“I thought you told me she wasn’t help,” said her husband. “You said she was a school-teacher.”
“Oh, well—” said the wife indolently, “you know what a school-teacher is that has to go out to work to make a living. Just as soon as I knew she would come I set her down where she belonged, and made up my mind if she was any good I’d get her permanently.”
“Well, that’s a laudable ambition. Coax a girl to come and help you as a favor, and then try to keep her down to the station you’ve put her in! I must say I admire a girl who is willing to cook when she hasn’t anything else to do, and especially when she knows how to cook like that. I believe I’ll look into her case. If she applies for a job in the school I’ll vote for her. I like a girl with ambition and without notions, and I’ll bet she earned her money today.”
“Now, Hatfield, that’s just like you,” complained Mrs. Hatfield Powers. “I take the trouble to tell you what a good-for-nothing girl she is and then you go and vote for her just for sheer stubbornness. Just to oppose me. Just to show you how wrong you are about money, I paid her ten dollars today for getting that little bit of dinner, and I went so far as to offer her double that if she would come early enough to get breakfast and stay all day tomorrow!” She looked around the room in triumph amid the admiring exclamations of her guests.
“Well, I still say she earned her money,” said her husband.
Joyce Radway let herself into her little dark room, locked her door, tossed her hat on the box table, flung herself on the heap of newspapers in the corner and burst into heart-breaking sobs.
By and by her tears were spent and she grew quieter, and above the tumult of her soul a still small voice seemed saying over the words softly to her troubled heart:
“The Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the Everlasting Arms.”
How wonderful that that should come to her now!
Once, a long time ago, when she was a little girl and was learning verses with her mother and her aunt, they had told her that these verses they were teaching her were to be stored up for a time of need, and that when any distress came, if they were safely in her heart and memory, they would come out to comfort her or show her the way out of a difficult situation. She had not thought much about it then, but now that all came back. She was in trouble and comfortless, and the verses were coming like a troop of strong angels to comfort and guide her and help her through temptation—to show her that God was not a God afar off, but was nigh to each one of us, even in our hearts. So, comforted, she fell asleep.