University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
A FRIEND IN NEED.

A winter had passed away, and one of our ungenial
springs, always unkind to invalids, was
wearing to the last days of May. Charlotte's disease
was aggravated by long confinement, and as
she sat toiling over an old coat of her father's, her
eye turned sadly towards the cold sky and the
thinly-clad boughs of the trees that were rustling
against the window, and that, like her, seemed
pining for warmth and sunshine. “Will summer
ever come?” she thought; and then, suppressing a
sigh of impatience, she added, “but I don't mean
to murmur.” At this moment Susan bounded into
the room, her cheek flushed with pleasure.

“Good news, good news!” she cried, clapping
her hands; “Harry has got home!”

“Has he?”

“Why, Lottie, you don't seem a bit joyful!”

The tears came to Charlotte's eyes. “I have
got to be a poor creature indeed,” she said, “when
the news of Harry's getting home does not make
me joyful.”

“Oh, but Lottie, it's only because you did not
sleep last night: take a little of your mixture and
lie down, and by the time Harry gets up here—he
told me he should come right up—you will look
glad; I am sure you feel so now.”

“I do, Susy: Essex never seems Essex when
Harry is out of it.”

“No, I am sure it does not; but, then, if he did
not go away, we should not have the joy of his
coming home.” Susan was the first to see the
compensation.

“I hope,” said Charlotte, after a short pause,
“that Harry will not go away again on this business;
he may be getting money, but then he
should have been at school the past winter. You
know what Doctor Allen used to say to mother—
`Education is the best capital for a young man to
begin with.' I am afraid Harry has caught some
of Morris Finley's notions.”

“Oh, no, no, Charlotte!—they are as different
as day and night. I am sure, if Harry is eager to
get money, it's because he has some good use for
it, and not, like Morris, just for the money's sake.”

“I hope it is so, but even then I do not like this
travelling about; I am afraid he will get an unsettled
disposition.”

“Why, Charlotte, it is not so very pleasant trav
elling about in freezing winter weather, and deep
muddy spring roads, peddling books.”

The subject of their discussion broke it off by
his entrance; and, after mutual kind greetings were
over, he sat down by Charlotte with a face that
plainly indicated he had something to say, and
knew not how to begin.

“Have you had good luck, Harry?” asked Charlotte.

“Very!” The very was most emphatic.

“Well, I hope it won't turn your head.”

“I don't know,” he replied, with a smile; “it
feels very light just now, and my heart too.”

Charlotte looked grave.

“No one would think,” said Susan, “that Charlotte
was glad to see you, Harry; but she is, for
we both love you just as well as if you were a
brother—having none that's natural, you know.
But poor Lottie is worse than ever this spring,
and nothing seems to do her any good; and I have
been trying to persuade her to send round a subscription-paper
to get money to go to New-York;
maybe she'll consent now you have come to ask
her.”

“That's the very thing,” said Harry, “I want
to speak to her about.”

“Oh, don't, Harry; if our friends and neighbours
were to think of it themselves, I would accept
the money thankfully, but I cannot ask for it.”

“You need not, Charlotte—you need not—but
you will take it from a brother, as Susy almost
calls me, won't you?”

He hastily took from his pocketbook five ten-dollar
notes, and put them on Charlotte's lap.

“Harry!” Charlotte feebly articulated.

“Oh, Harry, Harry!” shouted Susan, throwing
her arms round his neck in a transport of joy, and
then starting back and slightly blushing; “did I
not tell you so, Lottie?” she said.

Charlotte smiled through her tears. “Not precisely
so, Susy, for who could have expected this?
But I might have known it was not for the money,
as you did say, but for what the money would
bring, that Harry was working.”

“And what could money bring so good as better

health for you, Charlotte? Your suffering is the
only thing that ever makes me unhappy; and so,
after all, it is selfishness in me.”

Happy would it be for our race if there were
more such selfishness as Harry Aikin's. The
benevolent principle is, after all, the true alchymy
that converts the lead to gold.

The preceding fall, and shortly before the scene
described at the bridge, an acquaintance and very
good friend of Harry's, a bookseller in the shire
town of their county, had applied to Harry to be
his agent in peddling books, and had offered him
a tempting per centage on his sales. Harry, then
but fourteen, was rather young for such a business;
but the good bookseller had good reason to rely on
his fidelity and discretion, and hoped much from
his modest and very pleasing address. Harry
communicated the offer to his parents. They told
him to decide for himself; that whatever money
he earned should be his; but that, as he was to go
to a trade the following spring, and the intervening
winter being the only time he had for further school-education,
they advised him to forego the bookseller's
offer. Harry could think of plenty of eligible
appropriations for any sum he might earn; but, after
a little reflection, nothing that even fifty dollars
could buy weighed in the scales against six
months' good instruction; and, thanking his parents
for their liberality to him, he decided on the
school. This decision occurred on the very day
of poor Jock's untimely death, and was reversed
by that event, and the consequent overthrow of
Charlotte May's project. He immediately conceived
the design of effecting her journey to New-York

by the result of his labour; and, communicating
his purpose to his two confidential friends, his
parents (most happy are those children who make
their parents the depositaries of their secrets), he
received their consent and approbation. They
were consistent Christians, and thought that active
goodness enriched their child far more than money,
or even than education, which they held to be next
best to virtue. The contract was made with the
bookseller, and the fifty dollars, an immense sum to
him that earned it, and to her who received it, estimated
by the painstaking of the one, and the relief
and gratitude of the other, were appropriated to the
expenses of the New-York journey.

Those who travel the world over seeking pleasures
that have ceased to please; going, as some
one has said, from places where no one regrets
them, to places where no one expects them, can
hardly conceive of the riches of a poor person, who,
having fifty dollars to spend on the luxury of a
journey, feels the worth of every sixpence expended
in a return of either advantage or enjoyment.

If any of my readers have chanced to hear a
gentleman curse his tailor, who has sent home, at
the last moment, some new exquisite articles of
apparel for a journey, when they were found to be
a hair's breadth too tight or too loose; or if they
have assisted at the perplexed deliberations of a
fine lady as to the colour and material of her new
dresses and new hat, and have witnessed her
vexations with dressmakers and milliners, we
invite them to peep into the dwelling of our young
friends, and witness the actual happiness resulting

from the successful expedients and infinite ingenuity
of the poor.

The practicability of the long-wished-for journey
had been announced to Uncle Phil, and they were
entering upon deliberations about the outfit, when
their father, beginning, as need was, at the crown
of his head, exclaimed, “I declare, gals, I never
told you my bad luck about my tother hat. I laid
it down by the door just for a minute last Sabbath,
and our plaguy pup run off with it into a
mud-puddle—it was the worse for wear before,
and it looks like all natur now.”

“Let us look at it, father,” said Susan; “there
are not many people that know you in New-York,
and maybe we can smooth it up and make it do.”
The hat was brought, and examined, and heads
mournfully shaken over it; no domestic smoothing-up
process would make it decent, and decency was
to be attained. Suddenly, Charlotte remembered
that during her only well week that spring, she
had bound some hats for Mr. Ellis, the hatter, and
Susan was despatched to ascertain if her earnings
amounted to enough to pay for the re-dressing of
her father's hat. Iris could scarcely have returned
quicker than did Susan; indeed, her little divinity-ship
seldom went on such pleasant errands. “Everybody
in the world is kind to us,” said Susan,
as she re-entered, breathless. “Mr. Ellis has sent
full pay for your work, Lottie, and says he'll dress
father's hat over for nothing. I'm so glad, for now
you can get a new riband for your bonnet.”

“After all the necessaries are provided.”

“Anybody but you, Lottie, would call that a
necessary. Do look at this old dud—all frayed

out. It has been turned, and died, and sponged,
and now it is not fit to wear in Essex—what will
they say to it in New-York?”

“We'll see, Susy, how we come out. Father's
Sunday coat must be turned.” The coat was
turned, and the girls were delighted to see it look
almost as well as new; and even Susan was satisfied
to pay the hat-money to Sally Fen, the tailoress.

A long deliberation followed upon father's nether
garments, and they came to the conclusion they
were quite too bad to be worn where father was
not known and respected. And, to get new ones,
Charlotte must give up buying a new cloak, and
make her old one do. There is a lively pleasure
in this making do that the rich know not of; the
cloak was turned, rebound, and new-collared, and
Susan said, “Considering what a pretty colour it
was, and how natural Charlotte looked in it, she
did not know but what she liked it better than a
new one.” And now, after Charlotte had bleached
and remodelled her five-year old Dunstable, her
dress was in order for the expedition—all but the
riband, on which Susan's mind was still intent.
“Not but just ninepence left,” said she to Charlotte,
after the last little debt for the outfit was
paid. “Ninepence won't buy the riband, that's
certain, though Mr. Turner is selling off so cheap.
Why can't you break into the fifty dollars; I do
hate to have you seen in New-York with that old
riband, Lottie.”

“But I must, Susan—for I told Harry I would
not touch the fifty dollars till we started.”

“Well, give me the ninepence, then.” Susan's

face brightened. She had resolved, as a last resort,
to invest in the riband a certain precious quarter
of a dollar which Harry had given her ages
and ages ago, and which she had ever since worn
as a locket. She left her sister abruptly; and, as
she slid the coin from the riband, “Dear little
locket,” said she, “I suppose you will seem to
other folks just like any other quarter, and they
will just pass you from hand to hand without
thinking at all about you—how foolish I am!”—she
dashed a tear from her eye—“Sha'n't I love Harry
just as well, and won't he love me just as well,
and sha'n't I think of him more than ever now he
has been so kind to Lottie, without having this to
put me in mind of him?” This point settled to
her own satisfaction, she turned as usual to the
bright side. “How lucky Mr. Turner is selling
off—I wonder what colour I had best get—Charlotte
would like brown, it's so durable—but she
looks so pretty in pink. It takes off her pale look,
and casts such a rosy shadow on her cheek. But
I am afraid she will think pink too gay for her.”
Thus weighing utility and sobriety against taste
and becomingness, Susan entered the shop, and
walking up to the counter, espied in a glass case
a pink and brown plaid riband. Her own taste
was gratified, and Charlotte's economy and preference
of modest colours would be satisfied—
in short, it was (all women will understand me)
just the thing. She was satisfied, delighted, and,
had not the master of the shop kept her waiting
five minutes, she would have forgotten the inestimable
value of that “quarter,” that in addition to
the ninepence must be paid. But in five minutes
the feelings go through many changes; and, when
Mr. Fuller said, “Here is your riband, Susan
May!” Susan was standing with her back to the
counter, and looking at the “quarter” as if she
were studying it. She had on a deep sun-bonnet;
as she raised her head it fell back and disclosed a
tear on her cheek, and disclosed it, too, to Harry
Aikin, who had come in unobserved, and was
standing before her. She hastily threw down the
money—it rolled on to the floor—he picked it up—
he recognised it, and at once understood the whole.
Susan left the shop first, and we believe few ladies,
though they may have spent hundreds in the splendid
shops of Broadway, have had half the pleasure
from their purchases that Susan May had from the
acquisition of this two yards of plaid riband. We
ask, which was richest (in the true sense of the
word), the buyer of Cashmire shawls and blonde
capes, or our little friend Susan? And when Harry,
overtaking her before she reached her own door-step,
restored the precious “quarter,” she was not
conscious of an ungratified wish. Had they been a
little older, there might have been some shyness,
some blushes and stammerings; but now, Susan
frankly told him her reluctance to part with it, her
joy in getting it back again; and, suspending it by
its accustomed riband, she wore it ever after—a
little nearer the heart than before!

Charlotte's last obstacle to leaving home was relieved
by an invitation from Harry's mother to Susan,
to pass the time of her sister's absence with
her. “How thoughtful of Mrs. Aikin!” said Charlotte,
after she had gratefully accepted the invitation.
If there were more of this thoughtfulness, if

persons were more zealous to employ the means
of little kindnesses to their fellow-creatures, if
they considered them as members of their own
family, really brothers and sisters, how many burdens
would be lightened, what a harvest of smiles
we should have on faces now sour and steril.