And Bessy left something besides. The visit of the little one had seemed to bring sunshine with it. The hard lines on the parent's face were softened, every feature relaxed, the cold, money-making man was a parent, and a fond parent still. Franks felt that the unconscious Bessy had acted the part of a little ally; that she was helping to stir the deeply-imbedded vessel which he had been trying to move.
"Will that dear little girl enjoy her flowers less because the first are always for her father?" said Franks, as soon as the sound of the pattering feet was heard no longer. "Would that God's children were more like her, bringing their gifts with readiness, with joy, and not like too many of us, offering only the withered thing, the dead thing, that which we will not miss, to him whose goodness towards us has been greater than that of any father on earth!"
Bat Bell's hand approached his pocket, though he did not actually put it in. "Ned Franks," said the miller, "I tell you honestly, that I wouldn't stand this kind of talk from any man but yourself; but I know that your practice is better than your preaching; so, as you've set your heart on getting something for these cottages, just as a matter of favor to you"—Bell stopped short; he could not make up his mind either to finish his sentence, or to draw out his purse.
"I do not want you to give as a matter of favor to me," cried Franks, "nor is the state of the cottages what is uppermost now in my mind. I came here, indeed, anxious to get something for them, but I am a hundred-fold more anxious to get something for you!" The miller raised his dusty eyebrows with surprise, but Franks went on, without giving him time to interrupt the earnest flow of his speech. "If we knew that our Lord and Master had come down again to this earth, that he was in our land, our country, our village, nay, that he was deigning to dwell in one of these cottages, which, wretched as they are, are better than the Bethlehem stable, would we not deem it the first of honors to be allowed to bring gifts to him? Would not you and I be ready to pull down our own dwellings to get beams and rafters for his, and think the best that we have, yea, all that we have, too little to offer to our King? And it is all the same, Bat Bell: what we give to the poor for his sake, Christ receives as given to himself. Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me. Yes, my friend, I want help for the cottages, but I much more want something for you,—the joy of hearing at the last day the Saviour's welcome, Come, ye blessed of my Father."
VI.
The Return.
The fervent appeal, coming as it did from the very heart of the pleader, had stirred the stubborn hearer a little, though but a little way from his first position. Bat Bell could not help remembering that there was a reverse to the blessing, a "Depart ye cursed," for those of whom Christ would witness, "Ye did it not unto me." Bell feared that he might have lived all his life under the shadow of that curse; so, anxious to justify himself to his own conscience even more than to Franks, he took refuge in the remembrance of what he deemed a good deed.
"I can give,—I have given, and largely, too," said the miller, leaning his head against the wall. "There's my nephew, Rob Gates; did I not pay fifty pounds to 'prentice him out,—fifty pounds," repeated the miller emphatically, "of which I have not had one penny back, though the ungrateful dog has been in business these three years?"
Upon this one act of generosity Bell always fell back when any call on his charity was made, as if he considered that the lent fifty pounds covered every claim which could be made on his purse by religion or by humanity. It always gave him an opportunity of declaiming against the ingratitude of mankind; because his nephew had not repaid his loan, all who needed aid from the miller became in his eyes covetous and thankless, if not dishonest. Bat Bell tried to believe that in hazarding fifty pounds he had already given enough to God; it would have startled him to have been told that not one farthing of the money could be reckoned as real charity. Bell had helped his nephew from natural affection, and from family pride. The miller had acted exactly as he would have acted if he had been a Turk or an Infidel,—exactly as he would have acted had he never heard the name of the Lord. Tried by this test, of how small a part of our alms, alas! will the Master be able to say, Ye did it unto me!
"That miserable fifty pounds," thought Ned, who had heard of it often before, and who knew too well that the miller used its loss as a perpetual argument to silence conscience, and excuse his neglect of the poor.