The Girls at Mount Morris.

by Amanda Minnie Douglas.

CHAPTER I

LOOKING THE FUTURE IN THE FACE

Lilian Boyd entered the small, rather shabby room, neat, though everything was well worn. Her mother sat by a little work table busy with some muslin sewing and she looked up with a weary smile. Lilian laid a five-dollar bill on the table.

"Madame Lupton sails on Sat.u.r.day," she said. "Oh how splendid it must be to go to Paris! Mrs. Cairns is to finish up; there is only a little to do, but Madame said everything you did was so neat, so well finished that she should be very glad to have you by the first of October."

The mother sighed. "Meanwhile there is almost two months to provide for, and I had to break in the last hundred dollars to pay the rent. Oh Lilian! I hardly know which way to turn. I am not strong any more, I have made every effort to--" and her voice broke, "but I am afraid you will have to give up school."

She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

"Oh, mother, don't! don't!" the girl implored. "I suppose it was selfish of me to think of such a thing and you couldn't go through two years more. You are not as well as you were a year ago. I'll see Sally Meeks tonight and take the place in the factory. I only have to give two weeks and then begin on five dollars a week. It will be better than the sewing."

Lilian Boyd stood up very straight and determined, though her heart sank within her. To give up her cherished wish, to join the great army of shop girls with no hope of advancement in the future! She was almost sixteen; she had been two years in the High School and was a favorite scholar. Two years more and she could teach. It was in the walk of life that she so ardently desired. Tall for her age, vigorous, with courage and earnestness in every line of the face that was fine, now, to the casual observer and might develop into beauty. It was spirited, eager, with a clear complexion, deep blue eyes that in some moods seemed black, while the hair was light and abundant. The brows and lashes were much darker. The features were regular, the chin broad and cleft, but it was the courage and uplift in the face that gave it character.

The mother was so different. It was not altogether a weak face but intensely commonplace; the sort of woman who has no ambitions beyond the ordinary round of life. Was it the old story of the eagle in the dove's nest?

"You are very tired," she began, presently. "Lie down on the lounge while I get supper."

Mrs. Boyd was still crying softly. Lilian kissed her, threw a light shawl over her shoulders, then lighted the gas burner and set on the kettle. She would run out and get a chop for her mother, some for breakfast as well. Yes, she must begin to be the care taker, she had been so engrossed with her studies and giving her help with the sewing they did for a dressmaking establishment that she had hardly noted. She swallowed over a great lump in her throat, it was a bitter sacrifice and yet she must make it. She could not even study during the evenings for she must help with the sewing, and if her mother should be ill!

The little supper was tastily arranged, the tea and the chop had an unwonted fragrance.

"I'm awfully sorry," said the mother, "but Sally says it is a nice shop and the boss is particular about the kind of girls he has, and to think Sally's earning nine dollars a week now!"

"Yes, Sally's a nice pleasant girl," that was all she could trust her voice to say.

"And it will be company back and forth. Maybe--sometime--"

Oh, had she been right in that long ago time? It seemed ages to her, so much had happened since, and she thought she could not live without the child, but after all the girl was not of her kind. What if she had done her a great wrong! She had never been an introspective woman, her life was mostly on the surface, with commonplace aims and desires.

The kitchen was small, the middle room not much larger, but it had two nice windows, the front was on a much neglected street with a big carpenter's shop across the way. They used that for a sleeping room and it had in it the remnant of better days. The sewing room was much more quiet.

Lilian cleared away the things. Mrs. Boyd went back to the lounge. Then the girl went down the street. She had best make her sacrifice at once, it was not a subject to ponder over and she realized it had been a big black cloud hanging about her the last month.

Sally's mother sat out on the small porch gossiping with a neighbor.

"Oh, Lily Boyd," she exclaimed. "Sally was coming up on Sat.u.r.day but she had to fly round like a bee in a flower garden. It want her turn to go to the Rest House, but the other girl couldn't--sickness at home. So Sally went in her place. Splendid, isn't it! And board only two dollars a week. I tell Sally she's got the nicest boss we've ever heard about.

She'll be home Sat'day night and tell you all about it."

"Yes, I want to see her. No, I can't stay. Oh, mother does not seem very well. Good-night."

Lilian did not go straight home. This was the old part of the town there were no real cottages and little gardens fragrant with flowers, but people were huddled in them. There would presently be factories and tenement houses.

She was making a sharp, desperate fight. Strong natures have to. Why was she born with these ambitions and aims and capabilities and the ardent desire to do something? All girls did not have them. Some in the cla.s.s laughed and made merry without a thought of the future. Some expected to teach and 'just hated it.' She would have been so glad. Well the dream must be given up--at least for years. It would be horrible to count on her mother's death for freedom. She shuddered.

They went to bed, but neither of them slept until after midnight. Now and then Lilian heard a soft sob. She felt that she ought to comfort her mother, but what could she say? Since she had been growing up she had become aware of a barrier between them. Mrs. Boyd had loved her fervently as a little girl, she had not taken any special pride in her entering the High School with such a fine record. She was in no sense an ambitious or an intellectual woman and the girl's vigor and intentness sometimes frightened her. She should have been in some other sphere.

Lilian sank into a sort of dull apathy, questioning everything as youth often does under a great disappointment. What was the use of living if one could never attain the things one desired? She was not like Sally nor dozens of other girls. Their commonplace lives would be martyrdom to her.

So they both slept late. Lilian prepared the simple breakfast.

"Perhaps it would be a good thing to get out last winter's clothes and see what can be fixed over," said the mother. "But you have grown so much this year, Lilian."

Oh, if clothes mattered, if anything mattered! There was the postman's whistle.

Quite a thick letter for her mother in a neat lady's hand.

"Why that's funny," and a smile brightened the girl's face.

Mrs. Boyd glanced it over. "Why it's from Mrs. Searing. She was here last March, you know. She has always taken such an interest in you, and--oh read it, read it aloud. My head is so bad this morning."

She began to cry again.

Helen took the letter. The first page was full of friendly interest and then she branched off into a delightful visit she had been making at a very pretty place, one of the old fashioned aristocratic towns where a relative kept a select and high cla.s.s Seminary for young ladies. She had found her in something of a quandary. The woman who had taken charge of the bed and table line and a sort of general seamstress had suddenly married, and it was necessary to fill her place before school opened.

She wanted a middle aged person with some experience who was neat and careful. She would have a pleasant room and the duties would not be arduous. There was a housekeeper and several maids beside the cook.

"So," wrote Mrs. Searing, "I told her about Lilian, remembering you had said you were afraid you could not keep her in school to finish, and her ambition to be a teacher. She was wonderfully interested and I told her somewhat of your misfortunes and struggles. So she proposes that you shall accept this position and that Lilian shall take a sort of supervision of some of the younger pupils and go on with her own education. Mrs. Barrington has been very kind and helpful to several young girls and I know Lilian will admire her extremely."

The girl sprang up with a glad cry and flung her arms around her mother's neck.

"Oh, let us go, let us go! Why it seems like a miracle," and then she was crying, too, from an overwrought heart.

Presently she resumed the letter. They would have a pleasant room together, considerable leisure, and there would be music, a fine library beside that in the town and the society was charming. The mother's salary was a very fair one and in another year the daughter might be able to earn something for herself. Mrs. Searing really urged the matter. Would Mrs. Boyd write at once to Mrs. Barrington?

"Oh, mother, to think! No rent to pay, no bills to meet, no bother of cooking and house keeping. It seems too good to be true. Let me read it over again lest I must have skipped something."

It seemed more attractive at the second perusal. Lilian's heart beat with unwonted emotion. Mrs. Boyd leaned back in her chair, paler than ever but not quite so depressed.

"You must answer it, Lilian; I couldn't make it sound right, and you can tell her about yourself; I don't understand all these things. I never had any high up education. People were not thinking of it then."

Lilian was glad to do it. She knew a person of refinement and education would see what her mother missed and perhaps doubt her ability. She made a draft and read it aloud to Mrs. Boyd.

"It sounds beautiful; I couldn't have done it."

Was it education that gave one the power, the sense of what was appropriate, or some underlying fact that she dared not face? What if it had been a great mistake in that far back time? Could it ever be remedied?

"Oh, mother, I thought last night that I shouldn't want to live if I could never reach any of my aims. When I hear delicious music I feel it in my very finger ends. When I read about pictures and statuary and magnificent churches I can almost see them, and a rift in the sky, an autumnal branch of red brown leaves, nooks that I have seen now and then, looks that are grand and high and beautiful stir my very soul.

Where did I get this from? Was my father--"

She looked really beautiful standing there, her eyes full of inspiration, her cheeks aglow, her scarlet lips quivering. Mrs. Boyd trembled with a mysterious chill, and a shiver went over her.