course, there was nothing else to be done, but she had looked at aunt Hannah with a heavy heart and she knew aunt Hannah felt it as keenly. They had been very close to each other, these two, who had been separated from the others, in a sense, and had burdens to bear. Perhaps their sense of loneliness in the world had made them cling the more to each other. Celia would have liked to be able to say “Aunt Hannah, come with me. I can take care of you now. You have cared for me all my life, now I will give you a home and rest.” Ah! if that could have been! Celia drew her breath quickly, and the tears came between the closed lids. She knew if she once allowed the tears full sway, they would not stay till they had swept all before them, and left her in no fit state to appear before those dreadful, inquisitive boarders, or perhaps even to sell ribbons in Dobson and Co.’s on Monday. No, she must not give way. She would read that other letter and take her mind from these things, for certain it was that she could do nothing more now than she had done, except to write aunt Hannah a cheering letter, which she could not do unless she grew cheerful herself.
So she opened the other letter.
It was from Rawley and Brown, a firm of lawyers on Fifth Street, desiring to know if she was Celia Murray, daughter of Henry Dean Murray of so forth and so on, and if she was, would she please either write or call upon them at her earliest possible convenience, producing such evidences of her identity as she possessed.
The girl laughed as she read it over again. “The idea!” she said, talking aloud to herself again as she had grown into the habit of doing since she was alone, just to feel as
if she were talking to someone. “If they want to identify me, let them do so. I’m not asking anything of them. If I’m I, prove it! How very funny! What for, I wonder? There can’t be a fortune, I know, for father didn’t have a cent. I’m sure I’ve had that drummed into my head enough by Nettie, and even uncle Joseph took pains to tell me that occasionally. Well, it is mysterious.”
She got up and began to walk about the room singing to herself the old nursery rhyme:
“If it be me, as I suppose it be,
I’ve a little dog at home and he’ll know me;
If it be I, he’ll wag his little tail,
And if it be not I, he’ll bark, and he’ll wail.”
“Dear me!” said Celia, “I’m worse off than the poor old woman who fell asleep on the king’s highway. I haven’t even a little dog at home who’ll know me.” She sighed and sat down, picking up the white ribbon that had fallen to the floor. Then she read it over again carefully.
“How like aunt Hannah that sounds!” she said to herself, as she read the poem slowly over, ‘Child of the Master, faithful and dear.’ I can hear aunt Hannah saying that to me. She was always one to hunt out beautiful things and say them to me as if they had been written all for my poor self. If aunt Hannah had ever had time, I believe she would have been a poet. She has it in her. How entirely I have been doing just exactly what this poem says I must not do: choosing my cross for the coming week. Yes, and bending my arm for to-morrow’s load. I have been thinking what a dreary Sunday I should have, and wondering how I could endure it all day long in this ugly, cold room. And I won’t stay down in that mean parlor and listen to their horrible singing. It wouldn’t be right anyway, for they have not the slightest idea of Sabbath keeping. Last Sunday was one hurrah all day long. I wonder what that verse at the top is—‘His allowance was a continual allowance.’ I declare I don’t remember to have ever read it before. But trust aunt Hannah to ferret out the unusual verses. I must look it up. Second Kings: who was it about, anyway? The twenty-fifth chapter. Oh! here it is!” She read:
“And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evil-merodach king of Babylon in the year that he began to reign did lift up the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah out of prison;
And he spake kindly to him, and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with him in Babylon;
And changed his prison garments: and he did eat bread continually before him all the days of his lip.
And his allowance was a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every day, all the days of his life.”
Celia paused and read the verses over again.
She began to see why her aunt had sent it to her, and more than that why her heavenly Father had sent it to her. It was the same thought that was in the bit of a poem. God was taking care of her. He was a king and he was able to lift her head up out of prison, if this was a prison, and set her even on a throne, and change her prison garments, and more than that give her an allowance of grace to meet all the daily needs of her life. A continual allowance: she need never worry lest it should give out. It was “all the days of her life.” And aunt Hannah was his also. He would care for her in the same way. There was nothing to be done but to trust and do what he gave her to do. Perhaps it was unusually hard for her to do that. She had always been so accustomed to looking ahead and bearing burdens for others and planning for them. She recognized her fault and resolved to think more about it. Meantime, obviously the next duty for her to perform, and one by no means a cross, was for her to write a long cheery letter to aunt Hannah, who she could easily see was homesick for her already, though it was but a week since they had been separated. She gathered together her writing materials, drew her chair a little nearer the poor light, put on her heavy outdoor coat, for the room was chilly, though it was only the latter part of October, and began to write; thinking meanwhile that she could perhaps make a pleasant Sabbath afternoon for herself out of the study of Jehoiachin, who was so much a stranger to her that she had hardly remembered there was such a person spoken of in the Bible.
The letter she wrote was long and cheerful. It abounded in pen pictures of the places and things she had seen, and it contained descriptions in detail of the different boarders. She tried not to tell the disagreeable things, for she knew aunt Hannah would be quick to understand how hard it all was for her to bear, and she would not lay a feather’s burden upon those dear hard-worked shoulders. So she detailed merry conversations, and made light of the poor fare, saying she had a very good and a very cheap place they all told her and she guessed they were’ right.
She also drew upon her imagination and described the dear little home she was going to make for aunt Hannah to come and rest in and spend her later years, and she told her she was going to begin right away to save up for it. She made it all so real that the tears came to her eyes for very longing for it, and one dropped down on the paper and blotted a word. She hastily wiped it out, and then took a fresh page, for aunt Hannah’s eyes were keen. She would be quick to know what made that blot. She paused a minute with her pen in air ere she closed the letter. Should she, or should she not tell aunt Hannah of that letter from the lawyers? No, she would not until she saw whether it came to anything, and if so, what. It might only worry her aunt. There were worries enough at Hiram’s without her putting any more in the way. So she finished her letter, sealed and addressed it, and then ran down to put it in the box.
As she returned from her errand into the misty outdoor world, and closed the door behind her shivering, glad she did not have to go out any more, she met the tall, lanky cook in untidy work dress and unkempt hair. Celia noticed instantly that it was curly hair and black, like the one she found in the stew the night she came. She was passing on upstairs but the cook put out her hand and stopped her.
“Say,” she said in familiar tones, “I wish you’d jes’ step into Mis’ Morris’ room and stay a spell. She’s took dreadful sick this evenin’, and I’ve been with her off an’on most all the time, an’ I’ve got pies yet to bake for tomorrow, an’ I can’t spend no more time up there now.
