Taken or left

by Mrs. O. F. Walton

When Salome was a baby, we used at first to quarrel about her a great deal. We all wanted to nurse her, and to play with her, and to carry her out; and she was like a favorite toy, which every one of us wanted at the same time. But after a few months had gone by, and Salome was no longer such a novelty to us, the other boys were not so anxious to take charge of her, and, indeed, sometimes grumbled when mother called them from their games to take care of their little sister. And so it came to pass that Salome and I became such great friends. I was never tired of her; it was never a trouble to me to nurse her and to look after her.

"Where are Peter and Salome?" mother would call out at meal-times, for she knew we were always together.

When I was at school, Salome would go into the shop to father, and stay with him while I was away. Not one of his ten boys had been allowed to go into the shop at a time when customers were expected; we were turned out directly if our heads were seen peeping in at the shop door. But Salome used to sit for hours perched on a sack of flour, looking at her picture-book, or watching the customers coming in and going out, from father's high stool behind the counter. But she was always standing at the shop door watching for me, when she knew that it was the time for me to come home, and she would run to meet me, and throw her arms round my neck with a shout of joy, and then jump on my back to be carried home again.

There was a church at the end of the street in which we lived, and my father went to it every Sunday morning. My mother very seldom went with him; she had got out of the way of going while the children were babies, and once having got out of the way, it was very hard for her to get into it again. But my father took his five eldest boys with him, and my mother got us ready, and brushed our hair, and pinned on our clean collars, and then stood on the doorstep watching us go down the street, with little Salome in her arms.

We had a pew of our own, quite at the end of the large church, and here we sat in a row, always in the same order, first James, then John, then myself, then Andrew, then Philip, then our father at the door of the pew. We sat pretty quietly while service went on; but it always seemed a very long and dull time to me. The old clergyman's voice sounded very far away, and I scarcely heard or cared to hear what he said. I was always glad when the last prayer came, and the blessing was pronounced, and the organ began to play, and we could go home again. I do not remember anything that I heard at church, until one Sunday, of which I shall soon have to write. After that Sunday, church never seemed quite the same place to me as it did in the days which went before.

But I must tell you first of another day, which came before that Sunday, for it is a day which I shall never forget as long as I live.

I think that it is the first day in my life which I can remember as being at all different from the rest. There was not much variety in our life, nor in our poor mother's work. We were always hungry, always noisy, and always wearing out our clothes. There was always some one ill, or some one naughty, or some one in mischief. There was the daily hurrying off to school, and the daily hurrying home again. There was the great getting up every morning, when all ten of us lost everything we wanted; and the great going to bed every night, when our poor mother used to look quite worn out and exhausted, long before we were all of us tucked up in bed.

But through all the weeks and months and years of Salome's babyhood, she was learning to love me more, and I was getting still more fond of her. And the day which I shall never forget, and of which I must now write, was Salome's fourth birthday.