It would be difficult to explain or even to understand how Mrs. Downie had managed to succeed in eliminating from the house and from her circle of acquaintances all persons who were uncongenial to her own gentle and generous spirit, and in filling them with those who were in perfect accord with her, and with each other. It was the progressive work of years, however.
But now, at the time that Lilith first entered her house, it was filled with a little society to whom she seemed less a landlady than a loving mother, and whom she absolutely ruled—not by force of intellect, or position, or power, but by unselfish goodness. Always, since her mother’s departure, she had one or more of adopted children—little waifs, picked up in the streets of New York, and whom she lodged, fed and clothed, and sent to the public schools until they were old enough to be put out to learn trades.
When any hard-headed, practical brother or sister would expostulate with her on the extravagance of her benevolence and the imprudence of her neglect to provide comfortably for her old age, she would answer, simply:
“Why, Lor’s, you know if my poor, dear husband had lived we should have had a large family of children by this time, most like. But as I haven’t got none of my own, I feel as if I ought to take care of other people’s orphans. Seems to me that people without children should take care of children without parents, so far as they can. And as for the rest of it, I know that if I take care of the destitute the Lord will take care of me.”
Acting on this simple faith, the gentle little widow had brought up and provided for no less than seven girls and five boys.
And that is the reason why, at the age of sixty, she had not a dollar in the savings bank.
But oh! the treasure she had laid up in heaven!
At the present time she had a boy and girl, nearly grown up, and when these should be well provided for, by being put in the way of getting their own living, she meant to take two more to bring up—if she should live long enough to do so.
So much for the kindly mistress of the house.
Her circle of lodgers consisted of seven persons. First, there was the young Methodist minister, John Moore, who occupied the same pulpit that had once been filled for a few weeks by William Downie. And here let it be explained, that whenever there came to that church a young unmarried minister, he was always recommended to Mrs. Downie’s boarding-house as to a haven where he would be perfectly safe not only from the harpies of business, but from the harpies of matrimony, where he would really find “the comforts of a home,” and possibly the society of some fair, good girl, suitable to be the companion of his life and labor.