Beth looked forward with equal hope, too; but it proved to be dashed within the month. Her fears for Mr. Baldwin were realized. Her mother wrote that he was ill.
Beth was in some suspense for several days, for the information at first was very meager. But finally she learned the particulars. Her father had been taken with a hemorrhage in the shops—a strain had brought on the attack, the doctors said. But the trouble was deeper than that.
“He must stop all indoor work for months—perhaps he can never go back to the Locomotive Works,” Mrs. Baldwin wrote. “It is a sad loss; of course, they will not hold his situation open. They never do, no matter how long or how faithfully a man has worked for that corporation.
“My dear, you must make the most of this year’s schooling that we have paid for. I am afraid it will be your last. You cannot look forward to being a teacher, my poor dear. Marcus has already got a situation—‘job,’ he calls it. He insisted. He declares he is going to be the man of the house till papa gets well.
“I am sorry for you, Daughter—after all your high hopes. But there must be some good reason for it and He will not put upon our shoulders a harder trouble than we can bear.”
Beth could not agree with this doctrine of her mother’s. Either she was not sufficiently orthodox, or she had a clearer vision. She knew her father had been warned years before by physicians that his work was not suited to his constitution. And Mr. Baldwin had made no attempt to change it.
“It isn’t fair,” thought the young girl, “to lay it on God. I could not believe that He is love, if we suffered such trouble because He willed it. We have brought it on ourselves—and I guess it’s our work to hustle around and get the best of this trouble. Poor papa!”
She wasted no time in useless worry. First of all, she drew fifty dollars from the bank and sent it home.
“I will not be behind brave, little Marcus,” she wrote her mother. “I want you to use this. I can earn more—a lot more. And I’ll earn all I can before I come home for the summer.”
She confided in nobody but Molly—and to her under promise of secrecy. Beth shrank from the casual sympathy of others. Sympathy of that quality is so apt to be mixed with curiosity.