“That story has done me ever so much good, and
I shall not forget it. Now, good-night, for I
must be up early to-morrow, and I don’t want
to drive Mr. Wilkins away entirely,” said Christie,
after she had helped put the little folk to bed, during
which process she had heard her host creaking about
the kitchen as if afraid to enter the sitting-room.
She laughed as she spoke, and ran up stairs, wondering
if she could be the same forlorn creature who had
crept so wearily up only the night before.
It was a very humble little sermon that Mrs. Wilkins
had preached to her, but she took it to heart and
profited by it; for she was a pupil in the great charity
school where the best teachers are often unknown,
unhonored here, but who surely will receive commendation
and reward from the head master when their long vacation
comes.
Mrs. Wilkins’s minister.
Next day Christie braved the lion in his den,
otherwise the flinty Flint, in her second-class boarding-house,
and found that alarm and remorse had produced a softening
effect upon her. She was unfeignedly glad to
see her lost lodger safe, and finding that the new
friends were likely to put her in the way of paying
her debts, this much harassed matron permitted her
to pack up her possessions, leaving one trunk as a
sort of hostage. Then, with promises to redeem
it as soon as possible, Christie said good-bye to the
little room where she had hoped and suffered, lived
and labored so long, and went joyfully back to the
humble home she had found with the good laundress.
All the following week Christie “chored round,”
as Mrs. Wilkins called the miscellaneous light work
she let her do. Much washing, combing, and clean
pinaforing of children fell to her share, and she
enjoyed it amazingly; then, when the elder ones were
packed off to school she lent a hand to any of the
numberless tasks housewives find to do from morning
till night. In the afternoon, when other work
was done, and little Vic asleep or happy with her playthings,
Christie clapped laces, sprinkled muslins, and picked
out edgings at the great table where Mrs. Wilkins
stood ironing, fluting, and crimping till the kitchen
bristled all over with immaculate frills and flounces.
It was pretty delicate work, and Christie liked it,
for Mrs. Wilkins was an adept at her trade and took
as much pride and pleasure in it as any French blanchis-seuse
tripping through the streets of Paris with a tree
full of coquettish caps, capes, and petticoats borne
before her by a half invisible boy.
