Long!" exclaimed the baker. "Why, she's got as slandering a tongue as any in the parish! Give the poor old soul a loaf or a sup of broth if you like, but I'll not have my girl running in and out to hear all the gossip of the place, and worse."
"I knew you would say so, Ambrose," returned Charlotte. "All the same, the child's thought shames me that I've never done anything for the poor old thing; and she won't harm me."
Ambrose chuckled a little. "I don't know but aunt likes a spice of gossip as much as her niece. 'Tis she tells us all the news."
"Well, I can get plenty of that in the shop, without going to Dame Long for it," said Charlotte, laughing. "I like the real article, genuine and unadulterated."
They were laughing at Aunt Charlotte's wit when Amy came in, and she looked from one to the other, afraid they were laughing at her project, and ready to be offended or hurt. She did not like it when her father said, "Look here, my girl, Aunt Charlotte says Dame Long's dish of tongue is too spicy for you, and she must have it for herself."
"I don't know what you mean, father," said Amy, nearly crying, "I didn't want it for that."
"No, you didn't, child," said Charlotte; "but come along here, I want you to help me dish up."
Amy came with the tears standing in her eyes into the back kitchen, vexed, angered, and ready to be cross. Her aunt set her to prepare the dish for the Irish stew, while she said, "Father was at his jokes with me, Amy. He don't like you to be running in and out to old Sally Long by yourself; no more does your Aunt Rosy nor I; but the poor old body didn't ought to be neglected, and the sermon was just as much for me as for you, so I've made up my mind to look after her a bit, and you may come in with me sometimes if you like."
"That was not what I meant," said Amy, rather fretfully.
"I dare say not. There, mind what you are about, or you'll have that dish down. Where's the flour? Come, now, Amy, don't be daunted, if you can't do good quite in your own way; why shouldn't you ask Miss Dora now?"
Amy muttered and pouted. "I'm not such a child now!"
"Ain't you then, to be making such a pout at not getting just your own way."
Down came the dish with a bounce on the table, and away ran Amy up the stairs, where she cried and choked, and thought how hard it was that she should be hindered, and laughed at, and scolded, when she wanted to do good, and bring forth the fruit of good works.
She heard Aunt Rose ask where she was, and her Aunt Charlotte answer, "Oh! she will be down in a minute."
She felt it kind that no one said that she was in the sulks. The relief did her good; she could not bear that any one should guess what was amiss. So she washed her face in haste, tidied her hair and collar, and hoped that she looked as if she had gone up for nothing else.
Perhaps her father had had a hint, and she was his great pet, so he took care that the apprentices should not suspect that Amy had been "upset." So he began to tell what had made him late at home. He had overtaken poor Widow Smithers in much trouble, for she had had a note from the hospital to say that her little boy, Edwin, must be discharged as incurable. It was a hip complaint, and he could not walk, and she had not been able to find any way of getting him home.
It so happened that all the gentlefolks were out for the day, and she did not get her letter in time before the market people set off. She was indeed too poor to hire a conveyance, and was going in, fearing that she might have to carry this nine-year-old boy herself five miles unless she could get a lift. So Mr. Lee had driven her into the town, and after doing his work there, had come up to the hospital, and had taken her in with poor little Edwin, who was laid on a shawl in the cart, but cried a good deal at the jolting. The doctors said that they could do no more for the poor little fellow, and she would have to take him home and do the best she could for him.
It fell very hard upon her, poor woman, for she was obliged to go out to work every day, since she had four children, and only Harry, the one who was older then Edwin, earned anything—and indeed he only got three shillings a week for minding some cows on the common. The two girls must go to school, and indeed they were too young to be of much use and the boy would have to be left alone all day, except for the dinner hour, as he had been before the hospital had been tried for him.
"There, Amy," said Aunt Charlotte, as they were clearing away the dinner things after the menfolk had gone out, "there's something you could do. It would be a real kindness to go in and see after that poor little man."
"Yes," added Rose; "you might run in at dinner time, and I'd spare you a little time then, and you might read to him, and cheer him up—yes, and teach him a bit too."
"Edwin Smithers was always a very tiresome, stupid little boy," said Amy, rather crossly, from her infant school recollections.
"Then he will want help all the more," said Aunt Rose, and it sounded almost like mimicry of what Amy had said of old Mrs. Long.
She did not like it at all. It is the devices of our own heart that we prefer to follow, whether for good or harm, and specially when we think them good. And yet we specially pray that we may do all such good works as our Lord hath prepared for us to walk in, as if we were to rejoice in having our opportunities set out before us, yet the teaching a dull little boy of whom she had had experience in the infant school, did not seem to her half such interesting work as converting an old woman of whom strange things were said.
However, Amy was on the whole a good girl, though she had her little tempers, and did not guard against them as she ought, thinking that what was soon over did not signify.
By and by, Jessie came back radiant with gladness, and found a moment to say, before Florence Cray came in, that her mother was quite agreeable to her teaching in the Sunday school, if Miss Manners liked it. She had gone there herself for some years when she and Miss Manners were both young, and she was well pleased that her daughter should be helpful there.
Amy, who was fond of Jessie, was delighted to think of having her company all the way to school, and her little fit of displeasure melted quite away. But when Florence was heard coming in, both girls were silent on their plans, knowing that she would only laugh at their wishing to do anything so dull.
CHAPTER III
THE WORKING PARTY
"Are these fruits of the sermon on Friday night?" said Miss Manners to Mr. Somers, as they finished winding up their parish accounts on Monday morning. "Not only, as you know, here is Grace Hollis wanting to join Mrs. Somers's Tuesday working parties, Jessie begging to help at the Sunday school; but I find that good little Amy Lee went and sat with poor Edwin Smithers for half an hour on Sunday after church, showing him pictures, and she has promised his mother to come and look in on him every day. It is very nice of the Lees to have thought of it, and to spare her."
"Yes," said Mrs. Somers, "the Lees are always anxious to do right."
"I had a talk with Charlotte just now. She came to get some flannel for Mrs. Long. She says she will make it up for her, if the old woman can have it out of the club. Well, she says it is quite striking how all those girls have been moved by Mr. Soulsby's sermon on Friday evening. Amy came home and nearly said it all off to her Aunt Rose, and the girls were all talking about it in the workroom in the morning, full of earnestness to make some effort."
"I saw they were looking very attentive," said Mr. Somers. "Shall you accept Jessie Hollis's help?"
"I think I can make a class up for her."
"I
