Janet's Love and Service

by Margaret M. Robertson

But his mother was not to be moved.

“Girls used to have a good time and work too, when I was young. Emily Arnold is strong enough, if folks would let her alone, and not put notions in her head. And as for Hannah, I’ll have none of her.”

So Mr Snow saw that if Emily was to have a good time it must be elsewhere; and he made up his mind to the very best thing he could have done for her. He fitted her out, and sent her to Mount Holyoke seminary; that school of schools for earnest, ambitions New England girls. And a good time she had there, enjoying all that was pleasant, and never heeding the rest. There were the first inevitable pangs of home-sickness, making her father doubt whether he had done best for his darling after all. But, in a little, her letters were merry and healthful enough. One would never have found out from them anything of the hardships of long stairs and the fourth storey, or of extra work on recreation day. Pleasantly and profitably her days passed, and before she returned home at the close of the year, Mrs Snow had gone, where the household work is done without weariness. Her father would fain have kept her at home then, but he made no objections to her return to school as she wished, and he was left to the silent ministrations of Hannah Lovejoy in the deserted home again.

By the unanimous voice of his brethren in the church, he was, on the departure of Deacons Fish and Slowcome, elected to fill the place of one of them, and in his own way he magnified the office. He was “lonesome, awful lonesome,” at home; but cheerfulness came back to him again, and there is no one more gladly welcomed at the minister’s house, and at many another house, than he.

There have been changes in the minister’s household, too. When his course in college was over, Arthur came out to the rest. He lingered one delightful summer in Merleville, and then betook himself to Canada, to study his profession of the law. For Arthur, wise as the Merleville people came to think him, was guilty of one great folly in their eye. He could never, he said, be content to lose his nationality and become a Yankee; so, for the sake of living in the Queen’s dominions, he went to Canada; a place, in their estimation, only one degree more desirable as a place of residence than Greenland or Kamtschatka.

That was five years ago. Arthur has had something of a struggle since then. By sometimes teaching dull boys Latin, sometimes acting as sub-editor for a daily paper, and at all times living with great economy, he has got through his studies without running much in debt; and has entered his profession with a fair prospect of success. He has visited Merleville once since he went away, and his weekly letter is one of the greatest pleasures that his father and sisters have to enjoy.

Norman and Harry have both left home, too. Mr Snow did his best to make a farmer first of the one and then of the other, but he failed. To college they went in spite of poverty, and having passed through honourably, they went out into the world to shift for themselves. Norman writes hopefully from the far West. He is an engineer, and will be a rich man one day he confidently asserts, and his friends believe him with a difference.

“He will make money enough,” Janet says, “but as to his keeping it, that’s another matter.”

Harry went to Canada with the intention of following Arthur’s example and devoting himself to the law, but changed his mind, and is now in the merchant’s counting-room; and sends home presents of wonderful shawls and gowns to Janet and his sisters, intending to impress them with the idea that he is very rich indeed.

Those left at home, are content now to be without the absent ones; knowing that they are doing well their share in the world’s work, and certain that whatever comes to them in their wanderings, whether prosperity to elate, or adversity to depress them, their first and fondest thought is, and ever will be, of the loving and beloved ones at home.