Mother-Meg; or, The Story of Dickie's Attic. Catharine Shaw
means, and had behaved in a flighty, loud manner which grated on his feelings.
"No such wife for me," he had said to his mother one evening, when they had just met one of their acquaintances in gaudy finery, which could not hide her slovenly boots or pinned-together dress.
His mother quite agreed. Hard-worked and poor as she was, no one had seen her anything but neat.
But Meg was different. As now and then he met her flitting up the stairs at the hall, or passing to and from her mother's cottage, he knew he had to do with quite a different woman from those with whom he was accustomed to meet.
He was sauntering along a lane one afternoon in March when his work was over, thinking of all this, and enjoying the quiet twilight, when he saw a stooping figure in front of him eagerly looking for something.
"Have you lost anything?" he asked, coming up to the figure. "Can I help you?"
He found with a start that the subject of his thoughts was close to him.
Hitherto she had only nodded civilly in return for his passing greeting, and now in the dusk hardly recognized him, though she knew he was a stranger to their village.
"Oh, thank you!" she answered.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It is my mother's little brooch. I can't think how I came to drop it. I should not mind so much only that it has my father's hair in it. She values it very much."
"I dare say we shall manage to find it. When did you miss it?" he asked.
"Just now—not two minutes ago. I know I had it at that stile, because I turned there to look at the new moon, and I had it in my hand then."
They searched in silence for some minutes, but the twilight had deepened quickly, and the dewy grass seemed all one mist under their feet.
"This is damp for you, ain't it?" he asked suddenly.
"Yes; that was how I came to drop it. I gathered up my dress, and it must have slipped then. Whatever shall I do?—we cannot see any longer."
"I dare say they have a lantern at the stables; I will go and ask."
"I will wait here," she answered.
"Don't do that. You go home; I'll come back and look till it's found."
"I cannot trouble you with that," said Meg. "Mother and I will come early to-morrow. No one passes this lane before seven. We could see soon after six now."
"It will be no trouble," Jem answered earnestly; "and if it can be found to-night it is far better nor waitin'. There is some things gets better for waitin', but others——"
Meg listened: surely there was a serious tone in this man's talk, such as her mother loved.
They were rapidly nearing the light in her mother's window.
"That is your home, ain't it?" asked Jem, pointing.
"Yes; how did you know?"
"I heard you lived there. May I come up to the door with you?"
Meg assented. She was rather surprised, but not sorry that he wished it.
When, however, he got to the door, he bade her an abrupt good-bye, and hastened back along the path.
She saw his form disappear in the direction of the stables, and then she opened the door and told her mother all about it.
"He's been working at the Hall for this month, mother; but I've never spoken to him before."
Mrs. Archer went to the door and looked anxiously down the lane, as if with her old eyes she could see the lost brooch herself.
"Dear, dear," she said, "to think I could have let you take it to be mended, and not have gone myself!"
Poor Meg stood beside her in silence. She wished it too; but how could she know she would lose it?
Just then a light twinkled down the lane, and passed rapidly onwards.
Meg bethought herself.
"Mother, I must go back," she exclaimed. "What will they say to me? I told them I should be home early. I'll try to send George over to know if—if he has found it."
So when after a quarter of an hour's search Jem came back with it to the cottage, the little bird whom he had hoped to see there was flown.
"I'm naught but a workman," he said to her, when after another month of seeking the little bird he caught her at last; "and I haven't anything nice to offer you, Meg. I can't give you such a home as you've been used to, not even as good as you might ha' had at yer mother's."
Meg was going to speak, but he went on as if he must say all that was in his heart.
"And I know I'm not so—so—refined, Meg, as you are. You have lived amongst gentlefolks, I've lived amongst the poor, and I know now what I didn't perhaps enough understand when I set my heart on you, that my speech and my bringin' up is not so good as yours. Meg, if I've done you a wrong in lovin' you, I'll go back home, and never come again—"
He paused: could he say any more? What would he do if she accepted that last alternative of his?
But Meg put her hand into his.
"It's the heart, that is the thing, Jem," she whispered, "and that's above fine words and ways."
"If you can be satisfied with that, Meg, we shall be very happy!" he answered, clasping her hand tightly; "for my whole heart is yours, which has never loved another."
"And I'm not afraid," Meg went on earnestly, "since you told me all that happened two years ago. Any one who has felt like that is safe to trust."
For Jem had told her one Sunday, when, with her mother's permission, he had walked home from the evening service with her, what a different man he had been since one particular day.
"I was going down a street near home," he had said, "when some people came along singin' somethin' which I thought sounded very swinging and pretty, and I stopped to listen. They marched along slowly, half-a-dozen of 'em carryin' a banner in front of them, with the words in large letters on it, 'Come to the hall at 7 o'clock and hear the good news.' Still they went on with the singin', and I got curious to know what their good news was.
"'Ye must be born again, again,
Ye must be born again, again;
I verily, verily, say unto you,
Ye must be born again!'
"On it went with a swingin' sort of roll, and I wondered, and followed on in spite of myself. 'Seven o'clock; hear the good news!' What good news was there in being told to be born again? Nonsense! this warn't any good news as I could see. I'd a deal sooner they'd have told me where I could ha' got a bit more work. That's what would ha' been good news to me, I thought. But I went with 'em, for all that; and the end of it all was, that I was born again! That very night I got into a new sort o' man. I left all the old things far away behind—'as far as the east is from the west,' the man who preached said, and I got instead such a white robe to cover me over, as made me feel whiter than the snow they sang about. And that's how I came to be different—just washed in the Blood of the Lamb!"
"I know what that means too," Meg had answered softly.
"I knew you did," he had said. And then they did not speak again till they parted at the Hall gates.
"So, though I'm naught but a workman, you can put up with me, Meg?" he asked, the day before he was going away, and the repairs were finished.
And she answered by putting her hand into his.