CHAPTER VIII
Returning to the table, Mr. Middleton announced with troubled face that Miss Stewart, the librarian, was ill, and he must find some one before three o'clock to take her place. He glanced at Elsie hesitatingly.
"I suppose you are tired, Elsie, dear?"
"Oh, no," she returned and added, almost unconsciously, "Uncle John."
"Then I wonder if I can't work you in at the library for a day or so? It isn't at all taxing, indeed, it's really very pleasant. It's open every day from three to six, and except on Saturday, when there's apt to be a crowd, people drop in in a leisurely way. I could go over with you and get you started and stay until nearly four, when I have a committee meeting. Would you be willing to try, dear?"
"Oh, I'd like it ever so much," she returned, really captivated by the idea. He looked relieved and smiled gratefully.
"There, Jack, it's just as I told you it would be," exclaimed Mrs. Middleton, patting a pink satin bow complacently. "I said to your uncle, Elsie love, that a girl of sixteen is almost a woman—I was only seventeen when I was married—and that he could make an assistant of you right away."
Her smile faded and her hand went to her heart in an affected way.
"My being such a sad invalid is a terrible drag on your uncle, though he won't confess it," she added feebly. "I often and often drop a secret tear over it, I own; but now that there'll be some one to help with the little services that would naturally fall to a pastor's wife, I shall be quite content. You know how the poet says that others shall sing the song and right the wrong? 'What matter I or they?' That is how it seems to me."
Mr. Middleton gazed at his wife tenderly, but Elsie's youthful scorn increased. She was not sufficiently mature to understand that it shows something of character to look on kindly while another younger, fairer person steps in to fulfil duties that should have been one's own, even though one may have repudiated them.
Directly lunch was over, Elsie ran up-stairs—something she seldom had done—unfastened her trunk, took out an embroidered white linen suit and dressed quickly. She could scarcely wait until time to go to the library. She was ready to lose the train to-day, and even to-morrow if need be.
At the library, she found the procedure simple and easily acquired. It was fascinating, also, as was the great airy room; and she wandered about through the stacks, and gazed at the books, magazines, pictures, maps and bulletin-board in a sort of dream. It was a warm day and no one came in during the first half-hour.
Mr. Middleton had scarcely left, however, when a little girl in a scant, faded frock that was clean, however, and freshly starched, came shyly in with a book—a child of nine or ten with an anxious expression on her old, refined little face which hadn't yet lost all its baby curves.
"Why, where's Miss Rachel?" she asked, the look of anxiety fading and a shy little smile appearing in its stead.
Elsie explained.
"Well, I think you're ever 'n' ever so much nicer, and so pretty!" said the child. Then her face clouded again as she opened the book that she held in thin little hands that were like claws.
"The baby did it," she said sorrowfully as she exhibited a picture torn across. "He isn't a year old yet and don't understand. He isn't the least naughty, only mischeevious, you know. Ma says I ought not to have been reading it while I was minding him, but you see I'm always minding him except when he's asleep—and then he wakes right up, mostly."
She sighed. "Do you s'pose you can mend it?" she inquired.
"Yes, indeed," returned Elsie promptly, and smiled involuntarily.
The child fingered her frock. "Miss Rachel would scold," she faltered,
Elsie didn't know what to say. Neither did she understand why tears should come to her eyes, except that the little girl was so small, so thin, so clean and sweet, and so very childish in spite of her responsibility.
She found some gummed paper, cut a strip, brought the torn edges carefully together and mended the picture as neatly as if she had not been a week ago as helpless an able-bodied girl of her age as there was anywhere to be found. Her sense of satisfaction was certainly commensurate, perhaps extravagant.
"There! Miss Stewart will never know," she said. "Do you want another book now?"
"Yes, please; but—is it right for Miss Rachel not to know?"
Elsie considered. "Perhaps not," she admitted, "but at any rate she won't mind since it looks as well as before."
"And I'll be very careful after this," added the child.
She selected another volume from the children's shelf, and having had it charged, turned to go. But somehow Elsie was loath to have her.
"Why don't you sit down at the table and look at the picture papers?" she suggested.
"Oh, I've got to mind the baby," said Mattie—Mattie Howe was the name on her card. "I must be home when he wakes up. Good-by."
She started—came back—stood irresolute.
"Thank you for mending the book so good—so goodly," she said shyly, "and—I'd like to kiss you."
With a curious sensation that had no admixture of reluctance, Elsie bent over and received the kiss.
"You're prettier than the princess," the little girl declared, and ran away with her book.
Elsie Marley hardly knew what would have happened if an elderly lady hadn't come in at that moment and asked for "Cruden's Concordance." She had some difficulty in finding it, but the lady was very pleasant and grateful, and after that there was a constant succession of visitors. Many children came in, all attractive, to Elsie's surprise, though none so appealing as Mattie Howe; and older people in surprising numbers, considering Mr. Middleton's prophecy.
But word had somehow gone round that the minister's niece was "tending library," and things being rather dull in the midsummer pause of most of the activities of the place, no doubt more than one came out of curiosity.
It was a very friendly curiosity, however, expressed in the pleasantest manner, and Elsie found herself responding to their advances without knowing how. She wondered at herself. The girl did not realize that being in the library made a difference. It was her first experience of work, or of doing anything whatever for any one else, so that even the service of getting out books for another established a sort of relationship between them. At the close of the afternoon, though tired, she was strangely happy.
But she couldn't understand it—didn't know herself. She found herself wondering who the stranger was who had worn her frock and occupied the chair of the librarian that afternoon. Grandmother Pritchard wouldn't have recognized her, nor Aunt Ellen. Had she, in assuming another name, changed her nature also?