Ladybird (20 page)

“Oh, I wouldn’t want anybody to support me,” said the girl happily. “I can get some work to do. I must take care of myself, of course.”

“But what could you do?”

“I could milk,” was the eager answer. “I’ve done that a great deal, and I do it nicely.”

The lady laughed amusedly. “We don’t keep cows in New York. The city is too crowded. So you’ll have to give up the idea of being a dairymaid.”

“You don’t keep cows?” she asked perplexed. “How do you get along without milk?”

“Oh, we have milk. It comes on milk trains—in cans and bottles, packed in ice.”

“Real milk? Where does it come from?”

“Farms and dairies.”

“Then perhaps I’d have to go out to a farm or dairy and get work,” sighed the child disappointedly, “but I’d rather be near people who belonged to my mother.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t take a girl to do that work. It is all done by men or machines nowadays.”

“Machines? How could a machine milk a cow?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I never saw one, but I’ve heard that all the milking in large dairies is done by some kind of an electric contrivance that is made a good deal like a human hand. But what else can you do?”

“I can wash,” she said brightly, “and cook a little. I can learn to do almost anything, I guess.”

Looking at her, the woman thought perhaps it might be possible.

“How would you like to come and work for me?” she asked.

“Oh, could I? That would be beautiful!” said the child enthusiastically. “What would you let me do for you? I could learn to do fine cooking like what we had to eat today perhaps.”

“But I already have a cook and a maid and several other servants. I don’t need another. How would you like to be my social secretary? A sort of companion, you know.”

“That’s not work,” said Fraley disappointed, “that’s play. I couldn’t earn money honestly for doing a thing like that.”

“Oh, yes you could,” said the lady, “and it’s not play by any means. You would have to keep track of my engagements and see that I didn’t forget any of them. You would look after sending my laces to be mended and my jewels to be repaired or cleaned or restrung, you know. And you would have to learn to answer my notes and send out invitations—all those things. Can you write?”

“Oh yes,” said the girl eagerly.

“Write something for me. Write me a letter. Here, take this and see what you can do.”

The lady opened a gold-mounted handbag and took out a small notebook and a gold fountain pen and handed them to her.

Fraley examined the pen and handed it back.

“I’d better get my own pencil. I’m not used to that yet, but I’ll practice with it later if you want me to.”

She opened the newly acquired bag, dug out her own little stub of a pencil, and went to work. In a few minutes, she handed over the paper. It was written in a neat, plain hand, and the spelling was perfect.

Mrs. Wentworth looked up surprised. “Who taught you the form of a letter?”

“My mother used to make me write one to her every morning for a while, till she thought I understood. Sometimes she let me sign the end like the epistles in the Bible. ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.’ I like that, but I didn’t know whether that would do for the kind of letters you want or not, so I didn’t put it in.”

“It would not,” said the lady a bit sharply. “You showed good sense. Well then, shall we call it a bargain? I’ll hire you at a salary of two hundred a month. That will give you enough to buy some clothes right away. You’ll need a good many, for you will go out with me a lot. Do you think you will like it?”

“I’m sure I’ll like to be with you and do whatever you want done, if I can do it right,” said Fraley. “I think you are lovely.”

“Well, you may not think so after you’ve been with me awhile. And if you get tired of the job, of course, I shall not hold you. I don’t want you to feel under any obligation. I’m having my fun out of this, and I don’t feel you owe me anything. But there’s one thing I would suggest. Don’t drag the Bible in everywhere. People don’t all care for it as much as you do, and you’ll turn everybody against you. You wouldn’t want to do that, would you?”

“Why no, of course not.”

The lady gave her a strange look, almost as if she were going to laugh, and then she turned away and looked out of the window a long time. After which she turned back and said earnestly, “Fraley, you’re a dear little girl. Don’t let anything I’ve said worry you. I’m really rather a cranky old thing.”

“Don’t say that, please, Mrs. Wentworth.”

“I told you, you might call me Violet.”

“I know. But it doesn’t seem quite respectful. Mother taught me to be respectful.”

“Well, I don’t want respect. That makes me feel old, and I’m getting old fast enough without it. I’d rather you’d call me Violet.”

“I’ll try Mrs. Violet,” she smiled timidly.

“That’s right,” said the lady. “Now, can you play bridge?”

“Bridge?” said Fraley. “What is that?”

“It’s a game of cards.”

Fraley’s face darkened. “No, I cannot play cards.”

“I will teach you then.”

“No, Mrs….I mean, Violet, please. I would rather not learn. My mother hated cards. The men played them when they were drunk. She thought it was what made my father lose with money. I wouldn’t feel right playing them.”

“That’s absurd, of course. However, I shan’t press the matter now. You’ll learn soon enough when you get into another world that those are all things of the past. You are leaving them behind, and there will be new standards that you will have to accept if you want to be a success in New York. I am going to teach you how to be a success, little Fraley.”

Fraley smiled, but she did not look wholly convinced. She examined the tips of the smart little shoes she was wearing, which had already become irksome. She smoothed down the satin of her chic little frock and let the afternoon sunshine twinkle on the tiny platinum wristwatch that she was wearing. But somehow she felt a great depression. The new life began to look complicated. She looked wistfully out of the window and thought of the Raven, her new friend, and that reverent kiss he had laid upon her brow at parting. She wished she could go to her own dear mother and talk it all over and find out what was right.

She drew a deep sigh. It was very stuffy in the train, and her eyelids were heavy with sleep.

“You’re tired, child,” said the lady sympathetically. “Take off your hat and shoes and lie down there. We can draw the curtain or close the door, and no one will disturb you. I want to read awhile.”

So Fraley took off the new hat and hung it respectfully on the long brass hook over her head, took off the fine shoes and stood them in a corner by her seat, and nestled down on the pillow that the porter brought. She was soon sound asleep. One silk-clad arm was under her head, and the long dark lashes lay on the lovely rounded cheek. A little late beam of sunshine laid bright touches on the coil of soft hair over her ear and brought out exquisite tints in the warm flesh. What a picture she made as she lay there sleeping like a baby, the little girl pilgrim, all alone! Something deeper than she understood stirred in the woman who watched her, over the book she was not reading. What if she should make this girl something more than a social secretary! She would make a great sensation in her world, if she were launched in the way that she knew well how to launch a girl. Perhaps she would do it. She would go slow. She would find out first what kind of people she belonged to, whether they were likely to turn up later and spoil all her plans. Perhaps it would be good to investigate them before the girl had opportunity and, if they were undesirable, keep her from going to them at all. It would not be hard to do, she judged, for the child was most tractable.

So the afternoon waned, and the sun went down behind the long express train hurrying east, and the sky on either side was spread with lovely colors left over from the main display.

Fraley woke up in time to see it and to wonder for a moment where she was, in such a noisy rush. She laughed when the lady smiled at her.

“I thought I was hiding behind a big rock in the hot sun,” she said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. “I guess I must have gone to sleep. Why, it is getting night, isn’t it?”

“It surely is,” said the lady, closing her book. “Go smooth your hair, and let us go to dinner. I like to eat while the sky is in good form. It makes it seem like a banquet.”

Fraley got up and made ready, and they wended their way once more to the diner.

“I don’t really need to eat so often,” said the girl. “It costs a lot, and I’m not used to meals very often.”

“That is silly,” said the lady. “People have to eat, and besides, it is all there is to do here.”

“Oh, I think there is a great deal to do,” said Fraley happily. “There is so much to see. Such wide pictures out of the window, it is almost like climbing a tree and looking high over the world.”

“Can you climb a tree?” asked the lady, studying her and realizing her loveliness again. How good she looked in that dark blue. It brought out all the tints of her perfect skin.

“Oh yes,” laughed the girl, “I always could do that. Can’t you?”

“Well no,” said the lady, “not that I ever remember. I’m afraid I wouldn’t look like much up a tree. There are no trees to climb in New York, you know,” she reminded.

“Perhaps you do not need them,” said the girl gravely, thinking how often a tree had been her only refuge.

“Need them? Oh, for shade? Well no, we have our cool houses, you know, and in summer we always go away anyway.”

“I mean to climb to get out of danger,” explained Fraley.

“Danger? What kind of danger?”

“Oh, bad men and wild animals and angry cattle,” she answered coolly.

“Mercy!” said the lady. “Have you ever encountered such things?”

“Oh yes.”

“And taken refuge in a tree?”

“Yes. I don’t know where I would have gone if there hadn’t been a tree. I think God planted them just where He saw I would need them.”

The lady smiled superciliously. “Do you think He bothers about us to that extent?”

“Oh yes,” said the girl, opening her eyes wide in her earnestness, “I know He does. He took care of me every step of the way here.”

“Well, what kind of ice cream do you want? I suppose the vanilla with fudge sauce would be the best, unless you prefer fresh strawberries.”

“Oh yes, strawberries! I’ve picked them on the mountain. How my mother loved them!”

“How you loved your mother,” sighed the lady enviously. “I wish I might have been your mother, but I’m afraid you wouldn’t have been half so lovely as you are.”

“Oh,” said Fraley thoughtfully, gazing out at the violet and gold of the dying sunset, “it makes a difference where we are born, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does, princess in disguise.”

“If I couldn’t have been the child of my own dear mother, I think the next best thing would have been to have been yours,” she said at last, prettily, with a shy smile.

T
he wonder of the night was having the berths made up in the cozy little drawing room and lying on the long seat at the side, with the lady over in the other berth. In the soft noisy dark, the wheels beat a monotonous rhythm underneath her, and the night came close as they hurried along safe and protected through the dark land. The engine needed no guide. It had a set track to go on, and it made no mistakes.

And Fraley thought how just as plainly her own little track was perhaps marked out where God, who was her Engineer, could see it and guide her.

Then as she heard the steady breathing of her roommate and privacy settled down around her, she began to go over her meeting with the young man in the wilderness and all the way they had come in their friendship in those few short hours. That kiss he had given her at parting sat upon her brow like a holy thing. She had a friend, and something told her he would always be her friend. Would he like her better in these new clothes she had put on? Had he liked her less for her bare feet and faded clothing? It did not seem that he had noticed them. Out there in the wilderness perhaps it sort of fitted in with everything, and she was glad that he liked her first in her own plain simple things that she had always worn. Afterward, if she ever met him again, she would like to have him know that she knew how to look as the world expected her to look, but she would always remember that he had not despised her in her old garments and bare feet.

Then she remembered with a thrill of anticipation that she had a letter in her new pocketbook from him that she had not read. She would get it out and read it in the morning while the lady was in the little dressing room getting dressed. She shrank from reading it in front of her; she would ask so many questions. Instinctively she felt that this new Violet woman would not understand her friendship with this man in the desert.

She went back in her thoughts to the dim smoky schoolhouse with its candlelight and quavering prayers, the sweet songs they had sung and the voice of the young man as he read the familiar words from the Book. How close she felt to him as she thought of it, for he had enjoyed her Book and had wanted one for himself. He had a sympathy and understanding for it that she felt the lady did not have.

When she woke in the morning the lady was still asleep.

Softly Fraley tiptoed up and got her letter, stealing into the little dressing room to read it.

In a little delicate embroidered gown and robe of silk that the lady had provided for her, she stood by the light and read, breathless with the pleasure of having a real friend who would write to her like that.