She Came Out Carrying Red Roses, Holly and Cedar
“As fuel is brought to the fire
So I purpose to bring
My strength,
My ambition,
My heart’s desire,
My joy
And my sorrow
To the fire
Of humankind.
For I will tend,
As my fathers have tended,
And my father’s fathers,
Since time began,
The fire that is called
The love of man for man,
The love of man for God.”
Betty’s delicate, eyebrows were drawn so close together that they appeared almost heart shaped. “I fear I have only been tending the love of a girl for herself these past few months, so perhaps it is just as well that I should try to reform,” she thought half whimsically and yet with reproach. “Anyhow, I shall telephone Meg Everett this very afternoon, though I am glad Esther does not know the reason Meg and I have been seeing so little of each other lately, and that the fault is mine, not hers.”
By this time the girl had arrived in front of a large, dull, brown-stone building in the middle of a dingy street, with a subdued hush about it. Above the broad entrance hung a sign, “Home For Crippled Children.” Here for a moment Betty Ashton’s courage seemed to waver, for she paused irresolutely, but a little later she entered the hall. A week before she had promised an acquaintance at the church where Esther was singing to come to the children’s hospital some day and amuse them by telling stories. Since she had not thought seriously of her promise, although intending to fulfill it when she had discovered stories worth the telling. This morning while worrying over her own affair it had occurred to her that the best thing she could do was to do something for some one else. Hence the visit to the hospital.
Yet here at the moment of her arrival Betty had not the faintest idea of what she could do or say to make herself acceptable as a visitor. She had a peculiar antipathy to being regarded as a conventional philanthropist, one of the individuals with the instinct to patronize persons less fortunate.
Long ago when through her wealth and sympathy Betty had been able to do helpful things for her acquaintances, always she had felt the same shrinking sense of embarrassment, disliking to be thanked for kindnesses. Yet actually in his last letter Anthony Graham had dared remind her of their first meeting, an occasion she wished forgotten between them both.
The matron of the children’s hospital had been sent for and a little later she was conducting Betty down a broad, bare hall and then ushering her into a big sunlit room, not half so cheerless as its visitor had anticipated.