“I couldn’t if it had not been for you, dear. You are always thinking of something pleasant. I was so surprised when Dick told me—”
He was Dick to almost everybody, for his father was a plain, sociable farmer, and the son had grown up with the village boys. It was a great mortification to Mrs. Fairlie that he did not want to go to college and liked farming. But then Kate kindly took “cultivation” enough for two.
“What will you do with her?” asked Dick, lifting her out in his strong arms.
“Right here. O Jennie!” and she went on making a soft corner.
Dick put Mrs. Ryder in it. The neighbors crowded round, glad to see her out. A pale, sweet, motherly looking woman, who had been very handsome in her day, and now her cordial thankfulness was good to behold.
“You are just splendid;” Fan whispered to Dick.
We all liked Jennie Ryder ever so much, and felt a peculiar interest in her, beside. Two years ago,—or it would be in September,—after Jennie had graduated with honors she obtained a situation in an excellent school some twenty miles away, where she could only come home every Friday, but then the salary was too good to be declined. Just after she had taught two months, the stroke had fallen upon her mother. A cousin who had always lived with them was taken ill with a fever and died. For weeks Mrs. Ryder lay between life and death. Jennie was compelled to relinquish her school. It was a sore disappointment, for she loved teaching. But by spring Mrs. Ryder had partially recovered her health, yet her limbs were well nigh useless. She would hobble around a little with crutches, but Jennie knew that it would never do to leave her alone.
They owned a small cottage and garden, but the sickness had made sad inroads in the little fortune. Jennie felt compelled to earn something at home, so she bought a sewing machine and did fine work. I suppose every town or village thinks it must draw a line somewhere. There were the exclusive West Side people, who only expected to exchange calls with each other, there were the rich people who had been poor thirty or forty years ago, and then there was the circle who wanted to get on and up, by pushing others down and clinging to the skirts of those just above them. Somehow Jennie Ryder was pushed down. The richer girls who were at the Academy with her dropped her by degrees when she sewed for their mothers. One and another left off inviting her out to little sociables, or croquet. I think she felt it keenly, but she made no complaint.
She had so many pretty refined ways and accomplishments. If she had been in a city she could have made them useful, but here all the places were filled. She painted in water colors, drew in crayons, that were almost equal to chromos, made moss baskets and ferneries and picture scrap-books, and had their house looking like a little fairy nest. And she was so sunny and cheery, and really charming when her true self had a chance to peep out from the fence that circumstances and ignorant people built about her.
“Oh,” she said glancing around; “it is like a bit of heaven framed in, isn’t it? just look at the sky over head and the tree tops and mountain tops holding it up, as it were. And a whole long, lovely day! I did not expect on Sunday that I could come.”