Roland Graeme: Knight. A Novel of Our Time

by Agnes Maule Machar

"I never give anything to begging children," interrupted Mr. Chillingworth, more sternly than he was himself aware of; for his irritation with his previous visitor preoccupied him so much that he heard and saw the child vaguely, without taking in the sense of her words, or according her any more consideration, than, to his mind, was ordinarily deserved by the nuisances he indiscriminately classed as "juvenile mendicants." "If your mother wants anything, she can come herself," he added, from behind the resolutely closing door. He was not an unfeeling man, but he never knew what to do with children, and had grown hardened by the sight of misery that he could not prevent;—the words he used being a well-worn formula, the crystallized result of many vexatious impositions. He had only, to "save his precious time," delivered himself over to a set of rules, and in so far, cramped and limited the flow of human sympathy.

Roland, left on the door-steps with the little morsel of womanhood, looked down at her, while she looked up at him with the keenly scrutinizing glance, which, in some children as in animals, seems to have been developed by force of circumstances. In the mutual glance, brief and inquiring as it was, a certain sympathy seemed to establish itself between the young man and the child. He noted, with an eye always minutely observant of human faces, the grieved, discouraged look which the child's flexible mouth had assumed at the unexpected rebuff. But she only said, in an explanatory tone, as if answering an unspoken inquiry,

"Mother's too sick to come; she's awful sick!"

"What's your name, my child, and where do you live?" asked Roland Graeme, who could no more divest himself of the quick sympathy that was always catching hold of other people's lives, than he could of the winning candor of his blue-gray eyes.

"Miss Travers!"—was the unexpected reply to his first question, given with a certain quaint dignity that touched Roland's sense of humor. "We live way up there," pointing in the direction of a long street that ran from the neighboring corner toward the outskirts of the city.

"And what ails your mother, and why did she send you here?" he continued.

"She said I was to come to this house," pointing to the number above the door, "and to say that she wanted to see him very particularly," said the child, evidently repeating her message, word for word, "and she's very sick and can't eat bread, and there's nothing else in the house!" she added, in a tone in which perplexity and resignation were strangely mingled.

The young man sighed heavily. Here was another atom, added to that pile of human misery which had begun to weigh upon his spirit like a nightmare. But he replied in the same cheery tone he had used to the minister:

"Well, I'm going that way, and if you'll wait a minute or two for me at a house I have to stop at, I'll go with you to see your mother, and perhaps I can help her a little." And, taking the little one's hand, the two passed on in the fast gathering dusk. The child, who had acquiesced with a look of real satisfaction, trotted on beside him, occasionally looking up, to study the face of her new friend and to return his smile, while doing her best to keep up with the unconsciously rapid pace which had grown habitual with him.

He drew up suddenly before a modest abode, the door-plate of which bore the inscription, "Rev. John Alden." The door was opened by a bright fair-haired boy, to whom Roland's heart went out at once—for he loved boys, as much as some people detest them, and that is saying a good deal. This boy was evidently accustomed to all sorts of visitors, and did not even look surprised at Roland's odd little companion. Yes, his father was at home. Would they walk in? He seemed to know just what to do with the little girl, whom he carefully lifted to a chair in the hall, while he courteously ushered the young man into a parlor whose comfortable confusion and open piano, littered with music and books, indicated as much life and occupancy as the precise and frigid order of Mr. Chillingworth's reception-room betokened the reverse. A merry tumult of children's voices and laughter came through open doors, seriously diverting Roland's attention from the business part of his mission.