“No,” said Joyce wistfully, “but I’ve been preparing to teach for several years. I love it. I’m hoping to get a position near here this fall. But I haven’t any credentials yet. I would have to take examinations—”
“Come and see me tomorrow at my house. Any time. It’s right next door to the church. If I don’t happen to be there Mrs. Lyman will talk with you. It’s all the same. Can you come at nine o’clock? Well, I’ll be there then. Glad to have you come. Perhaps the Lord has sent you in answer to our prayer.”
So Joyce went to see the Lymans and as a result was engaged to teach in the Bible School, which would begin as soon as the public schools closed, and be in session for six weeks. She would have to be at the church at half past eight and stay until half past eleven. The pay wasn’t great, but it took only half her day and she loved the work. She might be able to get something else afternoons occasionally to help out. In the meantime she could live on that ten dollars if she had to, and she meant to. As for the interval before the Bible School opened, there would be something to do, she was sure. And, anyhow, the barrel of meal hadn’t wasted yet, and she felt sure the Lord would take care of her. Besides, she needed some time to fix up her little home and make it liveable. One couldn’t just exist if one was working, one had to have things tolerably comfortable for resting and eating or one couldn’t do good work.
So she went back to her little house and sat down to think. The conclusion of her meditation was that she decided to buy a saw.
Consulting Mrs. Bryant that Monday morning, she finally decided on a trip to the city, and armed with minute directions about stores and prices, she took the noon train.
Her first purchase was a Bible.
She had asked about a book-store where things would not be expensive and Mrs. Bryant had named a second-hand place where things were very nice and very cheap, she said. Joyce found a Scofield Bible, new and clean, and scarcely used at all, it seemed. It had an inscription on the fly-leaf, “To Mary, from Mother, December 25, 1922.”
Joyce felt a pitiful joy in buying that particular Bible. It seemed so sorrowful that a Bible from a mother to her child should be lying out in the open on a book-stall like that, and only two years after it was given. What if it had been hers from her mother? What if it had been Aunt Mary’s Bible! She fell to wondering about that other Mary. Was she dead, or didn’t she care about the book? Were they both dead, mother and child, in those two brief years? How did a precious, intimate thing like a Bible get to be sold in a second-hand store? It seemed almost indecent. Surely some relative or even a trustee who had to sell things at auction would have had the decency to give a Bible to some friend who would care for it, or to some mission that would use it for the glory of God. So she bought the Bible and carried it tenderly with a thought for its unknown owner and donor.
Joyce had a great many bundles when she had finished her purchases. She looked at them in amazement when she finally settled herself in the train once more for her return trip to Silverdale. She really had spent very little money for all those big packages. She began to count up. The Bible had cost fifty cents, and she knew it was very cheap. The saw was a dollar and a half, but it was the best of steel. There was a big bundle of gray denim for upholstery. She had got it at a reduced rate by taking all that was left of the piece. Two or three yards of flowered cretonne to cover her box dressing table. Perhaps she could have waited for that, but it wasn’t good policy for her to seem too poverty-stricken if she expected to get a position in school, and what she bought must be the right thing so that she would not have to renew it right away. She must make her little house look cosy if the minister and his wife dropped in to call, or any of those nice young people at the church should run in.
That big, bulky package with the handle contained a lot of wire springs, some upholstery webbing, and twine, a long, double-pointed upholstery needle, and several pounds of curled hair and cheap cotton. This constituted Joyce’s venture. With it she meant to make a bed and perhaps two chairs. Maybe it was foolish, and she ought to have bought a cot for five dollars and let it go at that, but she would have had to buy a mattress or something to put over it, and when it was done it would not be so comfortable as one that she could make. For Joyce had often watched an old neighbor of theirs in Meadow Brook who was an upholsterer. She knew all the little tricks. She knew how the webbing should be nailed on taut, how the springs must be sewed to the webbing, and then tied down level, and the padding of cotton and hair put on the top of that. She was sure she could do it, though she had never tried it. Joyce was not beyond trying anything if necessity drove her to it. She had once made a lovely feather fan out of chicken feathers and an old ivory frame. She felt she could make a bedstead if she tried hard enough. There was yet the frame to be dealt with, but she had her saw, and anyhow, the springs and webbing and hair had cost but very little, and it would surely be much more comfortable than a hard cot, besides looking a great deal better in her room, and costing no more than, nor as much as, a cot.