"Did you ever hear of the young servant-girl who was converted, and presented herself to the pastor desiring to be received into the Church? He asked her what proof she had that she was a Christian, and she answered, 'I sweeps the corners clean now.' I always thought that the poor girl gave good evidence of a changed purpose. I don't know whether she knew that verse, 'By their fruits ye shall know them;' but it is true, Dorrie, with pudding-kettles as well as with everything else."
I suppose that that simple little talk in that upper hall, on that Monday morning, actually changed the whole current of Dorothy Morgan's future life. Hitherto religion had had nothing whatever to do with pudding-kettles, or Monday mornings in the kitchen, or with the thousand little cares of everyday life. She had regarded them as so many nuisances, to be pushed aside as much as possible for actual work. I may as well frankly own to you that this young girl hated the neatly-painted kitchen in which most of her life was spent. She hated the dish-pan and the sink and the dishtowels with a perfect hatred. She hated brooms and dusters and scrub-brushes, and all the paraphernalia of household drudgery. It was literally drudgery to her.
Her new sister's wise eyes had singled out the thing which she perhaps hated most with which to illustrate this germ of truth that she had dropped into the soil of Dorothy's heart. An old-fashioned, heavy, black kettle, which had been handed down as an heirloom in the Morgan family for generations, and in which the favourite Sunday evening dish, hasty-pudding, was invariably cooked. Simmering slowly over the fire all Sunday afternoon, the pudding eaten at supper-time, the kettle filled with water and left to soak over night, and appearing on the scene with relentless regularity every Monday morning to be scraped and scrubbed by Dorothy's disgusted fingers. Dorothy hated hasty-pudding. Dorothy almost never washed that kettle with the degree of nicety that Mother Morgan demanded. She almost invariably left little creases of scorched pudding clinging to the sides, and a general greasiness of appearance about it that was fruitful of many sharp words on the mother's part and sullen defiance on Dorothy's. The idea that her religion actually had to do with this pudding-kettle came to Dorothy like a revelation. She went downstairs thinking it over. She realized that the thought gave new interest to life. If the fruits of Christian living were actually to be looked for in pudding-dishes, then what place was there where they could not show? There was a dignity in living, after all. It was not simple drudgery, and nothing else. She thought of it when the foaming milk was brought in, John setting down the pail with a thud, and saying,—
"Tend to that, and give us the pail; and don't be all day about it either."
I shall have to admit that Dorothy was more or less accustomed to this form of address, and yet that it always irritated her, and she was apt to reply, "I shall be just as long as I please; if you want it done quicker, do it yourself." Then would follow other cross or sullen words, neither person meaning to the full the words used, yet both feeling crosser when they parted. A sad state of living, truly, yet it had actually become a habit with these two, so much so that John looked at his sister in surprise when she lifted the pail silently, and presently returned it to him, with no other remark than the statement that Brownie was giving more milk than before. He made no answer to this, and went away actually surprised at the quietness of the kitchen. It is not my purpose to let you follow Dorothy closely through that day in the kitchen.
Monday morning is a time, you will remember, that tries the souls of many women. Mrs. Morgan was no exception. For some reason, best known to herself, she was particularly tried this morning. Nothing went right, and nothing could be made to go right. The fire at first would not burn enough; and then it burned too much, and sent the suds from the boiler sputtering over on the bright tins that Dorothy had arranged on the hearth to dry; and Mrs. Morgan was betrayed into saying that a child ten years old would have known better than to have put tins in such a place. And, despite Dorothy's earnest care, the starch presently lumped; and, worse than that, certain cloudy-looking streaks, coming from no one knew where, mixed with its clearness, and the mother affirmed that Dorothy ought to have her ears boxed for being so careless. Try as the daughter would, the mother was not to be pleased that morning. And Dorothy did struggle bravely. She made the smooth, black sides of the hated pudding-kettle shine as they had not before on any Monday morning on record. She scoured every knife, not forgetting the miserable little one with a notch in the end and a rough place in the handle, a knife that she had longed to throw away, and to which the mother pertinaciously clung; she rubbed at the hated sink until it shone like burnished steel; she rubbed at the dish-cloth, for which she had a separate and special feeling of disgust, until it hung white and dry on its line; she neglected no cup, or spoon, or shelf-corner, and she moved with brisk step and swift fingers, only to hear the metallic voice say, as it made its entrance from the outer kitchen where the rubbing and rinsing were going on,—
"I wonder if you are going to be all day washing that handful of dishes! I could have had them all put away and the kitchen swept an hour ago. I can't see how I came to have such a dawdler as you!"
Dear me! Have you been so fortunate as never to have heard mothers speak in this way? Good, honest mothers too. Mothers who would have sat with unwinking eyes and patient hands, night after night, caring for the wants, real and imaginary, of their sick daughters, who yet will stab them with unthinking words all day long. Words not true; for Mrs. Morgan knew perfectly well that she could not have finished all this work an hour before. Yet be just to her; she actually believed, energetic woman as she was, that she could have accomplished it all in much less time. For the matter of that, I suppose she could. Certainly Dorothy had not her mother's skill. The wonder was that the mother should have expected young hands to be as deft as her own.
So the day wore on. A trying one at every turn to poor young Dorothy, who had just enlisted, and was trying to buckle her armour on, and who kept up a brave struggle, and went steadily from one duty to another, doing not one of them as well as her mother could have done, but doing each one of them as well as she could. Could an angel do more? A hard day, both over the dishes and the dust and at the wash-tub; yet not by any means so hard as it might have been but for that bit of talk in the upper hall in the morning—a new idea that made a song in her heart despite all the trials—so much of a song that occasionally it flowed into words, and Dorothy's untrained voice was sweet and clear. She rarely used it over her work, but on this Monday twice she sang clear and loud,—
"Mine is an unchanging love;
Higher than the heights above."