Bessie among the Mountains

"That was a fustrate job I did for him – getting the lady up; now, warn't it? He said he'd never forget it."

"We shall none of us forget it," said Mrs. Bradford; "but, Lem, when one has done a great kindness to another person, it is better not to talk of it too much."

"No, I aint goin' to," said Lem, with a self-satisfied air. "I'll tell you if it hadn't been for me, the lady would have been gone afore those fellers got there with the ropes. He couldn't ha' held on much longer, and like enough they'd both gone down together."

Mrs. Bradford shuddered at the thought.

"Now, what do you s'pose he's goin' to do for me?" continued Lem. "Somethin' fustrate?"

"I think he is going to try to teach you to do right, and to put you in the way of earning an honest living, Lem. What would you like him to do for you?"

"Well," said Lem, "you give me these clothes, and now I'd just as lieve he'd give me one of his old hats and a red shirt; so I'd be decent-like; and then I'd like him to get me to be an engine driver on one of them railroads. If it wasn't for Dolly I'd like to be sent off on a ship to the place where the tigers and elephants is, so I could hunt 'em. But then she'd be lonesome after me; and if I was engine driver, I could come home every spell and see her. And I'm goin' to fix her a fustrate home, when I get a livin'. But I was thinkin' what will I do with her meantime. Do you think if he spoke a word for her, Porters would let her stay round their place? I guess she wouldn't plague 'em none now; and, when she gets well, she could do errands and such like for them."

Mrs. Bradford thought this a fitting time to tell Lem what he must know sooner or later.

"Dolly is going to a better home than any that you or we can give her, Lem," she said, gently. "She is going to that home which Jesus has made ready for her, – His own bright, glorious heaven, where she will never be tired or sick or hungry any more."

Lem stopped short in the path, and turned to the lady.

"She aint, I tell you," he said, fiercely. "You mean she's a goin' to be an angel, – what she's always talking about nowadays, – and she'll have to die for that, —he said so, – and she aint agoin' to. She's better now, I know; for she don't screech out with the pain like she used to."

"No," said Mrs. Bradford, standing still beside him, as he looked down the path after Dolly and her bearers, "she does not suffer as she did; but she is more ill and grows weaker every day. She cannot live many days, Lem; and she knows that she is going to Jesus, and wanted that you should be told."

Lem set down the flower-pots, and dug his knuckles into his eyes.

"She shan't neither," he exclaimed. "I'm goin' to ask him to make her well. He can do it, I know; and, if he will, I won't ask him for nothin' else along of the good turn I done him, gettin' up the lady."

"My poor boy," said Mrs. Bradford, pityingly, "neither my brother, nor any other person can do more for Dolly than to make her comfortable for the few days she will be here. Her life is not in his hands, or in the doctor's, but in those of God, who sees best to take her to Himself."

Lem threw himself passionately upon the ground.

"'Taint fair," he sobbed. "She's all I've got, and I always was good to her, now; ask her if I wasn't. I always gave her half what I got, and I saved her many a beatin'."

"Yes," said Mrs. Bradford, sitting down beside him, and laying her hand with a soothing touch upon his arm, "Dolly says you have been a good brother to her, and the only thing that makes her sorry to go is the fear that you may miss her."

"Like enough I'll miss her," said Lem, in a sullen kind of sorrow.

"But," said Mrs. Bradford, "you may see her again if you will live so that Jesus may some day take you to dwell with Him in His glorious home. Will you not try to do this, Lem?"

"Couldn't no way," replied Lem, sitting upright; "they say only good folks get to heaven, and don't you know they say I'm the worst boy here about? They used to say Doll was the worst girl too, and – don't you tell nobody I said it – she did do a heap of bad things, that's so! How's she goin' to get to heaven?"

"God says in His Word, 'believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.' Dolly does believe on her Saviour, and He will wash her soul from all its sin and fit it to live with Him. He has given her but little time to serve Him on earth since she has learned to love and trust Him; but she is doing all that she can: she is sorry for past sin, and whatever she thinks Jesus would like her to do, she tries to do."

"She's gettin' awful good, that's true," said Lem. "She made you take back old Miss Mapes' handkercher, and made me go and tell Miss Jones she was sorry for unhookin' her clothes-line and lettin' down the clothes in the dirt; and, oh! do you think, there's the biggest kind of a squash down in Todd's cornfield, and I was a goin' to get it for him, and Dol coaxed me not. She said 'twant right; and, when I said I guessed God had liever he'd have it than Farmer Todd, she said, No: God gave it to Todd, and so he ought to have it. She was so set about it, I had to tell her I wouldn't take it."

"Such things show Dolly's true repentance and love to her Saviour," said Mrs. Bradford. "If we wish to please Jesus and come to Him, and are truly sorry for the wrong things we have done, we will try to undo them so far as we can."

She talked to Lem a little more of Dolly's new hope, and the Saviour's great love and forgiveness, and then told him they had better go on.

"Wonder what she wants these for, if she's goin' away to leave 'em," said Lem, sorrowfully, as he took up his flower-pots.

"Sick people often take such fancies," said Mrs. Bradford; "and when Dolly has gone you will be glad to think that you have pleased her by even such a small thing as caring for her plants."

"And I do think they've picked up a bit," said Lem. "See, this one has two buds on it. I wouldn't wonder if they made flowers."

When Mrs. Bradford and Lem reached the tool-house, or "Dolly's home," as the children now called it, they found the sick girl laid comfortably in the neat bed which had been provided for her; while Mrs. Rush and Mrs. Porter were beside her, feeding her with some nice beef-tea.

"Good Lem," she cried, when she saw the flower-pots; and then, turning to Mrs Porter, she asked, "Could you let them stay here?"

"To be sure, child," said Mrs. Porter; and Mrs. Bradford, taking the flower-pots from Lem, placed them in the little casement window opposite to Dolly's bed. Dolly looked pleased, but she was too much worn out to say more; and, when she had taken her tea, turned her face on her pillow, and fell into the most quiet sleep she had had since her illness.

XVII.

DOLLY GOES HOME

DAY after day of the lovely September weather passed by, bringing change to God's world without and within. The days were warm and sunny, but the nights were cool; and now and then came the quiet frost, painting the grand old forest-trees and their clinging vines. The Virginia creepers – always the first to change – turned a bright crimson; here and there a maple flung out a scarlet branch, like a gorgeous banner in the air; while chestnuts and birch showed a few golden leaves, in beautiful contrast to the vivid green of the foliage which was yet untouched.

Each day Aunt Bessie improved. She came out among the family once more, and sat with them in hall, parlor, and piazza, and even took short drives and walks, though she was still pale, and the poor hurt arm could not yet be taken from the sling. But, as she said, she had now a dozen pairs of hands instead of one, for all were anxious to serve her, and could not do enough for the dear treasure they had so nearly lost.

But, though strength and health came to her with tender nursing and the lovely air and sunny days, they did not bring them to the poor little waif who had been cast upon the care and pity of these kind friends. She did not suffer much now, except when the cough racked her poor little wasted frame; but she grew weaker and weaker, and all knew that the end must soon come. Dolly had long been ailing, far more so than she imagined. Lem knew no more than herself, and there had been no one else to care for her. There had been no mother's quickened ear to mark the warning cough, no mother's loving eye to see the sunken cheek, no mother's tender hand to guard her child from damp and cold; and so the trouble had gone on unheeded and unchecked, till the night spent in the Ice Glen had finished the mischief already at work.

Maggie and Bessie came in to see her very often, bringing her fruit and flowers, and now and then some other little offering; some dainty which had been given to themselves and saved for her, a picture or a toy. For the toys she did not care much; indeed, they were so new to her that she scarcely understood them, and was too weak to play with them; but the pictures always interested her, especially one of Christ blessing little children, which Bessie had brought her. She would lie for hours with this in her hand, looking at it now and then with a pleased, happy smile, which said that it told its own story to her.

But as the poor little body grew weaker, her love and trust in her Saviour grew stronger and brighter. A very simple faith was that of poor Dolly; but she knew in whom she had trusted, – the Jesus who had died on the cross to save her soul and fit it for His heaven; and who had said, "Suffer little children to come unto me." And the "little one," as she called Bessie, had told her that Jesus meant all little children; that whoever would, might come to this blessed Saviour, and he would take them in His arms, and love and care for them. And Dolly "loved Him because he had first loved" her, and longed to go and live with Him for ever in that bright world where she had been told He waited for her.

It was wonderful to see how, without any direct teaching, she caught the words of the hymns the children sang to her, and how she would fit them to herself and her own needs.

As for Lem, he watched her with a sort of dumb sorrow which was touching to see. When he first saw Mr. Stanton, he made a piteous appeal to him, "to get her well, not to let her die;" and when the gentleman told him, as Mrs. Bradford had done, that he could do nothing, and that life and death were in the hands of God, who saw fit to take Dolly to Himself, he refused to speak or think of any thing for his own good.

"Lem," said Dolly to him one day, "why don't you be glad I'm going to Jesus? I'm glad. I asked Him a many times to take me."

"'Cause I can't," said Lem, sullenly. "I thought we was goin' to get along fustrate if he looked after us; but 'taint no good gettin' to be engine driver now, if you're goin' away."

"Oh, yes, it is!" said Dolly; "and you'll be good, won't you, Lem, and not steal no more, and try to come to Jesus too; and I'll ask Him to help you like He helped me?"

"I don't see as it's much help to make you sick and let you die," said Lem.

"I don't know," said Dolly. "I guess, maybe it's just the bein' sick and dyin' is a good help. You know, Lem, if I hadn't a been sick and the little one found me there, I'd never a heard about Jesus, and I guess the best help He can give me is to take me right up there. I asked little one t'other day how she come in that out-of-the-way place, where I thought nobody never come 'cept for hidin', and she said the man brought her; but she thought Jesus sent him, so she could tell me 'bout Him. I guess He did too; I guess He knew I was lonesome and tired, and would like to be an angel. Don't you think that was help, Lem; and wasn't He good to let it come to me?"

This had been said with many a pause and very feebly, for Dolly was too weak to talk much now; and a sudden fit of coughing took away her breath before Lem could answer.

The dying child had never lost her interest in the poor, sickly marigolds in her pots. They had for some reason, too, thrived rather better in their new home, and the two buds Lem had pointed out to Mrs. Bradford had grown larger, and one of them was now opening into a ragged, stunted flower. But it was very beautiful in poor Dolly's eyes, for she had raised and cared for it herself; and no other blossom could be so lovely for her. But the more she loved and cherished her own plant, the more bitterly did she grieve over the destruction of the gardens of the two little girls who had been so kind and forgiving to her. She knew for what purpose they had taken so much pains with them, especially with the heliotrope and geranium which had been so ruthlessly torn to pieces; for Mrs. Porter had told her, and her sorrow and repentance were very bitter and very sincere.

One Sunday morning, towards the end of September, Maggie and Bessie went over with their mother to see her. She was lying with her sunken eyes fixed on the marigolds, which stood on a small table beside the bed; and, oh, how wan, white, and wasted she looked! Yet there was a look of perfect peace on the poor face; and, when the children came in, she turned to them with a bright smile.

"They're coming on nice, aint they?" she said; "don't they look pretty?"

Maggie and Bessie were rather uncomfortable, for they did not think the forlorn marigolds pretty, and they did not wish to hurt Dolly's feelings by saying so; but mamma came to their relief, by saying, as she could with truth, —