The Letter of Credit

"No."

"But what do people do for vegetables and things?"

"They are brought out of the country, and sold in the markets. Don't you know Mr. Jones sends his potatoes and his fruit to the city?"

"Then if you want a potato, you must go to the market and buy it?"

"Yes."

"Or an apple, mother?"

"Yes, or anything."

"Well I suppose that will do," said Rotha slowly, "if you have money enough. I shouldn't think it was pleasant. Do the houses stand closetogether?"

"So close, that you cannot lay a pin between them."

"I should want to have very good neighbours, then."

Rotha was innocently touching point after point of doubt and dread in her mother's mind. Presently she touched another.

"I don't think it sounds pleasant, mother. Suppose we should not like it after we get there?"

Mrs. Carpenter did not answer.

"What then, mother? Would you come back again, if we did not like it there?"

"There would be no place to come to, here, any more, my child. I hope we shall find it comfortable where we are going."

"Then you don't know?" said Rotha. "And perhaps we shall not! But, mother, that would be dreadful, if we did not like it!"

"I hope you would help me to bear it."

"I!" said Rotha. "You don't want help to bear anything; do you, mother?"

An involuntary gush of tears came at this appeal; they were not suffered to overflow.

"I should not be able to bear much without help, Rotha. Want help? yes, I want it – and I have it. God sends nothing to his children but he sends help too; else," said Mrs. Carpenter, brushing her hand across her eyes, "they would not last long! But, Rotha, lie means that we should help each other too."

"I help you?"

"Yes, certainly. You can, a great deal."

"That seems very funny. Mother, what is wrong about aunt Serena?" said Rotha, following a very direct chain of ideas.

"I hope nothing is wrong about her."

And Mrs. Carpenter, in her gentle, unselfish charity, meant it honestly; her little daughter was less gentle and perhaps more logical.

"Why, mother, does she ever do anything to help you?"

"Her life is quite separate from mine," Mrs. Carpenter replied evasively.

"Well, it would be right in her to help you. And when people are not right, they are wrong."

"Let us take care of our own right and wrong, Rotha. We shall have enough to do with that."

"But, mother, what is the matter with aunt Serena? Why doesn't she help you? She can."

"Our lives went different ways, a long time ago, my child. We have never been near each other since."

"But now you are going to be where she is, mother?"

"Rotha, did you rip up your brown merino?"

"Not yet."

"Then go and do it now. I want it to make over for you."

"You'll never make much of that," said the girl discontentedly. But she obeyed. She saw a certain trait in the lines of her mother's lips; it might be reserve, it might be determination, or both; and she knew no more was to be got from her at that time.

The brown merino disappointed her expectation; for when cleaned and made over it proved to be a very respectable dress. Rotha was well satisfied with it. The rest of Mrs. Carpenter's preparations were soon accomplished; and one day in November she and her little daughter left what had been home, and set out upon their journey to seek another in the misty distance. The journey itself was full of wonder and delight to Rotha. It was a very remarkable thing, in the first place, to find the world so large; then another remarkable thing was the variety of the people in it. Rotha had known only one kind, speaking broadly; the plain, quiet, respectable, and generally comfortable in habitants of the village and of the farms around the village. They were not elegant specimens, but they were solid, and kindly. She saw many people now that astonished her by their elegance; few that awakened any feeling of confidence. Rotha's eyes were very busy, her tongue very silent. She was taking her first sips at the bitter-sweet cup of life knowledge.

The third-class hotel at which they put up in New York received her unqualified disapprobation. None of its arrangements or accommodations suited her; with the single exception of gas burners.

Close, stuffy, confined, gloomy, and dirty, she declared it to be.

"Mother," she said half crying, "I hope our house will not be like this?"

"We shall not have a house, Rotha; only a few rooms."

"They'll be rooms in a house, I suppose," said the girl petulantly; "and I hope it will be very different from this."

"We will have our part of it clean, at any rate," answered her mother.

"And the rest too, won't you? You would not have rooms in a house that was not all clean, would you, mother?"

"Not if I could help it."

"Cannot you help it?"

"I hope so. But you must not expect that things here in a big city can ever be bright and sweet like the fields at home. That can hardly be."

Rotha sighed. A vision of dandelions came up before her, and waving grass bent by summer wind. But there was hope that the morrow's search would unfold to her some less unpromising phases of city life, and she suspended judgment.

Next day, wonder and amusement for a time superseded everything else. The multitude of busy people coming and going, the laden carts and light passing carriages, the gay shops, and the shops that were not gay, filled Rotha's eye and mind. Even the vegetables exposed at a corner shop were a matter of lively interest.

"O mother," she cried, "is this a market?"