What Can She Do?

by Edward Payson Roe

"If I only had one or two women to help me we could soon get things settled," she said, "and I have so little time before the rest come."

Then she added suddenly to Arden, "Haven't you sisters?"

"My sister does not go out to service," said Arden proudly.

"Neither do I," said the shrewd Edith, "but I would be willing to help any one in such an emergency as I am in," and she glanced keenly to see the effect of this speech, while she thought, "What airs these people put on!"

Arden's face changed instantly. Her words seemed like a ray of sunlight falling on a place before shadowed, for the sullen frowning expression passed into one almost of gentleness, as he said:

"That puts things in a different light. I am sure Rose and mother both will be willing to help you as neighbors," and he started for another load, going around by the way of his home and readily obtaining from his mother and sister a promise to assist Edith after dinner.

Edith smiled to herself and said, "I have found the key to his surly nature already." She had, and to many other natures also. Kindness and human fellowship will unbar and unbolt where all other forces may clamor in vain.

Arden went away in a maze of new sensations. This one woman of all the world beside his mother and sister that he had come to know somewhat was to him a strange, beautiful mystery. Edith was in many respects conventional, as all society girls are, but it was the conventionality of a sphere of life that Arden knew only through books, and she seemed to him utterly different from the ladies of Pushton as he understood them from his slight acquaintance. This difference was all in her favor, for he cherished a bitter and unreasonable prejudice against the young girls of his neighborhood as vain, shallow creatures who never read, and thought of nothing save dress and beaux. His own sister in fact had helped to confirm these impressions, for while he was fond of her and kind, he had no great admiration for her, saying in his sweeping cynicism, "She is like the rest of them." If he had met Edith only in the street and in conventional ways, stylishly dressed, he would scarcely have noticed her. But her half-indignant, half-pathetic appeal to him on the dock, the lonely ride in which she had clung to his arm for safety, her tears, and the manner in which she had last spoken to him, had all combined to pierce thoroughly his shell of sullen reserve; and, as we have said, his vivid imagination had taken fire.

Edith and Hannibal worked hard the rest of the forenoon, and her experienced old attendant was invaluable. Edith herself, though having little practical knowledge of work of any kind, had vigor and natural judgment, and her small white hands accomplished more than one would suppose.

So Arden wonderingly thought on his return with a second load, as he saw her lift and handle things that he knew to be heavy. Her short, close-fitting working-dress outlined her fine figure to advantage, and with complexion bright and dazzling with exercise, she seemed to him some frail fairylike creature doomed by a cruel fate to unsuited toil and sorrows. But Edith was very matter-of-fact, and had never in all her life thought of herself as a fairy.