“Then there is some sense in the Bible, isn’t there?”
“Hush-er-you, Nell Blossom!” ejaculated the old woman sternly. “Does seem awful that you’re such a heathen. The Bible’s plumb full of good advice, and lovely stories, and sweet truths. I used to read it a lot before I broke my specs. But I remember lots that I read, thanks be.”
“I don’t care for stories,” said the girl crossly. “And I don’t know that I believe there is a heaven,” she went on quickly. “Once you are dead I reckon that’s all there is to it. I won’t learn any more songs about heaven. I used to cry over them—and about folks dying. I remember the first song Dad taught me to sing in the saloons. It used to make me cry when I came to the verse:
Last night as I lay on my pillow—
Last night as I lay on my bed—
Last night as I lay on my pillow,
I dreamt that my Bonnie was dead.
Bring back! Oh, bring back!
Bring back my Bonnie to me, to me——
It’s all stuff and nonsense!” she broke off with confidence.
“That ain’t a hymn,” said Mother Tubbs placidly. “Hymns is different, Nell. A good, uplifting hymn like ‘Am I a Soldier of the Cross,’ or ‘Beulah Land,’ takes you right out of yourself—bears your heart up on wings o’ hope and helps you forget you’re only a poor, miserable worm——”
“I’m not a worm!” interrupted Nell with vigor. “I’m as good as anybody—as good as anybody in Canyon Pass, anyway, even if some of these women do look down on me.”
“Of course you are, Nell. ‘Worm’ is just a manner o’ speaking.”
“Dad trained me to sing in these saloons, I know,” went on the girl quickly, angrily, “because he was too weakly to use a pick and shovel. We had to eat, and he thought he had to have drink. So I had to earn it. But I’ve been a good girl.”
“I never doubted it, Nell,” Mother Tubbs hastened to say. “Nobody could doubt it that knowed you as well as I do.” She let her gaze wander over the squalid back yards of the row of shacks of which the Tubbs’ domicile was no better than its neighbors. “They don’t know you like I do, Nell. You’ve lived with me for three years—all the time you was growing into a woman, as ye might say. You hafter do what you do, and I don’t ’low when we are forced into a job, no matter what it is, that it’s counted against us as a sin.”