“She looked as if I’d given her a gold mine, and thanked me, and said she wasn’t a bit afraid of my hands, but could I be spared? Wasn’t I busy downstairs? Now I’d only just broke one of the best dishes, and mother’d told me my room was better than my company, so I said, sort of ugly, that she needn’t worry; nobody wanted me downstairs, nor anywhere else.
“She put her little soft, thin hand on my great big red one, and said, so nice and quietly,—
“‘I want you, dear. Will you begin with the tray, and put the things in the top drawer. There are a few that I want put on that convenient shelf, and that pretty corner-bracket, but I’ll tell you as you go along.’
“Now most folks would just have said ‘bracket’ and ‘shelf,’ but that was her, all over! She never missed a chance to say a pleasant word, I do believe—any more than she ever took one to say anything ugly—and yet you didn’t feel as if it was all soft-sawder, and just to your face, the way you do with some people. It seems to me—though I’ve a poor memory, in common—that I can remember almost every word that was said that first day, for I turned a corner then, if ever anybody did.
“I’ve wondered, ever since, if it was just one of those blessed chances, as we call them, for want of a better word, that the Lord sends to help us along, or whether she’d seen, already, just how things were, and meant to help me, without letting on she saw—which, as far as I’ve seen, is the best sort of help, by a long shot! Anyhow, she made some little pleasant talk about almost everything I took out, a little history of where it came from, or something like that, and every other thing, it seemed to me, of her books and pretty nick-nacks, was given to her by her grandson or granddaughter. In the middle of the tray was a little bundle of raw cotton, as I thought, but she smiled, and said to please unwrap it, and I found it was only cotton wrapped, of all things, round an old tin mug. I’ve such a foolish face, it always shows what I’m thinking, and she answered, just as if I’d spoke,—
“‘It doesn’t look worth all that tender care, my dear, does it? But look inside, and see what it is guarding.’
“And then I saw, wrapped in tissue-paper, and just fitting nicely into the old mug, a little tumbler, and when I unwrapped it, it was so thin, I was ’most afraid to touch it, and it looked just like the soap-bubbles Julie and I used to blow, all the colors of the rainbow, when the light caught it.
“‘I was puzzling myself how to carry my precious little tumbler,’ she said, ‘when Nelly—my granddaughter—came in, and she thought of the mug; it was one she had bought for five cents of a tin-pedler, thinking it was silver, dear little soul! She had played with it till it was tarnished, and then put it away in the nursery till she should go to the country; it would do so nicely for picnics, she said. I did not like to take it, at first, but I want them to learn to give, so I tried the tumbler in it, and was surprised to find that it fitted very well, with a little paper put in between, so I thanked her, and kissed her, and she was more pleased, I really believe, than she was when she thought her mug was made of silver.’
“Mrs. Anstiss—her name was Anstiss—didn’t say any more just then, but after a little she took up the mug, and put it on the shelf in the little chimney closet. ‘I must take care of it,’ she said, ‘for I feel now that it is the safekeeper of my dear little tumbler, as well as my Nelly’s gift. We can’t all be’—I didn’t catch the name she called the glass, it was some great long word—‘but if we feel like being discouraged because we are not, why then our best plan is to try to do something for our superiors. That we can all do; the weakest and humblest of us can help to clear the way, to make straight paths, and remove stumbling-blocks for the strong and the capable, and the dear Father will look upon this work, done for His, as done for Him.’