Katie Robertson Part 4

"It seems to me just like stealing to waste time that we're paid for, or not to do work entrusted to us just as well as we possibly can."

"Oh, well, you're one of the saints, you know. If it's saints.h.i.+p to be rude and call other people thieves I'm glad I'm a sinner, that's all. I guess we'll catch the saint in a slip before long, don't you, girls?"

said she, appealing to several other idlers who naturally congregated around a bird of the same feather as themselves.

Bertie and Katie did not walk home together any more. The former, never having finished her work, was always obliged to remain in the mill till the closing-bell rang, while the former went home, as we have seen, at four o'clock, and at noon she was generally met by her brothers.

"Eric," she said on the day of the above conversation, "do you think it's right to idle and talk instead of doing your work?"

"We can't in the bindery; the machine won't let us. Everything would go to thunder if we looked off."

"But suppose you could, and n.o.body knew anything about it?"

"They couldn't fine you if they didn't know," said Alfred, whose ideas of the righteousness of law were modified by the possibility of escaping its penalty.

"What difference would that make?" said Eric. "G.o.d would know."

"Yes," said Katie, "I always wish the words 'Thou G.o.d seest me,' were written up on the walls of the mill. It helps you not to get tired and want to stop."

"Do you ever want to stop, Katie?" said her brother, tenderly.

"Yes, lots of times, It's just the same thing day after day, no change, no variety, the dust suffocates you, and it's so hard to get up in the morning, and"--

"Sho!" shouted Alfred, "I thought you'd sing a different tune after you'd been in the factory a little while. Don't you remember I told you so?"

"Katie," said Eric, "you remember _I_ told you that you should not work one moment longer than you wanted to. A girl with two strong brothers to support her need not work for her living unless she chooses to. Do you want to stop now?"

"I _want_ to, ever so much," said the girl, "but I don't _mean_ to. Do you think I am a baby to begin a thing and then leave it off again?

There's just as much reason as there ever was for my earning money. I'm not going to be dependent upon you, and mother is growing older every day. Do you remember what the Bible says about those who put their hands to the plough and look back? I don't mean to be one of those; and I mean to pray every day," she said more softly, "that I may be more patient and persevering."

Eric understood her, and even Alfred respected his sister the more for what he could not understand.

"I wish I knew some way of making money faster," said Katie to her brothers soon after; "a great deal, I mean. Mother wants any quant.i.ty of things--blankets, and kitchen utensils, and table things, and she hasn't a bonnet fit to go to church in. It takes about all we can make to feed us all, and if there is any left she always uses it to buy things for us instead of thinking about herself."

"I wonder how it is mothers never think of themselves," said Alfred.

"They are always fussing to make us happy, and we don't do things for them at all."

Katie thought of the words:--

"As one whom his mother comforteth,"

which had been in last Sunday's lesson, but did not say them aloud, only it was a comfort to her to think of the other holy words which say of a mother and her child: "She may forget, yet will not I forget thee." No matter how much a mother may love, G.o.d loves us better still.

One day about that time, Bertie Sanderson, following her usual custom of looking around the room instead of at her work, saw something that caused her to start, open her eyes very wide, and then mutter half-aloud:--

"Oho! the saints are not so saintly after all. It's dishonest to look around the room, is it? I wonder what you call that!"

"Bertie Sanderson, talking, as usual," said Miss Peters, marking the fine upon the slate which she always carried with her," and Katie Robertson, too," noting a sudden flush upon the face of the latter.

"I _am_ surprised."

"I did not speak," said Katie, respectfully, but with some confusion.

"There's no harm in talking to yourself," said Bertie, in the rude tone which she usually addressed to Miss Peters.

"Were not those girls talking, Gretchen," said the superintendent, appealing to a stout German who worked near the others.

"No, ma'am, I believe not; at least, Katie wasn't. I heard Bertie say something, but Katie did not answer, but"--

"Never mind," said Miss Peters, who had got all she wanted,--a chance to fine Bertie whom she hated,--"attend to your work," and she pa.s.sed on, never noticing the hand which Katie, having hastily thrust it into her pocket, continued to hold there.

The work proceeded in silence, and, as Katie went home at four o'clock as usual, Bertie did not have an opportunity to speak to her about the strange thing she had noticed. She did, however, say to Gretchen, as they separated: "Did you see that?"

"What?" said the German, innocently.

"Oh! nothing, if you did not see it." Bertie was going to tell her companion what she had seen, but on second thoughts decided to keep her discovery to herself, that she might have more power over the "saint,"

whom she was beginning to absolutely hate.

But Gretchen had seen exactly what Bertie had, only she did not think it her business, and as it was not, did not choose to speak about it, but, German fas.h.i.+on, went about her own business.

What had the two girls seen? What was it that made Katie Robertson's face such a study as she walked home at a much slower pace than was her wont? What was it that lay in the depth of her pocket, where her hand rested for greater security. What did she put away in the drawer that contained her treasures, going directly to her room for the purpose, instead of rus.h.i.+ng first of all to the sitting-room to see if her mother were at home.

Only a crisp fifty-dollar bill! Katie had never seen so much money at once before. How beautiful it looked; how much it represented of comfort and luxury; how many things it would buy that she knew were wanted by her mother and the boys! She deposited her treasure carefully at the bottom of a little pearl box which had been her mother's, and was the only really pretty thing which she possessed, and then went downstairs to lie on the sofa, think about and plan for spending it.

Where had Katie suddenly got so much money? and why did she so earnestly desire to keep the possession of it a secret? She _thought_ the answer to the latter question lay in her desire to surprise her mother, and was not at all conscious of another feeling that lay as yet quite dormant and unaroused. As to the former, that is easily answered. After cutting off the b.u.t.tons of an old vest, just as the little girl was preparing to cut it in smaller pieces, the pocket opened, and out fluttered a crumpled paper, which on being opened proved to be a fifty-dollar bill.

Some careless gentleman, no one could tell whom, no one could tell when, had stuffed it into the pocket and forgotten all about it. Strange that the vest should have gone through all the vicissitudes common to old clothes, worn possibly by a beggar, condemned to a dust-heap, fished out, sorted, sold, packed, sold again, and transported to the factory, pa.s.sing through a dozen hands, to any one of whose owners the money would have been so useful, and there it had lain unnoticed till it fluttered out into the very hands of Katie Robertson, who needed it so much.

What castles in the air the little girl built as she lay there in the twilight!--dresses and bonnets for her mother; new suits for each of the boys; a new tea-set, with table-cloth and napkins. Never in the world did a fifty-dollar bill buy half so much in reality as this one did in imagination; which, by the way, is a very pleasant way of spending money, since it does not at all diminish the amount, which may be all spent over and over again in a variety of ways. But strangely enough, while everything needed by the others, even to a new ribbon to tie round p.u.s.s.y's neck, was remembered, Katie's catalogue of articles to be bought contained nothing in the world for herself.

CHAPTER VII.

STRIFE AND VICTORY.

No thought had as yet suggested itself to Katie concerning her right to the money which had thus come into her possession, and as she lay there planning the things she was going to get with it, she enjoyed to the full the dignity of owners.h.i.+p. How glad her mother would be when there was a decent water-pail in the house, plates enough of one kind to go round, and a table-cloth that was not nearly all darns! Then her mother should have a new shawl and bonnet, and each of the boys a straw hat and a bright necktie, and she would have something to put in the plate every Sunday in church, and to add to the missionary collection of the Sunday-school cla.s.s. Perhaps, even, she could give something toward a present that the girls were talking of giving to Miss Eunice.

But just then an idea, so painful that at first she turned away from it, struck her, and a question that she did not want to answer suggested itself to her mind. Had she a right to keep the money? Was it really hers? Of course it was, said inclination; whose else could it be? She had _found_ it, no one else; if she had not picked it up it would have gone in with the rags to be boiled and ground up into paper again, or it might have been swept away among the dust and waste paper, and no one been the better or wiser. "Findings is keepings" was a familiar school-boy proverb; was it the right principle or not?

Katie tried to persuade herself that it was. Nevertheless, she was glad that, as she supposed, no one had seen her find the bill, and that her mother as yet knew nothing about the finding. Also, she did not plan out any more ways of spending the money.

Katie was so silent all teatime that her brothers continually rallied her upon her preoccupation, and her mother, fearing she must be sick, sent her to bed very early. To this the little girl did not object, as she wanted to be alone to think over the question that was so perplexing her brain.

Before getting into bed, our young friend opened her drawer, took out the box, gazed lovingly at the bill for a time, then put it away, and knelt to say her evening prayer. What was the matter to-night? For almost the first time since she had known what prayer really was, she could not pray. Her thoughts would not be controlled; they kept wandering away to the finding of that bill. She wondered whether any one had seen her find it, what use she should put it to, and if it were really hers after all. She knew it was wrong to think of other things at such a solemn moment, and felt guilty and condemned. Her conscience troubled her; it seemed as though G.o.d were angry with her. So far the finding of the money had not been a very happy event for its finder. It often happens that secular things, the things we are interested in in our daily lives, will come in between us and our prayers, and we cannot get rid of them. Young Christians especially are greatly troubled in this way, and have many weary fights in the attempt to control their thoughts. They have an idea that prayer is such a sacred thing, and G.o.d is so holy, that they must only talk to him about religion, and use pretty much the same words which they hear in church, and when they cannot do this, they either fall into the habit of _saying_ such words formally without in the least thinking of their meaning, or else they are wretched and self-condemned because of what are called "distractions in prayer." But there is a more excellent way, even to take all the things that really interest us directly to "our Father which art in heaven," and tell him all about them. He encourages us to do so when he says, "casting _all_ your care upon him," and "in everything by prayer and supplication make your requests known unto G.o.d." If we are really his children we may be sure that nothing is too small to interest him which _rightfully_ interests us, and if it is not a right interest there is no surer way of finding that out, and gaining the victory over it, than by bringing it to the light of his Holy Spirit and asking him for strength to dispose of it as we ought.

Had Katie thus taken the money which she had found directly to the Lord, she would soon have understood all her duty concerning it. Her desire would have been only to do his will, and she would have gone to sleep as peacefully as a little child who trusts its mother to manage for it just as she sees to be for the best. But this she did not dare to do, partly because she had not yet learned to understand how G.o.d "careth" for his children in all little things, and partly because down at the bottom of her heart she was not quite ready to do his will--that is, she _hoped_ that it would be right for her to keep the money, and hoped this so strongly that she could not look fairly on the other side of the question. Nearly all night--or it seemed so to a little girl who was generally asleep by the time her head touched the pillow--she lay tossing from side to side, troubled by a dozen different sides of the question. And when she did get to sleep it was to dream confused dreams of thieves being taken to prison, and of being one of them herself.

As soon as it was light, for the long days had come now, the tired little girl sprang from her bed, and dressed herself, in a very unhappy frame of mind. She must decide very soon now, and she began to see more and more clearly that that money did not belong to her, but to the owner of the vest in which she had found it. To be sure, she could not now find the original owner, but Mr. Mountjoy certainly owned it, because he had bought the rags. It was one thing, however, to see this, and quite another to decide to give up to him who had so much the little that was so much to her. All the pleasant planning must go with it; all the things she had desired for her mother and the boys. She was sure she had not been selfish; it was not for herself she wanted money at all. From force of habit she opened her Bible and read the first words she saw, which were these: "Thou desirest truth in the inward parts." And again the words flashed upon her: "Thou G.o.d seest me."