Was it any wonder the girl grew up vain, shallow, and with standards poorly calculated to withstand temptations if offered opportunely? Still, there was a certain something in her which, up to her nineteenth year, had saved her from anything worse than shallow flirtations; and then when everything seemed conspiring to lead her to more serious consequences of her folly, Fate had established close at her side a personality and atmosphere in such contrast to her own, and all she had ever known, that it acted as a dash of cold water acts upon a sleepwalker. At first she was startled, then roused, and finally thoroughly wakened to the perilous path she was following.
But the strangest part of it all lay in the fact that the individual which capricious Dame Fate had used as her instrument never for one moment suspected that she was being used at all, but continued on her sweet, cheery, sunny way entirely unconscious of her responsibilities. Perhaps therein lay her greatest strength. Then came the accident on the river, and Mrs. Carruth, quick to read and comprehend, found a field for the sweetest missionary work a woman can enter upon—that of shaping the life of a young girl for the noblest position to which she can attain—a refined young womanhood, a beautiful wifehood, and a motherhood as perfect as God will give her grace to make it. Mary Willing could hardly have found a more beautiful example, and the three years had wrought miracles.
Mrs. Carruth had made haste slowly. The first year Mary Willing entered upon her duties in the candy kitchen she went and came daily, learning and applying herself with all the enthusiasm her gratitude to those she so admired and strove to emulate inspired. The relations between the girl and Constance were those of valued employee and respected employer. It could not have been otherwise. Mary had a vast deal to _un_learn, the hardest of all things to accomplish, and when old impressions were effaced to begin an entirely new page. Gradually as time passed on the girl grew into her new environment. Old habits of manner and speech gave way to gentler ones, old viewpoints shifted to those of these good friends, who had risen up at such a crucial point in her life and were fitting her to be a little woman in the truest sense. In the course of the three years just passed she and Constance had grown closer to each other. The latter, quick to see the former’s sincere desire to improve, and take advantage of every opportunity to do so, felt the keenest sympathy for her less fortunate sister, and the strongest desire to aid her. Mary’s aim and ambition was to grow “just exactly like Constance Carruth! The dearest, best and loveliest girl that ever lived,” as she confided to her mother. The greatest obstacle to be overcome was the unhappy influence in Mary Willing’s own home life. It sometimes seemed to Mrs. Carruth that whatever good they accomplished in the five and a half working days of the week was entirely undone during the one day and a half which the girl spent in the hurly-burly, the untidiness and hopeless shallowness of her own home, to say nothing of the coarsening influence of a worthless, dissipated father’s presence. Mrs. Carruth believed that Mary Willing had naturally been endowed with instincts far above the average of her class, though from what source inherited she could not understand, and that all needed to develop them was a more wholesome atmosphere, wise guiding, and, of course, separation from former contaminating influences. But she bided her time and, when least expecting to do so, discovered the secret. At length, when she felt the moment to be ripe, she suggested most tactfully that Mary come to live with them, to occupy the little room which had once been Mammy’s, but, since her marriage to Charles, and her removal to the snug cottage adjoining the candy kitchen, had been newly decorated and furnished for what Jean, in her characteristic fashion, termed “the left-overs;” “left-overs” being any extra guest who might claim the hospitality of the family when the other guest room was occupied. It was a pretty little room, up in the third floor at the rear of the house, and overlooked the lawn, the candy kitchen, Mammy’s cottage, and the rolling country beyond owned by Jabe Raulsbury. It had been papered in the softest green paper, with garlands of pink roses as a border. The floor was carpeted with a deeper shade of ingrain filling, upon which lay two pretty rugs in pink and green. Dimity curtains, looped back with chintz bands, draped the windows. The furniture was of white enamel, with plain white iron bedstead. Cushions and coverings, as well as table and bureau scarfs, were of the chintz, edged with inexpensive lace—the bedspread of snowy white. Had the room been designed for Mary Willing’s rich coloring it could hardly have suited her more perfectly. But it had not; Fate was simply working out her scheme not only in color but in influence. How great the influence of that simple little room would prove not even Mrs. Carruth suspected, although she was a firm believer in the influence of one’s surroundings.
When Mrs. Carruth suggested that Mary remain with them in order to be at hand whenever needed in an emergency, and to avoid during the cold, stormy days of winter the long trip to and from her own home, the girl had responded with an eagerness which touched Mrs. Carruth very deeply. “And if I come here to live you must let me pay my board,” she cried, impulsively. Then, noticing the color which crept into the older woman’s face, she hastened to add, contritely: “Oh, dear me! Shall I ever learn how to say things? I’m—I’m so—I mean I know so little. Please forgive me, Mrs. Carruth. I didn’t stop to think how rude that was. I ought to have said you must not pay me such a large salary if you let me live here. I know that no amount of money that I could earn could pay my board. I’ve learned that much, you see, even if I don’t seem to have learned very much more during the last two years. But I’m truly, truly trying hard to learn.”
“I know it, dear. Perhaps I am over-sensitive. Old instincts are hard to overcome. No, I do not think we will change the salary. Constance had already thought of increasing the sum she is now paying you, for you earn it. Work has increased rapidly during these two years, and you are very proficient, and very valuable to her.”
“Oh, I am so glad! I want so much to be.”
“You are; so live here with us, and let the little room and the ‘bread and salt’ stand as a part of your salary.”
Mary Willing had never had occasion to enter this room, and when Constance led her to it upon the day she took up her residence with them, the girl stopped short upon the threshold, clasped her hands in a little ecstacy of rapture, and cried: “I’ll live up to every single thing in it, for only a gentlewoman could have arranged such a room, and only a gentlewoman has any right to live in it. It just speaks of that dear, blessed little mother of yours from every corner, and from every single rose on the paper and the chintz; and if I don’t live to make her proud of me I shall want to know why.”
[CHAPTER IV—The Busy Bees.]
“I’m afraid the head of the firm is very late this morning,” cried Constance, merrily, as she entered the candy kitchen. Mrs. Carruth had long since given it the name of the Bee-hive.