Mildred Keith - Complete 7 Book Collection. Finley Martha
and with general housework, I shall often be compelled to call upon you; or rather," she added, with a slight caress, "to accept the assistance you are only too ready to give."
"It is too bad!" cried the girl, indignantly; "that Viny doesn't earn her salt! I wonder how you can have patience with her, mother, if I were her mistress I'd have sent her off at a moment's warning long before this."
"Let us try to imitate God's patience with us, which is infinite;" Mrs. Keith answered low and reverently; "let us bear with her a little longer. But indeed, I do not know that we could fill her place with any one who would be more competent or satisfactory in any way."
"I'm afraid that is quite true; but it does seem too hard that such a woman as my gifted, intellectual, accomplished mother should have to spend her life in the drudgery of housework, cooking, mending and taking care of babies."
"No, dear; you are taking a wrong view of it. God appoints our lot; he chooses all our changes for us; Jesus, the God-man, dignified manual labor by making it his own employment during a great part of his life on earth; and 'it is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord.'
"Besides, what sweeter work can a mother have than the care and training of her own offspring?"
"But then the cooking, mother, and all the rest of it!"
"Well, dear, the health, and consequently the happiness and usefulness of my husband and children, depend very largely upon the proper preparation of their food; so that is no mean task."
"Ah, mother, you are determined to make out a good case and not to believe yourself hardly used," said Mildred, smiling, yet speaking in a half petulant tone.
"No, I am not hardly used; my life is crowned with mercies, of the very least of which I am utterly unworthy," her mother answered, gently.
"And, my child, I find that any work is sweet when done 'heartily as to the Lord and not unto men!' What sweeter than a service of love! 'Be ye followers of God as dear children.'"
"Yes," said Aunt Wealthy, coming in at the moment; "'as dear children,' not as servants or slaves, but doing the will of God from the heart; not that we may be saved, but because we are saved; our obedience not the ground of our acceptance; but the proof of our love to Him, our faith in Him who freely gives us the redemption purchased for us by His own blood. Oh what a blessed religion it is! how sweet to belong to Jesus and to owe everything to him!"
"I feel it so," Mrs. Keith said, with an undertone of deep joy in her sweet voice.
"And I," whispered Mildred, laying her head in her mother's lap as she knelt at her side, as had been her wont in childish days.
They were all silent after that for many minutes, sitting there in the gloaming; Mrs. Keith's hand passing softly, caressingly over her daughter's hair and cheeks; then Mildred spoke.
"Let me try it, mother dear; teaching the children, I mean. You know there is nothing helps one more to be thorough; and I want to fit myself for teaching if ever I should have my own living to earn."
"Well, well, my child, you may try."
"That's my own dear mother!" exclaimed the girl joyfully, starting up to catch and kiss the hand that had been caressing her. "Now, I must arrange my plans. I shall have to be very systematic in order to do all I wish."
"Yes," said Miss Stanhope, "one can accomplish very little without system, but often a great deal with it."
Mildred set to work with cheerfulness and a great deal of energy and determination, and showed herself not easily conquered by difficulties; the rest of that week was given to planning and preparing for her work, and on the following Monday her long neglected studies were resumed and her duties as family governess entered upon.
These took up the morning from nine to twelve, but by early rising and diligence she was able to do a good deal about the house before the hour for lessons to begin.
Her mother insisted that she must have an hour for recreation every afternoon, taking a walk when the weather permitted; then another for study, and the two with Mr. Lord left but a small margin for anything else; the sewing and reading with mother and sisters usually filled out the remainder of the day.
Sometimes her plans worked well and she was able to go through the round of self-imposed duties with satisfaction to herself and to that of her mother and aunt, who looked on with great interest and were ever on the watch to lend a helping hand and keep hindrances out of her way.
But these last would come now and again, in the shape of callers, accidents, mischievous pranks on the part of the little ones or delinquencies on that of the maid of all work, till at times Mildred's patience and determination were sorely tried.
She would grow discouraged, be nearly ready to give up, then summon all her energies to the task, battle with her difficulties and for a time rise superior to them.
But a new foe appeared upon the field and vanquished her. It was the ague, attacking now one, and now another of the family; soon they were seldom all well and it was no uncommon thing for two or three to be down with it at once. Viny took it and left, and they hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry.
Governessing had to be given up, nursing and housework substituted for that and for sewing and reading, while still for some weeks longer the lessons with Mr. Lord were kept up; but at length they also had to be dropped, for Mildred herself succumbed to the malaria and grew too weak, ill and depressed for study.
Chapter Twelfth.
"We're not ourselves,
When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind
To suffer with the body."
—Shaks. King Lear.
The neighbors were very kind; coming in with offers of assistance in nursing the sick, bringing dainties to tempt their appetites, encouraging them with the assurance that they were but sharing the common lot; "almost everybody expected a chill about once in two or three weeks; especially this time of year; and they weren't often disappointed, and thought themselves fortunate if they could stop at one paroxysm till the week came round again.
"Quinine would generally stop it, and when people had a long siege of the ague, they often got used to it so far as to manage to keep up and about their work; if not at all times at least between the chills, which as a general thing came only every other day.
"Indeed it was no unusual thing for them to feel quite bright and well on the intermediate day."
The Lightcaps were not a whit behind the others in these little acts of kindness. Rhoda Jane forgot her envy of Mildred on learning that she was sick and seemed to have lost her relish for food.
One morning Miss Stanhope, who was getting breakfast, was favored with an early call from Miss Lightcap.
She appeared at the open kitchen door basket in hand, and marched in without stopping to knock. "I heerd Miss Mildred was sick and couldn't eat nothin'," she said; "and I knowed you hadn't no garden sass o' your own; so I fetched over some tomats; we have a lot this year, real splendid big ones, and there ain't nothin' tastes better when you're gettin' over the agur, than tomats.
"Just you cut 'em up with vinegar and pepper and salt, and if she don't say they're first-rate eatin'—I'm mistaken; that's all."
"Thank you, you're very kind, Miss Nightcap," said Aunt Wealthy, looking so pleased and grateful that the girl could not take the misnomer as an intentional insult.
"Pshaw!" she said, "it's nothin'; we've plenty of 'em."
Having emptied her basket upon the table, she was starting for the door, but looked back.
"Say, do you want a girl?"
"Yes, indeed, if we can get one that's worth anything."
"Well,