CHAPTER VIII

"A REAL LITTLE HOME MISSIONARY"

MRS. DALE was rather astonished one morning when, coming into her sitting room to breakfast, she saw a rather crumpled note lying on her plate, directed in an uneducated hand:—

"To Mrs. Webster's lady.

"From Ellen's friend what spoke to you last Tuesday. With her respects and best wishes."

She was still more astonished when she opened and read Peggy's recipe.

And she read it, not once, nor twice, but she seemed to be weighing every word; and then slowly her eyes filled with tears.

The interest of a little servant-maid in her welfare did not seem impertinent; it touched the heart that had till now been filled with aching bitterness.

When Ellen came to clear away the breakfast things she spoke to her.

"Did your little friend give you this note to give me?" she asked.

Ellen crimsoned, then answered nervously—

"Yes, please, mum. And I hope you'll excuse her, mum, if she have written anythin' not proper, for Peggy be different like to most of the folks here. You see, her come from Lunnon!"

"So do I," said Mrs. Dale pleasantly. "If she comes to see you again, I should like to have a little chat with her."

"Yes, mum, thank you."

Ellen retreated in confusion; then she came back.

"If you please, mum, you won't let on to missus that I give you a letter from Peggy. Her might think it forward, and I telled Peggy it were."

Mrs. Dale promised, with a smile, that she would say nothing about it. Two days later she was walking out when she met Peggy with a basket of eggs on her arm.

Peggy smiled broadly, and Mrs. Dale stopped her.

"Thank you," she said, "for what you sent me the other day. I wonder what made you do it?"

"Oh, please 'm," was the breathless reply, "I knowed you would be glad to hear what would be good for yer 'eart. You did tell me 'm you had the 'eartache, didn't you? And I has set my mind all along to be like that there little captive maid in the Bible. Only she had a sick capting, and I can't find one nowheres. And there be no prophets nowadays—only doctors, and they don't seem certain sure of theirselves bein' able to cure everybody. So, please 'm, I were very down'earted, and then I were told by a missionary gent and my missus that some people didn't know where to go to get their souls or 'earts cured. And, please 'm, I thought I'd just like to tell 'em, and I hopes you'll be quite well in your 'eart soon 'm; I does indeed."

Her big blue eyes looked so earnest and confiding that Mrs. Dale felt she could not damp her ardour.

"Thank you, Peggy," she said. "You are the first person that I have ever met in my life that has cared for my soul."

She walked on rapidly without another word, and Peggy stood staring after her.

"Oh my! She is a nice lady. I do hopes she will be better soon."

She was very interested a few days afterwards when she heard that the Miss Churchhills were going to call on Mrs. Webster's lodger, and she ventured to ask Helen when she came back if she had seen her.

"Yes, I have, Peggy. I have discovered that my father knew her some years ago. She used to be one of his Sunday school teachers. Then she married, and has had a lot of trouble since. She has come into the country to recruit her health."

Helen did not tell Peggy Mrs. Dale's history. It was a pitiable one. She was tempted to marry a man she did not love, for the sake of a home. Her husband proved to be an atheist and a drunkard; he led her a miserable life. Three out of her four children died in their infancy. Her only boy began to develop a taste for drink when he was only fourteen, and was expelled from two different schools. She took him abroad, and more to her relief than grief, he died of a rapid decline when he was seventeen. Then she came back to her husband, and had now only been a widow for a few months.

She said to Helen very sadly—

"My life seems finished, for all that makes life pleasant has gone from me. I have no belongings, no religion, no hope; I bury myself in books, but they are beginning to weary me."

"There is never an end of anything," said Helen softly. "Life is made up of continual fresh beginnings, is it not?"

"Ah, that is talk—a mere platitude," Mrs. Dale said a little impatiently. "I can never make a beginning."

"But out of chaos God can."

Helen could not resist this remark.

Mrs. Dale looked at her.

"I have lost my faith in God, and yet—"

She moved across to her writing-desk, and placed a slip of paper in Helen's hand. It was Peggy's recipe.

"You may smile at it," she said; "but this has brought back such an overwhelming charge of memories that I dare not say there is no God. I believe it is the production of a small maid of yours. Was it her own idea?"

"Entirely," said Helen, looking at the paper, with a grave smile; "but there are great truths, Mrs. Dale, wrapped up in this small message."

"There are," responded Mrs. Dale; and then she talked of other matters.

"Peggy," said Helen to her sister afterwards, "is a real little home missionary. However queer her methods are, she has the two requisites for success—enthusiasm and perseverance."

"Yes," said Joyce, "but we engaged her to be our little servant; we don't want her to be a missionary. However, I will say she shows both enthusiasm and perseverance in our service; her scrubbing can be heard half a mile off!"

Spring slowly turned to summer, and when the fresh-cut hay lay about in the meadows a sad trouble came to Peggy.

She had been out one afternoon on an errand, and when she brought in the tea her eyes were red and swollen. Helen was very busy that evening getting some letters written for the foreign mail, but after tea, when Joyce went out to the kitchen to fetch something, she came upon Peggy sitting on a low stool by the fire, her apron up to her eyes, and great sobs escaping her.

"Now what is the matter?" Joyce asked a little sharply. "Have you broken anything?"

Peggy rose from her seat, and looked at Joyce with tragic eyes.

"No 'm, 'tis a deep trouble of my own, and I shan't never—no never—get over it."

Joyce seated herself on the edge of the kitchen table, and prepared herself for a little entertainment. She was sincerely fond of Peggy, but she did not regard her little maid's personal experiences with such sympathetic interest as her sister did.

"Well, what is it, Peggy? Has any one died?"

"'Tis worse 'm. My friend for life has giv' me up."

"Oh dear, that is sad! Is that a friend in London?"

"No 'm. 'Tis Ellen at the farm."

"You haven't known her for very long, Peggy. But why has she given you up?"

The apron went up to the eyes again; and thou came the explanation, poured forth with many sobs—

"'Tis like this 'm—it has struck me so sudden and so cruel that I'm fairly dazed to think on 't. Me and Ellen were life friends. I was bringin' on her fine to like the heathen, and she giv' me twopence halfpenny last week for my stockin'. We was goin to grow up side by side as it were, and I telled her everythink! And when you and Miss Helen were dead 'm, we was goin' up to London to get ready for bein' missionaries. That's what we arranged 'm.

"I never forgot Ellen in my prayers 'm—not once—and when I says 'Our Father,' I thinks of Ellen and me right through. You see 'm, the two of us made it seem right. I never could understand who the 'our' were. And my heart and Ellen's were just made for one another. I often says to her,—

"'Ellen,' I says, 'you listens and I talks; isn't that just right?' I says.

"And she always said yes to everythink I said—leastways, after I had learned her to, she did. And I was a-think-in' 'm that p'raps one day you might let me go into the town by the carrier, and then I was goin' to get Ellen a cap—a nice cap 'm—for present. I've always told her she'd look 'andsome in a cap.

"Well 'm, to-day I went to the village and posted your letters, and I was a-comin' across the fields, for 'tis shorter, and there were no bulls in 'em, when I see'd Ellen sittin' on a stile, and a young man beside her.

"I went up to her 'm, just as I always does, but the young man says in my very face 'm, 'Who be this guy, Ellen?'

"And she laughed, though her cheeks were red, and she says, "'Tis Peggy Perkins, servant down to Ivy Cottage.'

"'Tis Ellen's friend,' I said, lookin' at 'em straight. 'And, Ellen, I wants to have a word with you.'

"Ellen tossed up her head 'm, and says, 'I'm busy to-day. Can't you see it?' she says.

"'I sees you are idlin' with a strange young man,' I says.

"Then she turns upon me quite angry like. 'You go on, and mind your own business. I ain't a-goin' to walk out with you no more.'

"And then she laughed and he laughed, and I says, 'You mean to break our friendship, Ellen?'

"And she nodded; and then I come on home with a broken 'eart. He be a stranger 'm, come to help Mr. Webster with his bay; and Ellen is on with him, and off with me. I couldn't have believed she would have laughed at me—I couldn't indeed; and all our years to come—hers and mine—are no good at all now. And she don't love me no more. I h'ain't got one friend in the whole big world, and, please 'm, I didn't think Ellen would have done it!"

"Oh, well, Peggy, it isn't so bad. Cheer up! The young man will go away, and Ellen will come back to you."

"Never 'm, never! I shouldn't arsk her to. I couldn't never trust her agen."

"Well, Ellen is no great loss. There are other girls in the world quite as nice as she."

[Illustration: "THEN I COME HOME WITH A BROKEN 'EART."]

"But I were a-bringin' of her on so," sobbed Peggy. "I couldn't never make friends with no one else. She were a servant-maid just like me, and we had points in common, and we could talk our missuses over, and what we had for dinner, and the trouble the oving giv' us, and the cat and dogs, and the mice, oh! Please 'm, I couldn't find another Ellen, and she have broke my 'eart, she have!"

Joyce could not comfort her, neither could Helen. She cried herself to sleep that night, and the perfidy of Ellen was a daily, hourly nightmare to her.

"What's the good o' yer goin' on like this, Peggy?" she addressed herself passionately one lovely June day. "Better be like Albert Edward, and say nothin' to troubles that come to yer! He eats his food and sleeps, and don't make much o' disappointments. And nobody cares for your broken 'eart. The sun comes out just as fine, and the flowers keep on a-growin', and the summer don't turn to winter to soot your feelin's. You've been served shameful cruel, that you have, but just set yer mind to it that you has to walk along by yourself till you be growed-up. 'Tis wonderful what you can do if you sets your mind to it!"

And by dint of "setting her mind to it," Peggy did show a Spartan-like cheeriness, but her happy smile seemed to have turned into a hard grin, and Joyce could not stand it.

"Do, for goodness' sake, Peggy, keep from making such hideous faces!" she exclaimed.

And Peggy hung her head at once.

"Please 'm, I were only tryin' to be cheerful," she said. "I ain't a-goin' to cry no more."

"I'm glad to hear it. Ellen isn't worth the fuss; but you need not try to wear a perpetual smile. It isn't natural."

"No 'm, it ain't," said Peggy, with a sigh of relief. "It be my outside a-tryin' to smile, when my innards be still a-weepin'. But I'll do better soon 'm—I reely will!"

Failing to have Ellen's company, she turned her attention to old Job Somers, and whenever she could get an afternoon out, she spent it in his cottage tidying him up.

"And, please 'm," she informed Helen, "we do a bit of sighin' together, which be very comfortin'. For he have had a heap o' trouble, poor old man, near as much as Bible Job did have—and we reads about him together, and what he don't feel, I does, so every chapter seem to fit us."

"But, Peggy," said Helen, "I don't think moaning over each other's troubles will do you much good. I thought you were going to try to be one of God's little messengers, and cheer people up."

Peggy gazed at Helen in silence, then without a word she moved away. But she had learnt her lesson, and the next time she visited Job she put it into practice.

"Good arternoon, Mr. Somers. How are you—rather sadly? But I think you're lookin' a bit more spry."

"Oh no," said the old man, shaking his head; "I shan't never be better, and Bill have taken to go to choir practice in the evenin'. They do say he have a fine voice, but 'tis mortal dull for me, all alone! All alone!"

"So it be; but, mister, I ain't a-goin' to groan no more, for I have been a bad girl, forgettin' what I means to be, when I'm a growed-up. And I've forgetted all about the singin' heart, mister, which you'd best get as soon as you can."

"What be that? If Bill thinketh he can sing, 'tis more nor his old father can do."

"Oh yes, 'tis certain sure you can. 'Tis what I ought to have told yer this long while, but my trouble occpied me so. You do feel sick at heart generally, don't yer?"

"Ay, I do that, my maid, I do sure enough!"

"Then I'll tell you how to make it change. You give it right up to Jesus Christ, and He'll make a cure of it. You see, 'tis like this, mister: When He came to earth, you remember, He were always a-goin' about curin' sick folks. If any one had a sick body, and come along to Him, He always cured it. Nowadays, He's a just goin about the earth, a-curin' sick souls. O' course we don't see Him a-doin of it; He does it very quiet and private like, but that be what is goin' on. Now, wouldn't you like yours cured?"

"There's nought the matter with my soul," muttered the old man peevishly.

"Oh," said Peggy, "there is, mister. Yer soul or yer heart, 'tis all the same. You said 'twas sick. There be a deal o' folks with sick souls I've heerd tell, and there be no medicine for 'em that you can buy, for Jesus Christ don't mean 'em to be cured by anybody but Hisself. Now, who's a-takin' care o' yer soul, mister?"

"Myself," answered the old man promptly. "'Tis my business, and no one else's."

"You'll make a very bad job of it," said Peggy, shaking her head at him. "I 'spect it wants a gran' clean-up inside, like this here room that I've done so fine. Seems to me," she went on dreamily, "that souls be very like rooms. They ain't fit to live in till the Lord comes along and turns 'em clean inside out; gets rid o' the rubbish and dusts and tidies 'em proper. Even then, if He's to live in 'em, I 'spect He finds 'em wantin' a clean, and dustin' every day. There be always such a lot o' dirt and dust and rubbish in at the doors and windows, and if He misses one day, I daresay they gets in a pretty mess."

"You be a strange little maid," said Job; "I can't foller the argyment!"

"I'm only telling yer the way to get yer soul made well and happy," repeated Peggy. "If you has Jesus a-livin' in it, you'll feel awful well."

The entrance of Bill stopped further discussion. He looked at Peggy with a pleased smile.

"You do be a neat-handed maid," he remarked. "How you do hearten up our place!"

"'Tis you that untidies it after I goes," said Peggy, with her chin in the air. "I never can make out what you does to get the place so muddly."

She always gave herself airs with Bill; he seemed so big and clumsy that she lost patience with him. He now stood in the middle of the room, with his mouth partly open, rumpling his shock of thick hair with his big hands.

"We oughter have womankind to set us to rights, and to keep us there," he murmured.

"No," said his father, "we'll do finely, Bill, without 'em."

"So you will," said Peggy brightly, taking her departure; "and I'll give you a look up agen soon, mister; and you just do what I was a-tellin' you of. 'Tis easy if you sets your mind to it."