A Red Wallflower

'Answer it like a good woman, anyhow,' said Pitt, smiling. 'What should I do, properly, for such people as those I have brought to your notice? Apply the golden rule – the only one that can give the measure of things. In their place, what would you wish – and have a right to wish – that some one should do for you? what may those who have nothing demand from those who have everything?'

'Why, they could demand all you have got!'

'Not justly. Cannot you set your imagination to work and answer me? I am not talking for nothing. Take my old Christian, near eighty, who sees a sunbeam for one hour in the twenty-four, when the sun shines, and uses it to read her Bible. The rest of the twenty-four hours without even the company of a sunbeam. Imagine – what would you, in her place, wish for?'

'I should wish to die, I think.'

'It would be welcome to Mrs. Gregory, I do not doubt, though perhaps for a different reason. Still, you would not counsel suicide, or manslaughter. While you continued in life, what would you like?'

'Oh,' said Betty, with an emphatic utterance, 'I would like a place where I could breathe!'

'Better lodgings?'

'Fresh air. I would beg for air. Of all the horrors of such places, the worst seems to me the want of air fit to breathe.'

'Then you think she ought to have a better lodging, in a better quarter. She cannot pay for it. I can. Ought I to give it to her?'

Betty fidgeted, inwardly. The conditions of the cab did not allow of much external fidgeting.

'I do not know why you ask me this,' she said.

'No; but indulge me! I do not ask you without a purpose.'

'I am afraid of your purpose! Yes; if I must tell you, I should say, Oh, take me out of this! Let me see the sun whenever he can be seen in this rainy London; and let me have sweet air outside of my windows. Then I would like somebody to look after me; to open my window in summer and make my fire in winter, and prepare nice meals for me. I would like good bread, and a cup of drinkable tea, and a little bit of butter on my bread. And clothes enough to keep clean; and then I would like to live to thank you!'

Betty had worked herself up to a point where she was very near a great burst of tears. She stopped with a choked sob in her throat, and looked out of the cab window. Pitt's voice was changed when he spoke.

'That is just what I thought.'

'And you have done it!'

'No; I am doing it. I could not at once find what I wanted. Now I have got it, I believe. Go on now, please, and tell me what ought to be done for the man in rheumatic fever.'

'The doctor would know better than I.'

'He cannot pay for a doctor.'

'But he ought to have one!'

'Yes, I thought so.'

'I see what you are coming to,' said Betty; 'but, Mr. Pitt, I can notsee that it is your duty to pay physician's bills for everybody that cannot afford it.'

'I am not talking of everybody. I am speaking of this Mr. Hutchins.'

'But there are plenty more, as badly off.'

'As badly, – and worse.'

'You cannot take care of them all.'

'Therefore – ? What is your deduction from that fact?'

'Where are you going to stop?'

'Where ought I to stop? Put yourself, in imagination, in that condition I have described; the chill of a rheumatic fever, and a room without fire, in the depth of winter. What would your sense of justice demand from the well and strong and comfortable and able? Honestly.'

'Why,' said Betty, again surveying Pitt from one side, 'with my notions, I should want a doctor, and an attendant, and a comfortable room.'

'I do not doubt his notions would agree with yours, – if his fancy could get so far.'

'But who ought to furnish those things for him is another question.'

'Another, but not more hard to answer. The Bible rule is, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it – "'

'Will you, ought you, to do all that you find to do?'

But Pitt went on, in a quiet business tone: 'In that same court I found, some time ago, a man who had been injured by an accident. A heavy piece of iron had fallen on his foot; he worked in a machine shop. For months he was obliged to stay at home under the doctor's care. He used up all his earnings; and strength and health were alike gone. The man of fifty looked like seventy. The doctor said he could hardly grow strong again, without change of air.'

'Mr. Pitt!' – said Betty, and stopped.

'He has a wife and nine children.'

'What did you do?'

'What would you have done?'

'I don't know! I never thought it was my business to supplement all the world's failures.'

'Suppose for a moment it were Christ the Lord himself in either of these situations we have been looking at?'

'I cannot suppose it!'

'How would you feel about ministry then?'

Betty was silent, choked with discomfort now.

'Would you think you could do enough? But, Miss Frere, He says it isHimself, in every case of His servants; and what is done to them He counts as done to Himself. And so it is!'

Looking again keenly at the speaker, Betty was sure that the eyes, which did not meet hers, were soft with moisture.

'What did you do for that man?'

'I sent him to the seaside for three weeks. He came back perfectly well. But then his employers would not take him on again; they said they wanted younger men; so I had to find new work for him.'

'There was another old woman you told me of in that dreadful court; what did you do for her?'

'Put her in clover,' said Pitt, smiling. 'I moved Hutchins and his family into a better lodging, where they could have a room to spare; and then I paid Mrs. Hutchins to take care of her.'