"Oh, Paradise! oh, Paradise!" hummed Amy Raeburn that same Sunday morning as, the last to leave the Manse, she ran after her mother and sisters. The storm of the two previous days had newly brightened the landscape. Every twig and branch shone, and the red and yellow maple leaves, the wine-color of the oak, the burnished copper of the beech, were like jewels in the sun.

"If it were not Sunday I would dance," said Amy, subduing her steps to a sober walk as she saw approaching the majestic figure of Mrs. Cyril Bannington Barnes.

"You are late, Amy Raeburn," said this lady. "Your father went to church a half-hour ago, and the bell is tolling. Young people should cultivate a habit of being punctual. This being a few minutes behind time is very reprehensible--very rep-re-hen-sible indeed, my love."

"Yes, ma'am," replied Amy, meekly, walking slowly beside the also tardy Mrs. Barnes.

"I dare say," continued Mrs. Barnes, "that you are thinking to yourself that I also am late. But, Amy, I have no duty to the parish. I am an independent woman. You are a girl, and the minister's daughter at that.

You are in a very different position. I do hope, Amy Raeburn, that you will not be late another Sunday morning. Your mother is not so good a disciplinarian as I could wish."

"No, Mrs. Barnes?" said Amy, with a gentle questioning manner, which would have irritated the matron still more had their progress not now ceased on the church steps. Amy, both resentful and amused, fluttered, like an alarmed chick to the brooding mother-wing, straight to the minister's pew. Mrs. Barnes, smoothing ruffled plumes, proceeded with stately and impressive tread to her place in front of the pulpit.

Doctor Raeburn was rising to p.r.o.nounce the invocation. The church was full. Amy glanced over to the Wainwright pew, and saw Grace, and smiled.

Into Amy's mind stole a text she was fond of, quite as if an angel had spoken it, and she forgot that she had been ruffled the wrong way by Mrs. Cyril Bannington Barnes. This was the text:

"Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

"You are a hateful, wicked girl, Amy," said Amy to herself. "Why, when you have so much to make you happy, are you so easily upset by a fretful old lady, who is, after all, your friend, and would stand by you if there were need?"

Amy did not know it, but it was Grace's sweet and tranquil look that had brought the text to her mind. One of the dearest things in life is that we may do good and not know that we are doing it.

When the Sunday hush fell on the house of which Mrs. Wainwright had spoken Grace came softly tapping at the door.

"Yes, dear," called her mother; "come right in."

"Mamma," said Grace, after a few minutes, "will you tell me plainly, if you don't mind, what is worrying papa? I don't mean generally, but what special trouble is on his mind to-day?"

"Potter's bill, I have no doubt," said the mother, quietly. "Other troubles come and go, but there is always Potter's bill in the background. And every little while it crops up and gets into the front."

"What is Potter's bill, dear mamma, and how do we come to owe it?"

"I can't fully explain to you, my child, how it comes to be so large.

When Mr. Potter's father was living and carrying on the business, he used to say to your father: 'Just get all you want here, doctor; never give yourself a thought; pay when you can and what you can. We come to you for medical advice and remedies, and we'll strike a balance somehow.' The Potters have during years had very little occasion for a doctor's services, and we, with this great family, have had to have groceries, shoes, and every other thing, and Potter's bill has kept rolling up like a great s...o...b..ll, bit by bit. We pay something now and then. I sold my old sideboard that came to me from my grandparents, and paid a hundred dollars on it six months ago. Old Mr. Potter died. Rufus reigns in his stead, as the Bible says, and he wants to collect his money. I do not blame him, Grace, but he torments poor papa. There are two hundred dollars due now, and papa has been trying to get money due him, and to pay Rufus fifty dollars, but he's afraid he can't raise the money."

Grace reflected. Then she asked a question. "Dear mamma, don't think me prying, but is Potter's the only pressing obligation on papa just now?"

Mrs. Wainwright hesitated. Then she answered, a little slowly, "No, Grace, there are other accounts; but Potter's is the largest."

"I ask, because I can help my father," said Grace, modestly. "Uncle Ralph deposited five hundred dollars to my credit in a New York bank on my birthday. The money is mine, to do with absolutely as I please. I have nearly fifty dollars in my trunk. Uncle and auntie have always given me money lavishly. Papa can settle Potter's account to-morrow. I'm only too thankful I have the money. To think that money can do so much toward making people happy or making them miserable! Then, mother dear, we'll go into papa's accounts and see how near I can come to relieving the present state of affairs; and if papa will consent, we'll collect his bills, and then later, I've another scheme--that is a fine, sweet-toned piano in the parlor. I mean to give lessons."

"Grace, it was an extravagance in our circ.u.mstances to get that piano, but the girls were so tired of the old one; it was worn out, a tin pan, and this is to be paid for on easy terms, so much a month."

Grace hated to have her mother to apologize in this way. She hastened to say, "I'm glad it's here, and don't think me conceited, but I've had the best instruction uncle could secure for me here, and a short course in Berlin, and now I mean to make it of some use. I believe I can get pupils."

"Not many in Highland, I fear, Grace."

"If not in Highland, in New York. Leave that to me."

Mrs. Wainwright felt as if she had been taking a tonic. To the lady living her days out in her own chamber, and unaccustomed to excitement, there was something very surprising and very stimulating too in the swift way of settling things and the fearlessness of this young girl.

Though she had yielded very reluctantly to her brother's wish to keep Grace apart from her family and wholly his own for so many years, she now saw there was good in it. Her little girl had developed into a resolute, capable and strong sort of young woman, who could make use of whatever tools her education had put into her hands.

"This hasn't been quite the right kind of Sunday talk, mother," said Grace, "but I haven't been here three days without seeing there's a cloud, and I don't like to give up to clouds. I'm like the old woman who must take her broom and sweep the cobwebs out of the sky."

"G.o.d helping you, my dear, you will succeed. You have swept some cobwebs out of my sky already."

"G.o.d helping me, yes, dear. Thank you for saying that. Now don't you want me to sing to you? I'll darken your room and set the door ajar, and then I'll go to the parlor and play soft, rippling, silvery things, and sing to you, and you will fall asleep while I'm singing, and have a lovely nap before they all come home."

As Grace went down the stairs, she paused a moment at the door of the big dining-room, "large as a town hall," her father sometimes said.

Everything at Wishing-Brae was of ample size--great rooms, lofty ceilings, big fire-places, broad windows.

"I missed the sideboard, the splendid old mahogany piece with its deep winy l.u.s.tre, and the curious carved work. Mother must have grieved to part with it. Surely uncle and aunt couldn't have known of these straits. Well, I'm at home now, and they need somebody to manage for them. Uncle always said I had a business head. G.o.d helping me, I'll pull my people out of the slough of despond."

The young girl went into the parlor, where the amber light from the west was beginning to fall upon the old Wainwright portraits, the candelabra with their prisms pendent, and the faded cushions and rugs.

Playing softly, as she had said, singing sweetly "Abide with me" and "Sun of my soul," the mother was soothed into a peaceful little half-hour of sleep, in which she dreamed that G.o.d had sent her an angel guest, whose name was Grace.

CHAPTER IV.

TWO LITTLE SCHOOLMARMS.

"And so you are your papa's good fairy? How happy you must be! How proud!" Amy's eyes shone as she talked to Grace, and smoothed down a fold of the pretty white alpaca gown which set off her friend's dainty beauty. The girls were in my mother's room at the Manse, and Mrs.

Raeburn had left them together to talk over plans, while she went to the parlor to entertain a visitor who was engaged in getting up an autumn _fete_ for a charitable purpose. Nothing of this kind was ever done without mother's aid.

There were few secrets between Wishing-Brae and the Manse, and Mrs.

Wainwright had told our mother how opportunely Grace had been able to a.s.sist her father in his straits. Great was our joy.

"You must remember, dear," said mamma, when she returned from seeing Miss Gardner off, "that your purse is not exhaustless, though it is a long one for a girl. Debts have a way of eating up bank accounts; and what will you do when your money is gone if you still find that the wolf menaces the door at Wishing-Brae?"

"That is what I want to consult you about, Aunt Dorothy." (I ought to have said that our mother was Aunt Dorothy to the children at the Brae, and more beloved than many a real auntie, though one only by courtesy.) "Frances knows my ambitions," Grace went on. "I mean to be a money-maker as well as a money-spender; and I have two strings to my bow. First, I'd like to give interpretations."

The mother looked puzzled. "Interpretations?" she said. "Of what, pray?--Sanscrit or Egyptian or Greek? Are you a seeress or a witch, dear child?"

"Neither. In plain English I want to read stories and poems to my friends and to audiences--Miss Wilkins' and Mrs. Stuart's beautiful stories, and the poems of Holmes and Longfellow and others who speak to the heart. Not mere elocutionary reading, but simple reading, bringing out the author's meaning and giving people pleasure. I would charge an admission fee, and our dining-room would hold a good many; but I ought to have read somewhere else first, and to have a little background of city fame before I ask Highland neighbors to come and hear me. This is my initial plan. I could branch out."

To the mother the new idea did not at once commend itself. She knew better than we girls did how many twenty-five-cent tickets must be sold to make a good round sum in dollars. She knew the thrifty people of Highland looked long at a quarter before they parted with it for mere amus.e.m.e.nt, and still further, she doubted whether Dr. Wainwright would like the thing. But Amy clapped her hands gleefully. She thought it fine.

"You must give a studio reading," she said. "I can manage that, mother; if Miss Antoinette Drury will lend her studio, and we send out invitations for 'Music and Reading, and Tea at Five,' the prestige part will be taken care of. The only difficulty that I can see is that Grace would have to go to a lot of places and travel about uncomfortably; and then she'd need a manager. Wouldn't she, Frances?"

"I see no trouble," said I, "in her being her own manager. She would go to a new town with a letter to the pastor of the leading church, or his wife, call in at the newspaper office and get a puff; puffs are always easily secured by enterprising young women, and they help to fill up the paper besides. Then she would hire a hall and pay for it out of her profits, and the business could be easily carried forward."

"Is this the New Woman breaking her sh.e.l.l?" said mother. "I don't think I quite like the interpretation scheme either as Amy or as you outline it, though I am open to persuasion. Here is the doctor. Let us hear what he says."

It was not Dr. Wainwright, but my father, Dr. Raeburn, except on a Friday, the most genial of men. Amy perched herself on his knee and ran her slim fingers through his thick dark hair. To him our plans were explained, and he at once gave them his approval.

"As I understand you, Gracie," Dr. Raeburn said, "you wish this reading business as a stepping-stone. You would form cla.s.ses, would you not? And your music could also be utilized. You had good instruction, I fancy, both here and over the water."