Brenda's Bargain: A Story for Girls

by Helen Leah Reed

"Yes, indeed, I do think so, Nora; but for this reaching out, the work of the world could not be carried on, and I am more than happy when I see so young a girl ready to do her part."

Now Nora's disposition, as Miss South had said, had always been one of helpfulness to others. With less money to spend than most of her intimate friends, she had managed to enjoy life thoroughly, and she had been a most devoted sister and daughter.

Her brothers would confide their difficulties to her more readily sometimes than to their mother, although Mrs. Gostar was herself a most sympathetic person, and Nora was friend and adviser to half a dozen youths of Toby's classmates in College.

Yet in spite of her many home duties she found time for much outside work. She had a Sunday-school class of boys whose doings were a constant surprise and almost as constant an occupation for her. Sometimes their vagaries carried her even into the Police Court, where she was ready, if necessary, to say a good word for some boy brought up for a petty offence. When her brothers teased her about her burglar and highwayman protégés, she took their teasing in good part, and replied that as yet none of them had done anything bad enough to require her to give heavy bonds. "Which is fortunate, considering that I am not a large owner of real estate."

"But how much of your pocket-money goes in fines or in cab-hire when you are called out in sudden emergencies?" whereat Nora blushed to a degree sufficient to show that Toby had hit somewhere near the truth; for Nora's Sunday-school class, though not in a mission, was yet made up of boys who were remarkably free from a sense of responsibility, and it was this sense of responsibility that Nora tried to impress upon them; and to assure them of her interest, she did all that she could for them in their every-day life, and not infrequently was to be met with some of them escorting her even on one of the fashionable thoroughfares. Nora did not flinch at the smiles that some of her friends bestowed on her when they met her with her cavaliers.

Yet her interest in these boys did not prevent her having as great an interest in the girls at the Mansion, and in many a little emergency she was the right-hand helper of Julia and Miss South. It was Nora, too, who kept up the most active communication with Mrs. Rosa and the Rosa children at Shiloh. Manuel, indeed, was her especial pride, although she persisted that she was not entitled to all the praise that the family lavished on her for having rescued him years before from being run over. Angelina's sister was not as self-sufficient as she, and was only too glad to look up to Miss Gostar for advice and praise. Moreover, Nora gave perhaps a little less time than the others to the work at the Mansion, because she was especially interested in a Boys' Club. Some of her Sunday-school boys were in it, though a few of the club thought themselves too old for Sunday school. What Nora managed to accomplish in the course of a week was always a wonder to her friends, who with fewer home duties still seldom had time for outside work. Though her two elder brothers had gone from home, one to the West and one to New York, Toby and Stanley made constant demands upon her. "They not only expect me," she said, laughing, "to see that their buttons and gloves are in order, but wish me to be at home whenever they have invited any special friends to the house, and at pretty frequent intervals they expect me to ask some girl or another in whom they have a special interest. But they are very good to me, too," she would conclude, "and without one or the other of them to escort me where I wish to go, I do not see what I should do. I'd even have to stay away from the Mansion sometimes."

The class in invalid cookery proved a great success, and Miss South, as she tasted one after another of the savory little dishes offered her by the proud cooks, said that she almost wished that she might be ill enough to have these jellies and broths recommended to her for a steady diet.

Gretchen, to whom she said this, seemed greatly amused by the idea, and smiled and smiled, and finally broke into a loud laugh.

"Would you really like to be sick in your bed," she asked, "just so's you could eat my jelly?" And then Miss South repeated her praise of Gretchen's work.

"By and by," continued Miss South, "you may wish to have an exhibition of your work, and before spring I am sure you will probably have learned to make several new things."