"Yes," added Rose; "you might run in at dinner time, and I'd spare you a little time then, and you might read to him, and cheer him up--yes, and teach him a bit too."

"Edwin Smithers was always a very tiresome, stupid little boy," said Amy, rather crossly, from her infant school recollections.

"Then he will want help all the more," said Aunt Rose, and it sounded almost like mimicry of what Amy had said of old Mrs. Long.

She did not like it at all. It is the devices of our own heart that we prefer to follow, whether for good or harm, and specially when we think them good. And yet we specially pray that we may do all such good works as our Lord hath _prepared for us to walk in_, as if we were to rejoice in having our opportunities set out before us, yet the teaching a dull little boy of whom she had had experience in the infant school, did not seem to her half such interesting work as converting an old woman of whom strange things were said.

However, Amy was on the whole a good girl, though she had her little tempers, and did not guard against them as she ought, thinking that what was soon over did not signify.

By and by, Jessie came back radiant with gladness, and found a moment to say, before Florence Cray came in, that her mother was quite agreeable to her teaching in the Sunday school, if Miss Manners liked it. She had gone there herself for some years when she and Miss Manners were both young, and she was well pleased that her daughter should be helpful there.

Amy, who was fond of Jessie, was delighted to think of having her company all the way to school, and her little fit of displeasure melted quite away. But when Florence was heard coming in, both girls were silent on their plans, knowing that she would only laugh at their wishing to do anything so dull.

CHAPTER III.

THE WORKING PARTY.

"ARE these fruits of the sermon on Friday night?" said Miss Manners to Mr. Somers, as they finished winding up their parish accounts on Monday morning. "Not only, as you know, here is Grace Hollis wanting to join Mrs. Somers's Tuesday working parties, Jessie begging to help at the Sunday school; but I find that good little Amy Lee went and sat with poor Edwin Smithers for half an hour on Sunday after church, showing him pictures, and she has promised his mother to come and look in on him every day. It is very nice of the Lees to have thought of it, and to spare her."

"Yes," said Mrs. Somers, "the Lees are always anxious to do right."

"I had a talk with Charlotte just now. She came to get some flannel for Mrs. Long. She says she will make it up for her, if the old woman can have it out of the club. Well, she says it is quite striking how all those girls have been moved by Mr. Soulsby's sermon on Friday evening.

Amy came home and nearly said it all off to her Aunt Rose, and the girls were all talking about it in the workroom in the morning, full of earnestness to make some effort."

"I saw they were looking very attentive," said Mr. Somers. "Shall you accept Jessie Hollis's help?"

"I think I can make a cla.s.s up for her."

"I suppose it would be a pity to check her, but do you imagine that she knows anything?"

"I don't know; but she is not at all a stupid girl, and she cannot go far wrong with the questions on the Catechism and Gospels that I shall give her. Indeed I had thought of asking her and Margaret Roller, and, perhaps, Amy Lee, to come and prepare the lessons here on Friday evenings after church."

"A good plan," said Mr. Somers, "if it be not giving you too much to do."

"Not a bit, especially at this time of year, when n.o.body wants me in the evenings. My only doubt is whether it is not keeping the girls out too late, but I will see whether it can be managed. The children might be better taught, and the teachers might learn something themselves in this indirect way."

Perhaps this was Miss Dora's way of acting on the sermon, but she could not begin that week, as a friend was coming to spend the Friday with her.

Meantime Grace Hollis had joined the working party that met every Tuesday afternoon for an hour to make clothes for a very poor district in London. She had been sometimes known to say that it was all waste of time to make things and send them away to thriftless, shiftless folk; but she had heard something of the love of our neighbour, and our membership with the rest of our Lord's Body, which had touched her heart. So she brought her thimble and needle, to join the working party who sat round the Rectory dining-table. Mrs. Somers and Miss Manners shook hands, made her welcome, and found her a seat and some work. Grace looked about her to be sure who the party were. Mrs. Nowell, the gardener's wife, sat next to her. Then came little Miss Agnes from the Hall, sewing hard away, and Lucy Drew from Chalk-pit Farm, who was about her age, next to her, and old Miss Pemberton knitting.

"A mixed lot," said Grace to herself, and then her eye lit upon deformed Naomi Norris, of whom she did not approve at all. Did not the girl come of a low dissenting family, and had not her father the presumption to keep a little shop in Hazel Lane which took away half the custom, especially as they pretended to make toffee? Meanwhile here was Miss Wenlock, the governess at the squire's, and Miss Dora reading aloud to the party in turn. It was the history of some mission work in London, and Miss Lee, who was there, listened with great pleasure, as did many of the others. Indeed she well might, for her eldest sister's son hoped one day to be a missionary. But Grace was not used to being read to, and, as she said, "it fidgeted her sadly," and she was wondering all the time what mistakes mother would make in the shop without her, and she began to be haunted with a doubt whether she had put out a parcel of raisins that Farmer Drew's man was to call for. The worry about it prevented her from attending to a word that was read; indeed she could hardly keep herself from jumping up, making up an excuse, and rushing home to see about the raisins!

Then she greatly disapproved of the shape of the bedgown she had been set to make, and did not believe it would sit properly. It was ladies'

cutting towards which she felt contemptuous, and yet she would have thought it impolite to interfere. Besides, it might make the whole sitting go on longer, and Grace was burning to get home. At last the reading ended, but oh! my patience, that creature Naomi was actually putting herself forward to ask some nonsensical question, where some place was, and Miss Agnes must needs get a map, and every one go and look at it--Grace too, not to be behindhand or uncivil to the young ladies; but had not she had enough of maps and such useless stupid things long ago when she left school at Miss Perkins's?

When at last this was over, Mrs. Somers came and spoke to her while she was putting on her hat, and thanked her pleasantly, saying that she was afraid that beginning in the middle of a book made it less interesting, but that one day more would finish it. Then she added "I don't like the pattern of that bedgown, do you?"

"No, Mrs. Somers, not at all," replied Grace. "It quite went against me to put good work into it."

"I wonder whether you could help us to a better shape next time," said Mrs. Somers. "We should be very much obliged to you. This pattern came out of a needlework book, and I am not satisfied about it."

Grace promised, and went away in better humour, but more because she had been made important than because she cared for what she had been doing.

She was glad no one could say she had been behindhand with her service, but it was a burthen to her, and she did not open her mind to enter into it so as to make it otherwise.

Indeed, her mind was more full of her accounts and the bad debts, and of the cheapest way of getting in her groceries than of anything else. As she walked back through the village she wondered whether Mrs. Somers and Miss Manners would send to her mother's for their brown sugar this summer. That would make it worth while to go to a better but more expensive place, and have in a larger stock; and Grace went on reckoning the risk all the time, and wondering whether the going to the working parties would secure the ladies' custom. In that case the time would not be wasted. It did not come into Grace's head whether what she had thought of for the service of G.o.d she might be turning to the service of Mammon, if she only just endured it for the sake of standing well with the gentry. But then, was it not her duty to consider her shop and her mother's interest?

She was quite vexed and angry when she saw Jessie go and fetch the big Family Bible that evening, turning off the whole pile of lesson-books to which it formed the base.

"Now what can you be doing that for?" she said sharply.

"I want to prepare my lesson for to-morrow," said Jessie.

"And is not a little Bible good enough for you, without upsetting the whole table?"

"My Bible has got no references," said Jessie.

"And what do little children like that want of references? If you are to be turning the house upside down and wasting time like that over preparing as you call it, I don't know as ma will let you undertake it."

"I have ironed all the collars and cuffs, Grace," said Jessie; "yes, and looked over the stockings."

Grace had no more to say; she knew Jessie had wonderful eyes for a ladder or a hole; but it worried her and gave her a sense of disrespect that the pyramid which surmounted the big Bible should be interfered with, or that the Book itself should have its repose interfered with "for a pack of dirty children," when it had never been opened before except to register christenings, or to be spread out and read when some near relation died, as part of the mourning ceremony.

It really made her feel as if something unfortunate had happened to see the large print pages on the little round table, and her sister peering into the references and looking them out in her own little Bible, then diligently marking them.

Her mother, too, asked what Jessie was about, and though she did not say anything against her employment, their looking on, and the expression on Grace's face, worried Jessie so much that she could not think, and only put a slip of paper into her own book at each she found.

The chapter she had chosen was the Parable of the Sower, on which she had once heard a sermon. She was amazed to find how many parallel pa.s.sages there were, and how beautifully they explained one another when she made time for comparing them on Sunday morning. She saw herself beforehand expounding them to the children, and winning their hearts, as her friend in the hospital had described, and she was quite ready in her neat black silk and fur jacket, with a little blue velvet hat, when Amy Lee came to call for her, in her grey merino, black cloth coat, and little hat to match.

They met Miss Manners at the school door, and were pleasantly greeted, and taken into the large cheerful room, all hung round with maps and pictures, where the cla.s.ses were a.s.sembling, and one or two of the other teachers had come.

The bell was heard ringing, and while the children trooped in, Miss Manners showed Jessie a chair with some books laid open upon it, the cla.s.s register on the top, and said:

"I am sorry there has not been time to talk over your work this week; but I have laid out the books for you, and if you are in any difficulty come and ask me."

By this time the children had come in and taken their places, and Jessie was pleased to see that her cla.s.s was of children of eight or nine years old--not such little ones as Amy had threatened her with. Miss Manners went to the harmonium and gave out a Sunday morning hymn, which was very sweetly sung, and then she read prayers, everybody kneeling, and making the responses, so that Jessie enjoyed it greatly, and felt quite refreshed by the prayer for a blessing on the teachers and the taught.

Then Miss Manners told the eight little girls who stood in a row that Miss Hollis would teach them, and she hoped they would be very good and steady and obedient, and say their lessons perfectly.

Jessie knew all but two who came from the other end of the parish, and were not customers of her mother--at least she knew what families they belonged to, and had only to learn their Christian names from her list.

"Collect, please teacher," said the first girl, Susan Bray, very much in the voice in which she would have said "Candles, please miss," in the shop.

The Prayer-book was uppermost, and Jessie found she had to hear the Collect for the day repeated by five perfectly, by two rather badly, and one broke down altogether. The question-book lay open under it. Some of the questions were very easy, but of others Jessie was not sure that the children were right when they replied to some quite glibly, and she was not sure how to help them in others.

Then followed the opening of books again. Jessie was longing to give out all she had to say about the Sower, and began bidding them turn to it in St. Matthew, but Susan Bray stopped her most decisively. "Oh! please teacher, we've done that ever so long ago. We always reads the Gospel for the day, and here's the question-book, and it's got answers." And she thrust it right under the nose of Jessie, who by this time did not quite love Miss Susan Bray. She had plainly been sharp enough to see when her teacher was at fault.

The children read the Gospel for the day. It was Refreshing Sunday, so it was not a difficult one; the children were ready with the answers till the application came, and then Jessie had again to help them, which she did by reading the printed answers and making them repeat them after her, word for word. While she was doing this with Mary Smithers, who certainly was dulness itself, at one end of the cla.s.s, there was a whispering at the other, and she saw two children trying on each other's gloves, and she quickly put an end to that, and went on with another question and answer. The moment her eye was off Susan Bray and Lily Bell, however, they began comparing some gay cards. Jessie turned on them: "You are playing with those things. Give them to me."