Brenda's Bargain: A Story for Girls

by Helen Leah Reed

But with the best intentions in the world, Brenda could not help showing her preference for the pretty Concetta, whose dark eyes seemed mirrors of truth, and whose manners were always so charmingly deferential. Had she known that she was giving pain to Maggie by showing her preference in this way she would herself have been always ready enough to admit that this was not wise. But Maggie, although her tears flowed so easily, had the ability to keep her thought to herself.

Mrs. McSorley herself, with her Scotch canniness, had an exalted opinion of Brenda, and on Maggie's weekly visits home impressed on her the great advantages that she might expect from having the interest of a Back Bay young lady. "And if she likes any other girl better than you, it will be all your fault, and I'll take it a sign that you ain't doing your very best."

So Maggie had never said a word to her aunt about Miss Barlow's growing preference for Concetta. To have spoken of this would only have drawn a reproof upon herself. It was hard enough to confess her real faults, to tell over the list of things she had broken during the week. She had promised on first entering the Mansion to do this, and thus far she had kept her promise.

Now Maggie had her own little bit of a secret, and sometimes she drew from her pocket a crumpled half-sheet of paper, and wept when she saw at the bottom:

"From your loving Tim."

What would her aunt say, what would Miss Brenda say, if they knew that at intervals she received these misspelled letters from a jail-bird. Yes! "a jail-bird," that was what her aunt had called him, and though it was true that he had only been in the reformatory, and that his offence, as he had explained it, was due more to the fault of another man. Still he had been imprisoned, and Maggie was forbidden ever to speak to him again.

Yet he was her uncle more than Mrs. McSorley was her aunt. The latter was only an aunt-in-law, while Tim was her own uncle, and in spite of his faults she loved him. Of course he was a ne'er-do-well, but his smile was so jolly in contrast with the long-drawn, severe expression of Mrs. McSorley. The latter said that it was very easy for him to be jolly, when he never had the least care in the world for himself or for any one else. But Maggie remembered many kind things that he had done. "Since for him I'd never have been to the circus, and it was a whole day we spent at Nantasket, and he gave me that plush box of pink note-paper;" and Maggie would wipe away one of her ready tears as she thought of Tim, and she gazed at the tintype that she kept with a few other treasures in the plush-covered box.

Many a time she pondered what she should do if he should ever come to Boston, for he was now in Connecticut looking, as he said, for work. "And it won't be so very long," he wrote, "before I'll have me own house, and you for housekeeper; so learn all you can, for it won't be long."

For Maggie had written him once or twice since coming to the Mansion, and her letters had been more cheerful than those that had found their way to him when she was living with her aunt.

So Maggie had her day dreams; and the real secret of her patience, and her anxiety to learn everything relating to the work of the house, came from this hope, that she was to have the chance of showing her uncle what a good housekeeper she could be. Now Maggie should have realized that her aunt had done much more for her than her uncle; that Mrs. McSorley had shown her kindness in comparison with which Tim's occasional bursts of liberality were very small indeed. Where would she and her mother have been but for Mrs. McSorley? And Mrs. McSorley was only a sister-in-law, whereas Tim was her mother's own brother. Yet the kindness of Mrs. McSorley had been so overladen with good advice and reprimands, that it did not stand out as kindness pure and simple. Maggie was as sure that Mrs. McSorley did not love her as she was positive that Tim did love her.