Signing the Contract and What it Cost

“Come then, oh care! oh grief! oh woe!
Oh troubles mighty in your kind!
I have a balm ye ne’er can know —
A hopeful mind.” —

    F. Vane.
Up three flights of stairs the trunk was carried, Floy following close behind, laden with satchel, hat, and shawl.

“There!” cried Hetty pantingly, setting it down in the corner and straightening herself with her hands upon her hips, “I feel relieved; I’ve had my own way, and that’s something I always enjoy,” and she wound up with a cheery little laugh.

All Floy’s protestations had been good-naturedly overruled, Hetty declaring herself a sort of female Samson, and the trunk very small and light.

“You are very kind,” said Floy, “but you should have let me hire some one.”

“No, no! no telling how long we’d have been kept waiting, or how many customers would have stumbled over or against it, or caught their dresses on it in the mean time. Whew! how close this room is! The girls rush down without waiting to open a window,” hastily throwing up one as she spoke. “I’m sorry I’ve no better or lower accommodations to offer you, Miss Kemper,” she went on laughingly. “It’s a shame to make you climb so many stairs, but one of the things that can’t be helped. That’s your bed in the corner there,” pointing to a single bed which seemed not to have been occupied. “Do lie down and rest a little; sleep if you can. I must run right away,” and she flew downstairs.

Floy glanced about her. A great bare attic room, an old carpet, faded and worn, covering the middle of the floor; furniture scanty – just an old bureau, three chairs, all much hacked and scratched with long, hard usage; several unmade beds, each of which had evidently been occupied by two persons through the past night; and her own little one, which looked neat and inviting with its coarse but clean sheets and cheap white counterpane.

Everything indeed was clean, yet the room was disorderly and without a suggestion of comfort or prettiness in its appointments.

What a contrast to her own cosey, tasteful room in the old home!

She walked to the window and looked out. Day had fully dawned, and the busy hum of the awakening city came to her ear with no unpleasing sound. No velvety lawn, no garden gay with flowers, no nodding trees or softly wooded hills met her view; instead, bare roofs and domes and spires; but beyond these lay the great lake, its waters rippling in the morning breeze. And even as she gazed, far away to the east where sea and sky seemed to meet, a long line of rose color showed itself, deepened rapidly to crimson, brightened into gold; rays of light shot upward, quickly followed by the sun, “rejoicing as a strong man to run a race,” and sending his bright beams over the wide expanse of waters till each wavelet’s edge was tipped with burnished gold.

Floy leaned against the window-frame, hands clasped and eyes drinking in eagerly all the glory and beauty of the scene, loneliness, bereavement, all earthly ills forgotten for the moment.

“Ah,” she sighed half aloud, “if Espy were here! if he could but transfer this to canvas!”

Then all the grief and anguish of their estrangement, all the sorrow and loss that preceded and mingled with it, came rushing back upon her with well-nigh overwhelming force, and her slight, willowy form bent like a reed before the blast.

She sank upon her knees, her head resting upon the window-seat, her hands tightly clasped above an almost breaking heart.

A burst of wild weeping, tears falling like rain, bitter choking sobs following thick and fast upon each other, then a great calm; an effort at first feeble, but growing stronger by degrees, to roll the burden too heavy for her upon One able and willing to bear it, a soothing, comforting remembrance of His promise never to leave nor forsake, and anon the glad thought that she whose love was only second to His might yet be found.

“She may be near, very near me even now,” whispered the girl to herself, “in this city, this street, but a few doors away; it may be for that I have been sent here. Oh, what a thought! what joy if we should meet! But would we recognize each other? Mother, oh, mother! should I know your face if I saw it?”

She rose, tottered to the glass over the bureau, and earnestly scanned her own features. With a half-smile she noted their worn and haggard look. Grief, care, and fatigue seemed to have done the work of years.

“It is well,” she said. “I think I know now how she looks – my own poor, weary, heart-broken mother!”

Mrs. Kemper had told Floy that, allowing for difference in age, health, and circumstances, she was in face and form almost the exact counterpart of her own mother, and this was not the first time that the girl had earnestly studied her own face, trying to anticipate the changes to be wrought in it by the wear and tear of the next eighteen or twenty years, that thus she might be ready to know at a glance that other one she so longed to look upon.

She turned from the glass with a long, weary sigh, took off her dusty dress, shook out her abundant tresses, donned a wrapper, crept into the bed that had been pointed out as hers, and when Patsy came up an hour later to tidy the room, was sunk in a slumber so profound that she knew of neither the coming nor going of the child.

She was roused at last by a slight shake and the voice of the little maid.

“Miss, miss, they’re a-settin’ down to the table; don’t ye want some dinner? Miss Hetty she told me to ax ye.”

“Thank you!” cried Floy, starting up. “Yes, I’ll be down in a moment; I’d no thought of sleeping so long!”

It was the work of a very few minutes to gather up her hair into a massive coil at the back of her head and put on one of her simply-made but becoming mourning dresses.

She entered the dining-room with a quaking heart, not knowing what severe looks or reproaches might be meted out to her unpunctuality.

Patsy’s report had been, however, not quite correct, and she was but a moment behind the others.

They were the same party she had met at breakfast, with the addition of a middle-aged, cadaverous-visaged man with a perpetual frown on his brow and a fretful expression about the mouth, who, as she entered, was in the act of carving a leg of mutton. He honored our heroine with a stare which she felt like resenting.

“Miss Kemper, Uncle Thorne,” said Hetty.

“Ah, how d’ye do, miss? Will you be helped to a bit of a poor man?”

“Sir?” she said with a bewildered look.

“Ha! ha! ha! don’t you know that’s what the Scotch call a leg of mutton? I’m sure you’ll find it relishing. Just send me your plate by the fair hands of our young Devine. I fear her divinity lies altogether in name, for certainly she’s neither heavenly nor spiritual, supernatural nor superhuman in appearance.”

“No,” remarked Mrs. Goodenough in her slow, absent way as Patsy took the plate, “she’s not equivalent to that. What is it Shakespeare says?”

“My classical sister – ” began Mr. Sharp, in mock admiration.

“Aunt Prue,” asked Hetty hastily, “did Mrs. Cox decide whether she would have real lace on her bonnet?”

“Yes, and on the dress too. She’s running up a large bill, but she is able to pay it.”

“She or her husband?” asked Mr. Sharp with a sneer.

“She has none.”

“Fortunate creature!” exclaimed Hetty in an aside.

“She’s a rich widow,” continued Mrs. Sharp; and from that the talk went on, running altogether upon flowers, laces, and ribbons, hats, bonnets, and dresses, and the latest styles for each.

“What puerilities!” remarked Mr. Sharp at length; “but the average female mind seems capable of dwelling upon nothing but trifles.”

“And some male bodies – not a few either – appear to be quite willing to live upon – ”

“Hetty, Hetty,” interrupted her mother, “don’t be personal.”

“Humph! let her talk!” he said with sarcasm; “it amuses her and harms no one. It’s no fault of hers that she wasn’t given an intellect capable of appreciating literary labor.”

“Very true,” remarked his wife. “How does the work progress, Thorne? I hope this has been a good day for you.”

“A woman of sense, knowing how my morning nap was broken in upon by unnecessary noises, and how very unsuitable was the breakfast served up to me afterward, would not ask such a question,” he answered loftily.

“Come, girls,” said his wife, rising hastily, “I think we are all done, and there’s not a minute to be lost.”

Floy rose with the others and accompanied them to the work-room.

“What can you do, Miss Kemper?” asked Mrs. Sharp.