From Jest to Earnest

by Edward Payson Roe

Before she could answer, he said to Lottie, "Are you ready to go home? Harcourt and Addie say we ought to start at once."

Lottie was provoked at his rudeness, and furtively watched Mrs. Dlimm's face, to see what impression he made upon her. Indeed her face was a study for a moment as she measured De Forrest's proportions with a slow, sweeping glance, which he thought one of admiration. But, instead of turning contemptuously or resentfully away, her face was pitiful.

They were now summoned to hear the result, but Lottie found opportunity to whisper to Mrs. Dlimm, "What do you think of him?"

"I don't know what to think. It is painfully evident that he is not a man."

Mrs. Dlimm's verdict had a weight with Lottie that she would hardly have believed possible a few hours before. There was a quaint simplicity and sincerity about her, an unworldliness, that gave her words something of the authority of the other world.

The abstraction that had been on Hemstead's face passed to Lottie's, and she heard with inattentive ear the young farmer say with hearty emphasis, "We present you, as an expression of our good-will, with two hundred and fifty dollars."

She heard, but still did not heed the pastor's grateful reply. De Forrest whispered to her often, but her brow only contracted at his interruption to her busy thought. Suddenly she noted Hemstead's eye resting on her with a questioning expression. Then with a seeming effort she came out of her revery, and tried to be her old self again.

When Mr. Dlimm ceased, the farmer called out heartily: "Good for you, dominie. Now I call for a vote of thanks to the stranger who showed us a way out of our scrape. I understand that his name is the Rev. Mr. Hemstead. Also a vote of thanks to such a young lady as the city doesn't often send us, who, if she will permit a country compliment, is like the rose, good enough for a king, yet sweet to all. I call on both for a speech."

Lottie, blushing and laughing, declared that she was one who believed "that a woman should keep silence in meeting," and requested Hemstead to answer for both.

"Miss Marsden does not need words," said Hemstead. "She has a better kind of eloquence, and speaks to us through good and kindly deeds. My part in the happy results of this evening is slight. It is comparatively easy to suggest good and generous action, but it is harder to perform. It is one thing to preach, and quite another to practise. You have had the hard part,—the practising,—and yet have done it as if it were not hard, as duty seldom is when performed in the right spirit; and therefore deserve the greater credit. If what you have done from generous impulse to-night you will henceforth do from steady principle, you will all have cause to remember this evening gratefully. That 'it is more blessed to give than receive' is true, not only because the Bible declares it, but because human experience proves it."