Purple Springs

by Nellie L. McClung

When Pearl left Mrs. Crocks standing on the street she walked quickly to the station, but arriving there with the yellow blank in her hand, she found her intention of accepting a school in the North had grown weak and pale. She did not want to go to North, or any place. She suddenly wanted to stay. She would take a school some place near—and see what was going to happen; and besides—she suddenly thought of this—she must not decide on anything until she saw Mr. Donald, her old teacher, and got his advice. It would not be courteous to do anything until she saw him, and tomorrow was the day he wanted her to go to the school to speak to the children. Why, of course, she could not go—-and so Pearl reasoned in that well-known human way of backing herself up in the thing she wanted to do! So she tore off a couple of blank forms and put them in her purse, and asked the agent if he knew how the train from the East was, and he gave her the assurance that it had left the city on time and was whoopin' it along through the hills at Cardinal when last heard from—and stood a good chance of getting in before night.

All the way home, Pearl tried to solve the tangle of thoughts that presented themselves to her, but the unknown quantity, the "X" in this human equation, had given her so little to work on, that it seemed as though she must mark it "insufficient data" and let it go! But unfortunately for Pearl's peace of mind it could not be dismissed in that way.

One thing was evident—it was some sudden happening or suggestion that had changed his attitude towards her, for there was no mistaking the tenderness in his messages over the phone the day before—and why did he remember the day at all, if it were only to tell her that she was too young to really know her own mind. The change—whatever it was—had taken place in the interval of his phoning, and her visit, and Mrs. Crocks had said that a committee had gone to see him and offer him the nomination! What difference would that make? The subtle suggestion of the senator's daughter came back to her mind! Was it possible—that the Watson family were—what she had once read of in an English story—'socially impossible.' Pearl remembered the phrase. The thought struck her with such an impact that she pulled her horse up with a jerk, and stood on the road in deep abstraction.

She remembered the quarrel she had once had with a girl at school. It all came back in a flash of rage that lit up this forgotten corner of her memory! The cause of the quarrel did not appear in the record, but that the girl had flung it at her that her people were nothing and nobody—her mother a washerwoman and her father a section hand—now stood out in letters of flame! Pearl had not been angry at the time—and she remembered that her only reason for taking out the miserable little shrimp and washing her face in the snow was that she knew the girl had said this to be very mean, and with the pretty certain hope that it would cut deep! She was a sorrel-topped, anaemic, scrawny little thing, who ate slate-pencils and chewed paper, and she had gone crying to the teacher with the story of Pearl's violence against her.

Mr. Donald had found out the cause, and had spoken so nicely to Pearl about it, that her heart was greatly lifted as a result, and the incident became a pleasant recollection, with only the delightful part remaining, until this moment. Mr. Donald had said that Pearl was surely a lucky girl, when the worst thing that could be said to her was that her two parents had been engaged in useful and honorable work—and he had made this the topic for a lesson that afternoon in showing how all work is necessary and all honorable. Out of the lesson had grown a game which they often played on Friday afternoons, when a familiar object was selected and all the pupils required to write down the names of all the workers who had been needed to bring it to perfection.

And the next day when lunch time came, Mr. Donald told them he had been thinking about the incident, and how all that we enjoy in life comes to us from our fellow-workers, and he was going to have a new grace, giving the thanks to where it belonged. He said God was not the kind of a Creator who wanted all the glory of the whole world—for he knew that every man and woman or boy or girl that worked, was entitled to praise, and he liked to see them thanked as they deserved.

A new grace was written on the board, and each day it was repeated by all the pupils. Pearl remembered that to her it had seemed very grand and stately and majestic, with the dignity and thrill of a pipe-organ:

"Give us to know, O God, that the blessings we are about to enjoy have come to us through the labors of others. Strengthen the ties of brotherhood and grant that each of us may do our share of the world's work."

But the aesthetic emotions which it sent through her young soul the first time she said it, did not in any way interfere with the sweet satisfaction she had in leaning across the aisle and wrinkling up her nose at her former adversary!

She began to wonder now if Mr. Donald had been right in his idealistic way of looking at life and labor. She had always thought so until this minute, and many a thrill of pride had she experienced in thinking of her parents and their days of struggling. They had been and were, the real Empire-builders who subdued the soil and made it serve human needs, enduring hardships and hunger and cold and bitter discouragements, always with heroism and patience. The farm on which they now lived, had been abandoned, deserted, given up for a bad job, and her people had redeemed it, and were making it one of the best in the country! Every farm in the community was made more valuable because of their efforts. It had seemed to Pearl a real source of proper pride—that her people had begun with nothing, and were now making a comfortable living, educating their children and making improvements each year in their way of living and in the farm itself! It seemed that she ought to be proud of them, and she was!