While in her classes, Jason easily had stood foremost; it had not been in her power to surpass the grade of the work that he did. In his absence, she found it possible to attain higher marks than Susanna or the most ambitious of the boys. The thing that Mahala never realized was, that whether her work was the best in her class or not, so long as her father was on the board it was so graded by a line of teachers who were accustomed to seeing her in the lead in every other activity among the children of her own age in Ashwater.
What Mahala did for Jason was simple enough, possibly not vital to him. With a firm determination, candles, and kerosene, he might have equalled what the other pupils were accomplishing in school, working in the room over the grocery at night. Faithful to his promise, Peter walled off a room of generous dimensions for Jason, papered its walls and ceiling freshly, while the boy himself put a coat of new paint on the woodwork.
After the first month of experiment, and steadily following down the years, Peter Potter paid him monthly a fair share of the proceeds of the business which prospered remarkably with Jason’s assistance. Peter never objected when he found one of Jason’s school books lying on his account desk or Jason deep in the book when he had the store cleaned and arranged to such a state that he felt he might use a few minutes for himself. Both knew that Jason’s spare time was secured through deliberate planning of his work. Peter never knew at what hour Jason arose, but he did know that each morning when he stood in front of his store, he would find a fresh and attractive display of provisions and a new and luring sign containing some quirk or jest that caught people’s attention and turned their footsteps into his door.
Among this daily increasing fleet of footsteps attracted by the window displays, the catchy signs, and the quick and efficient services of Jason aided by a rejuvenated Peter, who had taken a reef in his trousers and consented to wear a washable coat, there came once a week the daughter of opulence. Usually she arrived with a slip in her hand, ostensibly to order groceries for her mother. At times she walked in frankly. It was at Peter’s suggestion that her endeavours for Jason were made under cover of a screened space where the desk bearing Peter’s ledgers and account books was ranged. Its bill-papered grating gave them privacy while Mahala each week marked in Jason’s books the extent to which the lessons in his class had progressed. Then she remained a few minutes to give him a hint as to how a difficult equation worked out in algebra; to help him over a knotty place in physical geography or astronomy, where the class had used authorities other than their school books and had kept notes. These she loaned him, and she took pains as she set them down in school to use great precision and fully elaborate points she well understood, that they might be clear to Jason.
Exactly why she took the trouble to do this, Mahala did not concern herself. She did it persistently, in the full knowledge that neither her father nor her mother would have approved, had they known. Mostly Mahala was willing to work diligently to earn the approval of her parents; but there were times when Elizabeth and Mahlon Spellman were enigmas to their daughter. She heard her father talk daily about brotherly love and charity and saw him truly love no man, saw him give only in public and when the gift would be talked about and redound to his credit for the length of the county. She heard her mother delicately voice the sentiment: “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” when the girl could not help knowing that in reality her mother would be deeply shocked at the thought of such a thing as loving her neighbour. The truth was that she had no use for her neighbours either on the right hand, or the left, or fore or aft. Her chosen friends in the village were progressive people of financial circumstance and social position. The admirable precepts laid down by Mahlon and Elizabeth had been familiar to Mahala from her cradle. She had believed in her youth that her father and mother were always right, always consistent, always kind; she accepted their doctrines as her own law of life. But with Mahala “love thy neighbour” and “all things whatsoever” were not mechanical mouthings to make a good impression. They were orders which she, as a small soldier of the Cross, undertook to obey.
So, as the years went by, in daily contact with her parents, Mahala learned to watch them, to study them, and finally, God help them!—to judge them. By and by, there were times when her eyes narrowed in concentration; at rare times her lips opened in protest that she speedily learned was utterly futile. She soon found out that they had laid out their course and were following it in a manner which they deemed consistent. She was not permitted to speak if her father raised his hand. That sign for silence she never had dared disobey. She learned also that she might better save her breath than to use it in speech when Elizabeth’s lips set in a thin, narrow line and her eyes hardened to steel-gray. Because she knew that the uplifted hand and the tight lips would be inevitable should her father and mother learn that she was helping Jason with his lessons, she took good care that they did not find it out. She openly rejoiced to them over the changed conditions in Peter Potter’s business. She carried home mouth-watering descriptions of the food displayed in his windows. Sometimes she repeated the wording of a placard that amused her. Once, in laughingly recounting at the supper table how in Peter Potter’s window there stood a huge, golden cream cheese surmounted by a neat sign which read,
Good people, this cheese,
Begs that you sample it, please,
she said that people were standing on the street laughing about it when it really was so simple that there was nothing to laugh over.
“That’s exactly the point,” said Mahlon. “It is so everlastingly simple that it becomes clever. It puts the burden of the request on the cheese and then leaves the cheese to prove itself. I’ll wager it’s a good one. Did you get a slice?”