Then would Gracie laugh and demur and admit, to herself only, that it was very pleasant to be needed--as she certainly was--for one night more; and so the nights pa.s.sed.

Her work was to be "Professor of Elocution," as Mr. Roberts gaily called her when the workers were alone together. It had been discovered that she could read both prose and poetry with effect. So a reading-cla.s.s was organized, and they chose for the first evening, not one of Bryant's or Whittier's gems, nor selections from Milton or Shakespeare, which would have suited part of the company, nor yet the "Easy Readings" in some standard spelling-book, which would have fitted the capacity of the others, but with great care and much discussion, one of Will Carleton's descriptive poems, full of homely, yet tender language, full of pathos and of humor, was unanimously selected.

The first evening reading had been commenced with nuts and apples. There are those who can see no connection between this and the intellectual; happily for the characters with whom she had to deal, Mrs. Roberts was not one of them. While the others were still enjoying the refreshments she took the book and read. This was her quiet little sacrifice. It was not pleasant to her to become a public reader. It required courage to get through with one verse, with Dr. Everett sitting opposite, and Gracie Dennis on a low seat at her side, and her husband listening intently. Mrs. Roberts was not a good reader, and was aware of it. She p.r.o.nounced the words correctly, it is true; but when you had said that, you had said all that there was to offer in praise of her effort. She had some exasperating faults. But she bravely read the two verses, and some of the boys listened, and one of them laughed; he had caught a gleam of the fun in the poem. This, of course, was Nimble d.i.c.k.

Then Alfred Ried made the same effort on the same verses; his performance was very little better, and he, too, knew it. He could write, but he was by no means a public reader; this was his offering to the general good. If those fellows, by reason of his mistakes, could be induced to climb, he was willing to offer his pride on the altar. No matter by what petty trials they were caught so that they were really caught.

Then followed Gracie Dennis, and her own father, acceptable preacher though he was, might with credit to himself have taken lessons of her.

She was certainly, for one so young and so unprofessional, a magnificent reader. So indeed was Marion Wilbur, and she had enjoyed teaching Gracie.

The poem blossomed in her hand. The crunching of nuts and apples entirely ceased. The boys sat erect and listened and laughed and flushed and swallowed suspiciously over some of the homely pathos. They had never heard anything like that before, and they evidently appreciated it. She read through to the end.

Then were unloosed the tongues! They exclaimed in delight:--

"What an accomplishment it is!" said Mr. Roberts; "and how few possess it. Doctor, how many really fine readers have you heard in your life?"

"About three," said the doctor, laconically.

"Well," said Mrs. Roberts, "let us all be exceptions. Gracie, teach us how. I will try again."

And she did, on the first verse of the poem; with better success than before; but how sharp the contrast between her reading and Gracie's, she knew! It was not easy for her to read.

I don't know, possibly I am mistaken, but it seems to me that I have known people ready for large sacrifices, who yet would shrink painfully from these little ones.

In discussing the programme for the evening, the question had been, when each had done his part, How were they to influence the boys to join?

_Could_ they join? Was it probable that they knew enough about reading to attempt to speak the words of the poem? With reference to this obstacle a poem had been chosen full of simple, homely words, such as are in common use; especially was the first verse free from what Mr.

Roberts called "shoals." Having heard the verse read several times, it was hoped that some one of the seven might have courage to attempt it, but Gracie did not believe that such would be the case.

"I don't see how we can ask them, and do it naturally," said Dr.

Everett. "It is such an unheard-of thing, you know; and I am afraid, do our best, it will present itself to them as a patronage, and that will be fatal. The people who are low enough to need patronage are the very ones who won't endure it."

Whereupon various ways of managing the matter were discussed and discarded; suddenly Mrs. Roberts turned to her young lieutenant, who had been silent for some time, and said:--

"What are you thinking of, Mr. Ried? Do you see a way out?"

"No," he said; "I have neither knowledge nor skill in such matters, but my thoughts just then were far away; I was thinking how curiously, certain apparently trivial instances of one's childhood will stand out with almost startling prominence."

"What sent you off in that direction?" questioned Dr. Everett. "There must have been an a.s.sociation of ideas."

"Oh, there was; I was thinking how vividly I remembered a discussion between my mother and my sister, younger than Ester, in regard to some matter which perplexed them; and when they could come to no satisfactory conclusion they appealed to my sister Ester, who was resting as usual on her lounge. I can seem to hear her voice as she said: 'We haven't to do anything about it until to-morrow; perhaps to-morrow will have a light of its own for our direction."

"Thank you!" Mrs. Roberts said, her eyes lighting with an appreciative smile; "we have not to do anything about this until Monday night, and perhaps Monday night will see us wise."

I don't know how many thought of this little conversation when Monday evening came, but certainly Alfred Ried and Mrs. Roberts did, for she glanced at him and smiled significantly when Dr. Everett, having apparently forgotten that anything beyond their own pleasure was in contemplation, challenged Gracie to a discussion as to the emphasis on a certain word in the second line; he had never heard it so read, and he called for an a.n.a.lysis that would sustain the reading, and received it, and was not yet prepared to yield the point, but read the verse as he had imagined it should be read, and then Gracie, at Mr. Roberts' call, repeated it with her rendering, and I am not sure but all parties concerned actually forgot their final object in the interest of the discussion until they were suddenly called to it by an interrupting voice:--

"Your'n's the way," it said, with an emphatic nod of a shock of matted hair, "your'n's the way."

It was Dirk Colson. He had forgotten for the moment that anybody was listening to him, save the two readers. He was looking directly at Gracie, and the nods were evidently intended for her.

"Of course it is!" she said, eagerly, her face flushing with a triumph that had nothing to do with the right emphasis; "you read it, won't you, and show these people that we are right?"

Afterward Mrs. Roberts confessed that she involuntarily placed her hand on her heart with a dim idea of hushing its beating lest others would hear, so important to her did the moment seem. Dr. Everett looked dismayed. The least hopeful one of the seven seemed Dirk. None of them knew of his dangerous talent for imitation. None of them believed that he would make any attempt at reading, but thought he would shrink into deeper sullenness. All of them were mistaken. He reached for the book, glanced for a moment over the lines, and then read the verse, with so complete an imitation of Gracie Dennis, and yet with a voice and manner that so fitted the homely words and the homely scene described that the effect was actually better than when Gracie read.

Instinctively the cultured portion of his audience greeted the effort with a clapping of hands. The blood, meantime, rolled in dark waves over Dirk's face. He had been cheered before. None of his present applauders could imagine what a set had often clapped their hands over his successful imitations; but Dirk, who liked applause as well as other human beings do, had never, in his wildest stretches of imagination, placed himself before such people as listened now and received their approval.

Great was the excitement and satisfaction. The six companions, far from feeling any emotion of jealousy, seemed greatly elated, believing that one of their number had made a "hit," and increased their importance.

No one else could be found to attempt the verse. Nimble d.i.c.k shook his head good-naturedly, and declared that he would rather "undertake to run an engine to Californy" than try it; and the others were of like mind.

Then came Gracie to the front again:--

"I'll tell you what you must all do. I have been experimenting with that type-writer, Mr. Roberts, all the week. You know it will manifold, with the use of carbon paper, and it chances that when I was seized with a desire to try its powers in that direction I choose this very verse to copy; so I have fifteen good copies in print. You must each take a copy and make this verse a study until next Monday; then I shall challenge you all to sustain me in my reading."

This proposition was hailed with such satisfaction by the older members that it immediately became popular, and each boy received his copy mechanically and gazed at it curiously: but Dirk Colson's thoughts were turned in a new channel.

"Look here!" he said, detaining Gracie by an imperious inclination of his head, as she handed him the copy; "how did you make these? didn't you print them fifteen times? I didn't understand what you said."

"Why no!" said Gracie, "the machine will _manifold_. I'll show you; come over to the end window; it stands there waiting to be displayed, and it is a little wonder."

Then they crowded around the type-writer, and Gracie, really proud of the skill she had acquired in a week's time, showed off the little wonder to great advantage.

The fact that the type-writer was new to most of the others, that they were decidedly ignorant as to its working, increased the comfort of the hour by doing away with the embarra.s.sing feeling that any one of them was playing a part. Dr. Everett was no more familiar with the type-writer than was Dirk Colson, and was just as eager to know about it.

Also everybody, apparently, felt an equally strong desire to write his name on the marvellous little creature, and each in turn sat down before it and moved his awkward hands with nearly equal slowness over the keys, picking out the magic letters.

It was this episode that made the workers during their next conference branch out in new lines.

"We need something," said Dr. Everett, walking up and down the floor in puzzled thought, "we need something that shall be a genuine common interest, of which we are all, or all but one, equally ignorant--something that we can take hold of with zest, on as low a platform as the most ignorant of those seen. I was convinced of that when I saw the abandon with which we all went into the type-writer business, with a naturalness and equality that, in the matter of reading and writing, it is impossible for us to feel. If the machine were complicated, so that it would take us each three months or so to master it, that would do. What can we take up that will place us on a level?"

CHAPTER XIX.

"WE HAVE BEGUN BACKWARDS."

"Well," said Mr. Ried, "we should want to have one of our number not 'on a level.' How would it do to appoint you, sir, to give us a few lectures in Hygiene? Popular lectures about air and exercise and ventilation and bathing, and all sorts of every-day topics, about which people are ignorant."

"That's a capital idea, Ried. Those fellows could certainly be benefited by a little attention to such questions; and I'm sure the rest of us would like to hear of the principles which govern these important laws.

Such lectures put into popular form are decidedly interesting, I think.

Let us vote for them." This was Mr. Roberts' hearty seconding.

But the doctor laughed.

"There is a ludicrous side to it which you do not see," he said.

"Imagine me holding forth on the importance of ventilation, for instance, to a poor follow who comes from a region where father and mother, and a horde of children of both s.e.xes and all ages, crowd together in one room, and that a cellar, where the sun never penetrates and the air that crawls in through the one small window is reeking with even more impurities than can be found inside. Or talking about bathing, to the poor wretches who have no clothing to change, and barely water enough, by carrying it long distances, to satisfy their most pressing needs! Still, Ried, I'm not quarrelling with your idea. There is a sensible side to it; there are things that I could tell even those boys which might interest them, and would certainly be to their advantage to know. The subject is one which can be popularized to suit even such an audience. I'll try for it occasionally if it shall seem best: but it doesn't meet my demand. I want us all on a platform where we shall start in equal ignorance and get on together. Of course you are all more or less familiar with all the facts that I should have to present, and the boys would know it. They are sharp fellows; it wouldn't take them an hour to discover that we were fishing for them; and if there is any one thing on which they are at present determined, it is, probably, that they will not be benefited. What is there that one of us knows, of which the others are ignorant? French won't do, for Miss Dennis is acquainted with that language, I think, and so are you, Ried, are you not?"

"Well, I can stammer through a few sentences. I don't speak it like a native as you do."