Patience Sparhawk and Her Times. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
be frightfully religious, but they have nice faces.”
She ran down to the lower deck, then across the gang-plank.
“I’m Patience Sparhawk,” she said; “are you—” The older woman uttered a little cry, caught her in her arms, and kissed her. “Oh, you dear little thing!” she exclaimed, and kissed her again. “How I’ve prayed the dear Lord to bring you safely, and He has, praise His holy name. Oh, I am so glad to see you. I do love children so. We’ll be so happy together—you and I and Him—and, oh, I’m so glad to see you.”
Patience, breathless, but much gratified, kissed her warmly.
“Don’t forget me,” exclaimed the other lady. She had a singularly hearty voice and a brilliant smile. Patience turned to her dutifully, and received an emphatic kiss.
“This is my dear friend, my dear sister in the Lord, Miss Beale, Patience,” said Miss Tremont, flurriedly, “and she wanted to see you almost as much as I did.”
“Indeed I did,” said Miss Beale, breezily. “I too love little girls.”
“I’m sure you’re both very kind,” said Patience, helplessly. She hardly knew how to meet so much effusion. But something cold and old within her seemed to warm and thaw.
“You dear little thing,” continued Miss Tremont. “Are you cold? That is a very light coat you have on.”
Patience was not dressed for an eastern winter, but her young blood and curiosity kept her warm.
“Here comes the captain,” she said. “Oh, no, I’m all right. I like the cold.”
The captain, satisfying himself that his charge was in the proper hands, offered to send her trunk to Mariaville by express, and Patience, wedged closely between the two ladies, boarded a street car.
“You know,” exclaimed Miss Tremont, “I knew the Lord would bring you to me safely in spite of the perils of the ocean. Every night and every morning I prayed: Dear Lord, don’t let anything happen to her—and I knew He wouldn’t.”
“Does He always do what you tell Him?” asked Patience.
“Almost everything I ask Him—that is to say, when He thinks best. Dear Patience, if you knew how He looks out for me—and it is well He sees fit, for dear knows I have a time taking care of myself. Why, He even takes care of my purse. I’m always leaving it round, and He always sends it back to me—from counters and trains and restaurants and everywhere. And when I start in the wrong direction He always whispers in my ear in time. Why, once I had to catch a certain train to Philadelphia, where I was to preside at a convention, and I’d taken the wrong street car, and when I jumped off and took the right one, the driver said I couldn’t possibly get to the ferry in time. So I just shut my eyes and prayed; and then I told the driver that it would be all right, as I had asked the Lord to see that I got there in time. The driver laughed, and said: ‘W-a-a-l, I guess the Lord’ll go back on you this time.’ But I caught that ferry-boat. He—the Lord—made it five minutes late. And it’s always the same. He takes care of me, praised be His name.”
“You must feel as if He were your husband,” said Patience, too gravely to be suspected of irreverence.
“Why, He is. Doesn’t the Bible say—” But the car began to rattle over the badly paved streets, and the quotation was lost.
Patience looked eagerly through the windows at purlieus of indescribable ugliness; but it was New York, a city greater than San Francisco, and she found even its youthful old age picturesque. The dense throng of people in Sixth Avenue and the immense shop windows induced expressions of rapture.
“You don’t live here, do you?” she said with a sigh.
“Oh, Mariaville is much nicer than New York,” replied Miss Beale, in her enthusiastic way. “I hate a great crowded city. It baffles you so when you try to do good.”
“Still they do say that reform work is more systematised here, dear sister.”
“Forty-second Street,” shouted the conductor, and they changed cars. A few moments later they were pulling out of the Grand Central Station for Mariaville.
Miss Beale had asked the conductor to turn a seat, and Patience faced her new friends. As they left the tunnel she caught sight of a tiny bow of white ribbon each wore on her coat.
“Why do you wear that?” she asked.
“Why, we’re W. C. T. U’s,” replied Miss Beale.
“Wctus?”
“Temperance cranks,” said Miss Tremont, smiling.
“Temperance cranks?”
“Why, have you never heard of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union?” asked Miss Beale, a chill breathing over her cordial voice. “The movement has reason to feel encouraged all through the West.”
“I’ve never heard of it. They don’t have it in Monterey, and I’ve not been much in San Francisco.”
“She’s such a child,” said Miss Tremont. “How could she know of it out there? But now I know she is going to be one of our very best Y’s.”
“Y’s?” asked Patience, helplessly. She wondered if this was the “fad” Mr. Field had predicted for her, then recalled that he had alluded once to the “Temperance movement,” but could not remember his explanation, if he had made any. Doubtless she had evaded a disagreeable topic. But now that it was evidently to be a part of her new life she made no attempt to stem Miss Tremont’s enthusiasm.
“The Y’s are the young women of the Union; we are the W’s. It is our lifework, Patience, and I am sure you will become as much interested in it as we are, and be proud to wear the white ribbon. We have done so much good, and expect to do much more, with the dear Lord’s help. It is slow work, but we shall conquer in the end, for He is with us.”
“What do you do—forbid people to sell liquor?”
Both ladies laughed. They were not without humour, and their experience had developed it. “No,” said Miss Tremont, “we don’t waste our time like that.” She gave an enthusiastic account of what the Union had accomplished. Her face glowed; her fine head was thrown back; her dark eyes sparkled. Patience thought she must have been a beautiful girl. She had a full voice with odd notes of protest and imperious demand which puzzled her young charge. One would have supposed that she was constantly imploring favours, and yet her air suggested natural hauteur, unexterminated by cultivated humility.
“I should think it was a good idea,” said Patience, with perfect sincerity.
“Oh, there’s dear Sister Watt,” cried Miss Tremont, and she rose precipitately, and crossing the aisle sat down beside a careworn anxious-eyed woman who also wore the white ribbon.
“Come over by me until Miss Tremont comes back,” said Miss Beale, with her brilliant smile. “Tell me, don’t you love her already? Oh, you have no idea how good she is. She is heart and soul in her work, and just lives for the Lord. She sometimes visits twenty poor families a week, besides her Temperance class, her sewing school, her Bible Readings, her Bible class, and all the religious societies, of which she is the most active worker. She is also the Mariaville agent for the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and trustee of the Bible Society. You should hear her pray. I have heard all the great revivalists, but I have never heard anything like Miss Tremont’s prayers. How I envy you living with her! You’ll hear her twice a day, and sometimes oftener. She has a nice house on the outskirts of Mariaville. Her father left it to her twenty years ago, and she dedicated it to the Lord at once. It is headquarters for church meetings of all sorts. She has a Bible reading one afternoon a week. Any one can go, even a servant, for Miss Tremont, like all true followers of the Lord, is humble.”
Patience reflected that she had never seen any one look less humble than Miss Beale. In spite of her old