Part 9 (2/2)
”Papa says that we ourselves are the places we live in,” said Betty, as if it took a great deal of courage to tell Mary Beck so unwelcome a truth. ”I like to remember just what he says, for sometimes, when I haven't understood at first, something will happen, may be a year after, to make it flash right into my mind. Once I heard a girl say London was stupid; just think! _London!_”
Mary Beck was rocking steadily, but Betty sat still, with her feet on the window-seat and her hands clasped about her knees. She could look down into the green yard below, and watch some birds that were fluttering near by in the wet trees. The wind blew in very soft and sweet after the rain.
”I used to think, when I was a little bit of a girl, that I would be a missionary, but I should perfectly hate it now!” said Mary, with great vehemence. ”I just hate to go to Sunday-school and be asked the questions; it makes me p.r.i.c.kle all over. I always feel sorry when I wake up and find it is Sunday morning. I suppose you think that's heathen and horrid.”
”I always have my Sunday lessons with papa; he reads to me, and gives me something to learn by heart,--a hymn or some lovely verses of poetry. I suppose that his telling me what things in the Bible really mean keeps me from being 'p.r.i.c.kly' when other people talk about it. What made you wish to be a missionary?” Betty inquired, with interest.
”Oh, there used to be some who came here and talked in the vestry Sunday evenings about riding on donkeys and camels. Sometimes they would dress up in Syrian costumes, and I used to look grandpa's 'Missionary Herald'
all through, to find their names afterward. It was so nice to hear about their travels and the natives; but that was a long while ago,” and Becky rocked angrily, so that the boards creaked underneath.
”Last summer I used to go to such a dear old church, in the Isle of Wight,” said Betty. ”You could look out of the open door by our pew and see the old churchyard, and look away over the green downs and the blue sea. You could see the red poppies in the fields, and hear the larks, too.”
”What kind of a church was it?” asked Mary, with suspicion. ”Episcopal?”
”Yes,” answered Betty. ”Church of England, people say there.”
”I heard somebody say once that your father was very lax in religious matters,” said Becky seriously.
”I'd rather be very lax and love my Sundays,” said Betty severely. ”I don't think it makes any difference, really, about what one does in church. I want to be good, and it helps me to be in church and think and hear about it. Oh, dear! my foot's getting asleep,” said Betty, beginning to pound it up and down. The two girls did not like to look at each other; they were considering questions that were very hard to talk about.
”I suppose it's being good that made you run after Nelly Foster. I wished that I had gone to see her more, when you went; but she used to act hatefully sometimes before you came. She used to cry in school, though,” confessed Becky.
”I didn't 'run after' her. You do call things such dreadful names, Mary Beck! There, I'm getting cross, my foot is all stinging.”
”Turn it just the other way,” advised Mary eagerly. ”Let me pound it for you,” and she briskly went to the rescue. Betty wondered afresh why she liked this friend herself so much, and yet disliked so many things that she said and did.
Serena always said that Betty had a won't-you-please-like-me sort of way with her, and Mary Beck felt it more than ever as she returned to her rocking-chair and jogged on again, but she could not bend from her high sense of disapproval immediately. ”What do you think the unjust steward parable means, then?” she asked, not exactly returning to the fray, but with an injured manner. ”It is in the Sunday-school lesson to-morrow, and I can't understand it a bit,--I never could.”
”Nor I,” said Betty, in a most cheerful tone. ”See here, Becky, it doesn't rain, and we can go and ask Mr. Grant to tell us about it.”
”Go ask the minister!” exclaimed Mary Beck, much shocked. ”Why, would you dare to?”
”That's what ministers are for,” answered Betty simply. ”We can stay a little while and see the girls, if he is busy. Come now, Becky,” and Becky reluctantly came. She was to think a great many times afterward of that talk in the garret. She was beginning to doubt whether she had really succeeded in settling all the questions of life, at the age of fifteen.
The two friends went along arm-in-arm under the still-dripping trees.
The parsonage was some distance up the long Tideshead street, and the sun was coming out as they stood on the doorsteps. The minister was amazed when he found that these paris.h.i.+oners had come to have a talk with him in the study, and to ask something directly at his willing hands. He preached the better for it, next day, and the two girls listened the better. As for Mary Beck, the revelation to her honest heart of having a right in the minister, and the welcome convenience of his fund of knowledge and his desire to be of use to her personally, was an immense surprise. Kind Mr. Grant had been a part of the dreaded Sundays, a fixture of the day and the church and the pulpit, before that; he was, indirectly, a reproach, and, until this day, had never seemed like other people exactly, or an every-day friend. Perhaps the good man wondered if it were not his own fault, a little. He tried to be very gay and friendly with his own girls at supper-time, and said afterward that they must have Mary Beck and Betty Leicester to take tea with them some time during the next week.
”But there are others in the parish who will feel hurt,” urged Mrs.
Grant anxiously; and Mr. Grant only answered that there must be a dozen tea-parties, then, as if there were no such things as sponge-cake and ceremony in the world!
XII.
BETTY AT HOME.
EVERYBODY was as kind as possible when Betty Leicester first came to Tideshead, and best company manners prevailed toward her; but as the girls got used to having a new friend and playmate, some of them proved disappointing. Nothing could shake her deep affection for honest-hearted Mary Beck, but in some directions Mary had made up her inexperienced and narrow mind, and would listen to none of Betty's kindly persuasions. The Fosters' father had done some very dishonest deeds, and had run away from justice after defrauding some of the most trustful of his neighbors. Mary Beck's mother had lost some money in this way, and old Captain Beck even more, so that the girl had heard sharp comments and indignant blame at home; and she shocked Miss Barbara Leicester and Betty one morning by wondering how Henry and Nelly Foster could have had the face to go to church the very Sunday after their father was sent to jail. She did not believe that they cared a bit what people thought.
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