criminal indulgence, Isabella?" asked her father.

"I shouldn't call it exactly a criminal indulgence to take snuff," answered Isa, emboldened by her aunt's smile. "I shouldn't think it best for a young person to begin, because it is a disagreeable habit; but I should think, when a woman had taken it till she was seventy or eighty years old, she might be allowed to go on for the rest of her life."

"And if a man had gone on stealing till he was eighty, would that be a reason for his keeping on?"

"There is a difference between stealing and taking snuff," answered Isa.

"Decidedly a difference," remarked Miss Hardy. "Did you tell me that there was a department for children and young people attached to the institution?"

"Yes; they have eight little girls, who remain till they are fifteen, unless they are adopted or bound out to suitable places before that time."

"And what becomes of them then?"

"They go out as servants or seamstresses, and Mrs. Mulford tells me they usually do very well. They look upon the institution as a real 'home;' and as long as they behave tolerably well, they are allowed and encouraged to go back there whenever they are out of a place. In that way the managers are able to keep informed of them, and also to maintain a certain control over them."

"A very good plan," said Miss Hardy.

"Yes, I quite approve of that part of the institution," said Mr. Ferrand, "though I fear that hardly enough pains is taken to bring up the children with a proper sense of their position, and of the deference due to their superiors."

"I was not without an object in asking," said Miss Hardy. "I am very much in want of a dining-room girl—one to set and wait on the table and take care of the dishes, which is in itself no small piece of work in a family like ours."

"What has become of that pretty little Margaret you had when I was there?" asked Mrs. Ferrand. "You thought of taking her into school, I remember."

"So I did," answered Miss Hardy. "She did very well for a year and a half, and then she came to an untimely end. You need not look distressed, Lucilla; it was nothing very tragical. The last long vacation she went out to Denver with Mary Nichols—you remember her—partly as companion, partly to take care of the children. That was the last of her. A well-to-do farmer saw her, fell in love with her, and married her. I felt a little uneasy, but Mary writes me she has done very well and is very happy. Since then I have had a succession of incapables, and I want somebody I can keep."

Isa glanced at her mother. Mrs. Ferrand made her a little sign which she well understood as a signal that she was to say nothing.

In compliment to her aunt, and also because the school-room piano had altogether broken down, Isa was allowed to intermit her practising for one evening, but she could not on any account be allowed to sit up a moment later than usual.

But when Miss Hardy went up to bed, Isa peeped out and called her:

"Oh, auntie, please come in. I want to talk to you."

"Get into bed, then, you imprudent child," said Miss Hardy. "Why are you up in this cold room?"

"It is cold," said Isa, shivering—"too cold for you to sit here, I am afraid. But I do want to talk to you about Rhoda. I do want you to take her so much."

"Who is Rhoda?" asked Miss Hardy, wrapping herself in a shawl, for it was one of Mr. Ferrand's maxims that nobody should sleep in a warm room, no matter what the weather might be. "Tell me about her."

"She is a girl who used to live here—oh, such a good girl! She used to help me about my sums and my music, and all, but pa sent her away because he caught her playing upon the piano, but she is living at 'The Home' now, but she wants a place, and she is so anxious to get an education. She studies at home all the time, every chance she can get. Just think, Aunt Harriet—really studies algebra because she likes it; and she can sing beautifully, and read music, and all. Please ask ma about her. She can tell you the story better than I can. And she knows how to work, and she said herself that she was more help to her than any girl she ever had," said Isa, mixing up her pronouns in a way that would have horrified her father. "And she wants an education more than anything else in the world, and that made pa send her away—at least that wasn't all, for Rhoda herself said she did wrong, but she told pa she was sorry."

"I can't say I get any very lucid ideas from your story, Isa," said Miss Hardy.

"I never can tell anything straight, especially when I am in a hurry," said poor Isa. "But you ask ma. She can tell you all about Rhoda, for she liked her. And I am sure she would suit you, for I love her dearly."

"A very good reason. Well, my love, it is time you were asleep, so we won't talk any more to-night. How you are shivering!"

"I always shiver so when I first go to bed," said Isa, "and then I am so hot you don't know. Marion brings me a hot brick every night, but I can't get warm for all."

"I really think she might answer your purpose very well," said Mrs. Ferrand when Miss Hardy applied to her for information about Rhoda. "She is very neat, and the most trustworthy girl of her age I ever saw. She never disappointed me."

"That is a valuable quality, certainly; but why did she go away? Isa said something about a piano which I did not understand."

Mrs. Ferrand repeated the story, to which her sister listened with great interest.

"Poor child! It was a hard case," said she. "I have known plenty of girls who cheated to get rid of lessons, but I can't say I ever met such an instance as this. And you say she is out of a place? Could I see her, do you think?"

"Oh yes. We shall probably find her at 'The Home;' and if not, I will send for her."

"And won't you give her an education, Aunt Harriet, or let her work for it?" asked Isa, eagerly.

"I will see about that, my child. If she seems likely to suit me, I should prefer to take her as a servant, to begin with, and then I can observe her for myself. I promise you I will do all I can for her."

"All right," said Isa. She had perfect confidence in Aunt Harriet, and not the least doubt of Rhoda's capacity to make her way with "reasonable people," as she expressed it.

Miss Hardy called at "The Home," saw Rhoda, and had a long talk with her.

"You think you would like to come?"

"Oh yes, ma'am."

"It is a long journey," said Miss Hardy, "but a very easy one, and I will send you careful directions. I suppose, if I do not want you till the first of September, you can remain here?"

Rhoda looked at Miss Carpenter.

"Certainly," answered Miss Carpenter. "We shall be very glad to have her. Rhoda makes herself very useful in the family."

"Very well; then we will consider the matter settled," said Miss Hardy—"that is, if I can depend on your not disappointing me and going off to some other place. You look rather indignant, Rhoda, but that is the way I have been served a great many times. I keep a place for a girl and put myself to some inconvenience to keep my engagement to her, but she does not consider herself in the least bound by her promise to me if she fancies she can do better."

"I think you may depend on Rhoda," said Miss Carpenter.

Rhoda was delighted. She liked the change, and she had imbibed from Isa a very high idea of Miss Hardy, which was not lessened by seeing her. Then, best of all, she should be in a school, and it would go hard but she would benefit thereby.