Bessie and Her Friends

Willie promised, for it seemed to him that he could have patience and courage for anything now.

"Oh!" said Jennie, as they reached Mr. Bradford's house, and went up the steps, "don't I wish I lived in a house like this!"

"Don't be wishing that," said her father. "You'll see a good many things here such as you never saw before, but you mustn't go to wishing for them or fretting after the same. We've too much to be thankful for, my lassie, to be hankering for things which are not likely ever to be ours."

"'Tis no harm to wish for them; is it, father?" asked Jennie, as they waited for the door to be opened.

"It's not best even to wish for what's beyond our reach," said her father, "lest we should get to covet our neighbors' goods, or to be discontented with our own lot; and certainly we have no call to do that."

Richards asked for Mrs. Bradford, and she presently came down, bringing Maggie and Bessie with her. Jennie felt a little strange and frightened at first when her father left her. Making acquaintance with Maggie and Bessie in her own home was a different thing from coming to visit them in their large, handsome house, and they scarcely seemed to her like the same little girls. But when Maggie took her up-stairs, and showed her the baby-house and dolls, she forgot everything else, and looked at them, quite lost in admiration.

Willie was not asked to look at anything. The little sisters had thought of what he had said the day they went to see him, and agreed that Bessie was to take care of him while Maggie entertained Jennie. He asked after Flossy, and the dog was called, and behaved quite as well as he had done when he saw Willie before, lying quiet in his arms as long as the blind boy chose to hold him, and putting his cold nose against his face in an affectionate way which delighted Willie highly.

There was no difficulty in amusing Jennie, who had eyes for all that was to be seen, and who thought she could never be tired of handling and looking at such beautiful toys and books. But perhaps the children would hardly have known how to entertain Willie for any length of time, if a new pleasure had not accidentally been furnished for him.

Maggie and Bessie had just taken him and his sister into the nursery to visit the baby, the canary bird, and other wonders there, when there came sweet sounds from below. Willie instantly turned to the door and stood listening.

"Who's making that music?" he asked presently in a whisper, as if he were afraid to lose a note.

"Mamma and Aunt Bessie," said Maggie.

"Would you and Jennie like to go down to the parlor and hear it?" asked Bessie.

Willie said "Yes," very eagerly, but Jennie did not care to go where the grown ladies were, and said she would rather stay up-stairs if Maggie did not mind.

Maggie consented, and Bessie went off, leading the blind boy by the hand. It was both amusing and touching to see the watch she kept over this child who was twice her own size, guiding his steps with a motherly sort of care, looking up at him with wistful pity and tenderness, and speaking to him in a soft, coaxing voice such as one would use to an infant.

They were going down-stairs when they met Aunt Patty coming up. She passed them at the landing, then suddenly turning, said, in the short, quick way to which Bessie was by this time somewhat accustomed, "Children! Bessie! This is very dangerous! You should not be leading that poor boy down-stairs. Where are your nurses, that they do not see after you? Take care, take care! Look where you are going now! Carefully, carefully!"

Now if Aunt Patty had considered the matter, she would have known she was taking the very way to bring about the thing she dreaded. Willie had been going on fearlessly, listening to his gentle little guide; but at the sound of the lady's voice he started, and as she kept repeating her cautions, he grew nervous and uneasy; while Bessie, instead of watching his steps and taking heed to her own, kept glancing up at her aunt with an uncomfortable sense of being watched by those sharp eyes.

However, they both reached the lower hall in safety, where Bessie led her charge to the parlor-door. "Mamma," she said, "Willie likes music very much. I suppose you would just as lief he would listen to you and Aunt Bessie."

"Certainly," said mamma. "Bring him in."

But before they went in, Willie paused and turned to Bessie.

"Who was that on the stairs?" he asked in a whisper.

"Oh! that was only Aunt Patty," answered the little girl. "You need not be afraid of her. She don't mean to be so cross as she is; but she is old, and had a great deal of trouble, and not very wise people to teach her better when she was little. So she can't help it sometimes."

"No," said Willie, slowly, as if he were trying to recollect something, "I am not afraid; but then I thought I had heard that voice before."

"Oh, I guess not," said Bessie; and then she took him in and seated him in her own little arm-chair, close to the piano.

No one who had noticed the way in which the blind boy listened to the music, or seen the look of perfect enjoyment on his pale, patient face, could have doubted his love for the sweet sounds. While Mrs. Bradford and Miss Rush played or sang, he sat motionless, not moving a finger, hardly seeming to breathe, lest he should lose one note.

"So you are very fond of music; are you, Willie?" said Mrs. Bradford, when at length they paused.

"Yes, ma'am, very," said he, modestly; "but I never heard music like that before. It seems 'most as if it was alive."

"So it does," said Bessie, while the ladies smiled at the boy's innocent admiration.

"I think there's a many nice things in this house," continued Willie, who, in his very helplessness and unconsciousness of the many new objects which surrounded him, was more at his ease than his sister.

"And mamma is the nicest of all," said Bessie. "You can't think how precious she is, Willie!"

Mrs. Bradford laughed as she put back her little daughter's curls, and kissed her forehead.

"I guess she must be, when she is your mother," said Willie. "You must all be very kind and good people here; and I wish, oh, I wish it was you and your sister who gave the money for Dr. Dawson. But never mind; I thank you and love you all the same as if you had done it, only I would like to think it all came through you. And father says" —

Here Willie started, and turned his sightless eyes towards the open door, through which was again heard Mrs. Lawrence's voice, as she gave directions to Patrick respecting a parcel she was about to send home.

"What is the matter, Willie?" asked Mrs. Bradford.

"Nothing, ma'am;" answered the child, as a flush came into his pale cheeks, and rising from his chair, he stood with his head bent forward, listening intently, till the sound of Aunt Patty's voice ceased, and the opening and closing of the front-door showed that she had gone out, when he sat down again with a puzzled expression on his face.

"Does anything trouble you?" asked Mrs. Bradford.

"No, ma'am; but – but – I know I've heard it before."

"Heard what?"

"That voice, ma'am; Miss Bessie said it was her aunt's."

"But you couldn't have heard it, you know, Willie," said Bessie, "'cause you never came to this house before, and Aunt Patty never went to yours."

These last words brought it all back to the blind boy. He knew now. "But she did," he said, eagerly, – "she did come to our house. That's the one; that's the voice that scolded mother and Auntie Granby and Jennie, and that put the money into the Bible when we didn't know it!"

Mrs. Bradford and Miss Rush looked at one another with quick, surprised glances; but Bessie said, "Oh! you must be mistaken, Willie. It's quite unpossible. Aunt Patty does not know you or your house, and she never went there. Besides, she does not" – "Does not like you to have the money," she was about to say, when she thought that this would be neither kind nor polite, and checked herself.

But Willie was quite as positive as she was, and with a little shake of his head, he said, "Ever since I was blind, I always knew a voice when I heard it once. I wish Jennie or Mrs. Granby had seen her, they could tell you; but I know that's the voice. It was you sent her, after all, ma'am; was it not?" and he turned his face toward Mrs. Bradford.

"No, Willie, I did not send her," answered the lady, with another look at Miss Rush, "nor did any one in this house."

But in spite of this, and all Bessie's persuasions and assurances that the thing was quite impossible, Willie was not to be convinced that the voice he had twice heard was not that of the old lady who had left the money in the Bible; and he did not cease regretting that Jennie had not seen her.

But to have Jennie or Mrs. Granby see her was just what Mrs. Lawrence did not choose, and to avoid this, she had gone out, not being able to shut herself up in her own room, which was undergoing a sweeping and dusting. She had not been afraid of the sightless eyes of the little boy when she met him on the stairs, never thinking that he might recognize her voice; but she had taken good care not to meet those of Jennie, so quick and bright, and which she felt would be sure to know her in an instant. But secure as Aunt Patty thought herself, when she was once out of the house, that treacherous voice of hers had betrayed her, not only to Willie's sensitive ears, but to that very pair of eyes which she thought she had escaped. For, as the loud tones had reached Maggie and Jennie at their play, the latter had dropped the toy she held, and exclaimed, in a manner as startled as Willie's, "There's that woman!"

"What woman?" asked Maggie.

"The old woman who brought the money to our house. I know it is her."

"Oh, no, it is not," said Maggie; "that's Aunt Patty, and she's an old lady, not an old woman, and she wouldn't do it if she could. She is real mean, Jennie, and I think that person who took you the money was real good and kind, even if we did feel a little bad about it at first. Aunt Patty would never do it, I know. Bessie and I try to like her, and just as we begin to do it a little scrap, she goes and does something that makes us mad again, so it's no use to try."

"But she does talk just like the lady who came to our house," persisted Jennie.

"You can see her if you have a mind to," said Maggie, "and then you'll know it is not her. Come and look over the balusters, but don't let her see you, or else she'll say, 'What are you staring at, child?'"