Now, Miss Ann,” said Johnny, taking charge of the meeting, and quite forgetting to ask “if she would mind telling,” “we want you to please tell us how you manage always to seem to like what you are doing, and to want to do what everybody wants you to do and not to—not have any yourself at all!”
Miss Ann’s pleasant round face turned even redder than it had been as she over the blackberries, and she seemed too astonished to speak, for a moment; then she put an arm about each of the children, and gave each a kiss, and somehow, although Johnny had begun to think he was too old to be kissed, he did not mind it at all.
“You dear little souls!” said Miss Ann, and Tiny thought there was a sort of quaver in her voice, “it’s only your own good-nature that makes you feel that way. Why, I’ve never been able to hold a candle to mother for work, nor to father and Julia and the boys for smartness, and there was a time, five or six years ago, when I felt sort of all discouraged. They couldn’t help laughing at me when I said silly things, and made stupid blunders, and my ugly face worried me every time I looked in the glass.”
“But you’re not ugly at all!” burst in both the children, indignantly.
Again the color swept over Miss Ann’s face, but she laughed in a pleased, childlike way, as she said,—
“There you go, again! What sweet little souls you are. I’m real glad you feel that way, dears, but I know too well it’s only your kind hearts that make you think so. And it seemed to me that I might about as well give up, I couldn’t make myself pretty, no matter how hard I tried, nor how I my molasses-candy-colored hair—every way seemed to make me a little uglier than the last. And I was so slow,—I was always thinking about that poor man in the Bible, that wanted so to get into the pool, and while he was coming somebody else would step down before him. Mother would lose her patience, and Julia and the boys would laugh, a dozen times a day, and then I would get all of a tremble with nervousness, and like as not say something I’d be sorry for the minute it was said, and maybe wind up with a crying spell. They didn’t any of them know how I really felt, or they wouldn’t have laughed and joked about it, for kinder folks than mine you couldn’t find in a day’s walk, and somehow, though it sounds to say so, that very thing made it hurt all the more. And when mother said she calculated to take boarders that summer, for we’d had two or three bad years, and things were getting behindhand, I came near running away, and taking a service place where nobody knew me. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to that, and I can’t tell you how thankful I’ve been ever since, that I couldn’t, for I’d have missed the best thing that ever happened to me, besides shirking a plain duty, like a coward. The first boarders that came that season were a dear old lady and her husband. He was real nice, and not a bit of trouble, but she! I lost my heart to her the first time I saw her, and I kept losing it more and more all the time she stayed. She hadn’t very good health, but most well people will give twice the trouble she did, and never stop to think of it. She was going to stay all summer, and the way I came to begin waiting on her was a sort of an accident. Julia made me take up the pail of fresh water to fill her , just to plague me, and I found her with her trunk and the top bureau drawer open, and she sitting down between them, looking very white and weak.
“‘I’m not good for much, my dear, you see,’ she said, with that sweet, gentle smile I grew to love so, ‘I thought I would begin to and settle things a little, but it’s too soon after the journey; I must have patience for a day or two—there is nothing here that will not keep.’
“I wouldn’t have believed it, if anybody’d told me beforehand that I would do it, but I said, just as free as if I’d known her all my life, ‘If you don’t mind my big rough hands, ma’am, I’ll take out your things for you. There’s a real nice closet, and your dresses will be all if they stay too long in the trunk.’
“She looked as if I’d given her a gold mine, and thanked me, and said she wasn’t a bit afraid of my hands, but could I be spared? Wasn’t I busy downstairs? Now I’d only just broke one of the best dishes, and mother’d told me my room was better than my company, so I said, sort of ugly, that she needn’t worry; nobody wanted me downstairs, nor anywhere else.
“She put her little soft, thin hand on my great big red one, and said, so nice and quietly,—
“‘I want you, dear. Will you begin with the tray, and put the things in the top drawer. There are a few that I want put on that convenient shelf, and that pretty corner-bracket, but I’ll tell you as you go along.’
“Now most folks would just have said ‘bracket’ and ‘shelf,’ but that was her, all over! She never missed a chance to say a pleasant word, I do believe—any more than she ever took one to say anything ugly—and yet you didn’t feel as if it was all soft-sawder, and just to your face, the way you do with some people. It seems to me—though I’ve a poor memory, in common—that I can remember almost every word that was said that first day, for I turned a corner then, if ever anybody did.
“I’ve wondered, ever since, if it was just one of those blessed chances, as we call them, for want of a better word, that the Lord sends to help us along, or whether she’d seen, already, just how things were, and meant to help me, without letting on she saw—which, as far as I’ve seen, is the best sort of help, by a long shot! Anyhow, she made some little pleasant talk about almost everything I took out, a little history of where it came from, or something like that, and every other thing, it seemed to me, of her books and pretty nick-nacks, was given to her by her grandson or granddaughter. In the middle of the tray was a little bundle of raw cotton, as I............