Part 38 (2/2)

”You shall be proud of me then, father,” replied Ray with enthusiasm. ”I am so glad you took me with you today. It has given me a new idea of life. Now I feel as if I could be of some use in the world.”

”You certainly can if you wish to do good, for the compet.i.tion in that line is not so great as it should be,” answered Mr. Goldwin thoughtfully.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RAY READING TO MRS. FLANNERY.]

”It looks so in Mrs. Flannery's case surely,” remarked Herbert; ”there were few to help her in her terrible trouble.”

”Did she have no friends but you and Mr. Hunter?” asked Ray.

”No, I think not,” answered young Randolph, ”at least none that I know of.”

”What would she have done, poor woman, but for your kindness?”

”I do not like to think about it,” replied Herbert with a shudder.

”I think I know of a good woman who would go down and take care of Mrs.

Flannery while she is sick,” said Mr. Goldwin. ”She certainly needs good nursing for the present.”

”I wish such a woman could be had,” said Herbert, ”for both Bob and myself are anxious to get to work.”

CHAPTER x.x.x.

IN A NEW HOME.

Three weeks after the funeral Mrs. Flannery had sufficiently recovered her strength so that she could safely be moved from the rooms she had occupied so long. Ray Goldwin had done much towards bringing about this satisfactory result by her frequent visits and cheerful manner--always saying and doing the right thing with admirable tact. She became much interested in the childless woman whose heart still bled unceasingly for her ”poor Tom, poor Tom,” as she murmured often to herself.

At the funeral Ray had contrasted her own life with that of Herbert and Bob. As she pondered over what these two humble boys, with so slender means, had done for the dying lad and his grief-stricken mother, she felt how much she suffered by the comparison.

The solemnity of the occasion and the glowing words of praise for the two friends of the dead, spoken with such peculiar force by the minister, led her, as was natural, to overestimate their worth and to undervalue her own. With the same spirit, therefore, with which she admired Herbert and Bob for their acts, she condemned her own inactivity, and there in that little room beside the remains of the humble newsboy she resolved that she would be something more than a society girl as her life had hitherto been tending. She had learned a valuable lesson and given place to a purpose as n.o.ble as it was humane.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. FLANNERY AND THE TWO BOYS IN THEIR NEW HOME.]

That she was carrying out this purpose her kind acts and words of comfort to Mrs. Flannery amply attested. She, however, was not alone the source of comfort while on these missions of n.o.ble charity, for the sick woman gave her, unconsciously, to be sure, as she talked of Herbert Randolph, a taste of happiness of a finer and sweeter character than she herself, poor woman, could ever hope again to feel. It was born of hero wors.h.i.+p--a wors.h.i.+p ripening into simple, childlike sentiment. I say hero wors.h.i.+p, for such her thoughts of young Randolph and Bob Hunter were when she first realized how kind and generous they had been to him who now lay dead, and to his helpless and heart broken mother.

Such thoughts, however, to a young girl just verging upon the age of woman, and when the hero is a n.o.ble, manly boy like Randolph, are but the buds of the more beautiful and fragrant flower which time is sure to bring forth.

And this is the way that Ray came to find such pleasure in the simple talk of Mrs. Flannery--talk that but for this magnetic interest must have been unbearably dull to her young ears.

Herbert and Bob, feeling that it would be better for the bereaved mother to get away from her present rooms where she was constantly reminded of the dead, leased a neat little flat in Harlem, to which she was moved, together with her furniture. Here they designed making a home for themselves, inaugurating Mrs. Flannery as housekeeper. It seemed to them that they could in no other way carry out so fully the wishes of their dead friend. The housework would occupy her mind and keep her busy, and by their living thus together she would have with her the two friends in whose care the deceased had placed her. Moreover each desired a better home than their cheerless attic room had been to them, and they felt that they could now afford to spend more upon themselves.

Thus the flat was taken and with Mrs. Flannery's furniture, a few new things from the store and little fancy articles made and contributed by Ray and her mother, the boys found themselves very happily situated in their new home. Mrs. Flannery, too, while at her new duties, recovered more quickly than would seem possible from the terrible shock she had sustained. In young Randolph and Bob Hunter she found all she could have desired in sons of her own--found, as her poor dying boy had said, that they would look out for her, and could do more for her than he. And she proved a good mother to them, studying their every want with grat.i.tude and affection.

To Bob especially the comforts of his present life gave great happiness, and as the weeks rolled by he became more and more attached to his new home, and spent all the spare time possible in study, being taught by Herbert.

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