PUZZLING QUESTIONS

"This is lovely!" said Maybelle, as she drew the curtains, and pushed her sewing chair closer to Mrs. Burnham's. "Isn't it nice to be alone together? Erskine wanted me to go with them to the rehearsal and act as prompter, but I told him I was going to follow the promptings of my own heart and stay with you, especially since his mother must also be away. If we lived all alone in a dear little home, you and I, I could take care of you all the time."

"I am afraid I should need something besides lovely rooms and pretty sewing," Mrs. Burnham said laughingly.

"Yes, indeed! but I could do them; all sorts of things. I used to do things for Mrs. Parker, and for papa when he would let me. I was always coaxing papa to have a little bit of a house just large enough for us two, and let me take charge of it; I knew I could; I could learn, you know, and Mrs. Parker taught me a great many things; but he never would. Poor papa! he didn't want a home; he said that he had one once, and he wanted it to live in his memory forever. He meant that time—before mamma died. Do you think it is like most men to be so constant to a memory?"

"I do not know," Mrs. Burnham said, with an effort. She never knew what to say to Maybelle when she was in this mood. It was impossible to join in the talk about a dead mother, and not feel herself a hypocrite. But Maybelle was already on another theme.

"Dear Mrs. Burnham, I am glad we are alone to-night. There are matters about which I want to talk with you.

"Do you know, I have been treated always like a little girl? and it seems to me that the time has come for me to begin to be a woman. I used to try to get papa to tell me about his affairs, but he never would. During those last dreadful days, all he would tell me was that he had left everything to Aunt Mamie, and I was to do just as she said. But I have a feeling that papa was poor; and that he just made enough by his pictures to support us, perhaps not always that; I have thought lately that perhaps a great many of my nice things and—and opportunities, came through Aunt Mamie. Madame Sternheim has dropped hints more than once that have made me believe so. And now,—don't you think I ought to know all about it, and be making plans to support myself?"

"My dear!" was all that Ruth could say, in an almost dismayed tone. Maybelle's future and her connection with it were more puzzling to Erskine Burnham's mother than they could possibly be to this child. The earnest young voice went on:—

"I wrote to Aunt Mamie just how I felt, but she cannot see it as I do. She says that she is alone in the world, that money is the only thing she has enough of, and that papa gave me to her to take care of. She does not understand why I should not be quite happy over such an arrangement; but dear Mrs. Burnham, I am sure you do. It is not that I do not love to belong to her, I mean to, always; and sometimes I cannot sleep for the joy of thinking that she loves me so dearly; I can't think why she does. But don't you think that a self-respecting girl wants to support herself just as soon as she possibly can, unless she has a father and mother who can do it as well as not, and want to?"

This also was a sore and embarrassing phase of the subject to poor Ruth. Oh, to be able to say to her that her mother, her own mother, was in a position to cover for her every need that money could supply and that the man who now stood in the place of father to her would insist upon so much tardy justice—if he knew of her existence! Yet Ruth's common sense told her that even though there were no terrible reasons for silence for the sake of others, the hardest blow that could be given to a girl like Maybelle would be to destroy her beautiful illusions of her mother with the base truth. That mother of sacred memory, alive, well, living in ease and luxury and ignoring her as utterly as though she had never been born! Could such a cruel blow as that be borne! Yet any words that this much-tried woman could arrange in reply to the appeal just made, seemed false. She hesitated, and knew that her face was flushing under the girl's earnest gaze. At last, she said the only words there seemed left for her to say.

"My dear, I am a little bit on both sides of this question. I certainly sympathize with your view, and on general principles should agree with you. But the circumstances are peculiar this time." And as she said the words she felt like a hypocrite; how peculiar they were, that poor child had not the least idea! "Miss Parker is, as she says, practically alone in the world. Her brother's marriage is a coming event; then he will not need her any more, in the special sense in which she can help him now, and he does not need her money, for he has plenty of his own. Their father discovered a gold mine, you know, as well as one of another metal, almost more valuable than gold. So, if Miss Parker wants to spend a little of her surplus money upon you, because she loves you, ought you not to please her in this, and be governed by her advice, at least for the present? When you are older, and especially when Miss Parker returns home, which I think she will do before very long, probably some plans can be made that will please you both. Cannot you wait, dear?"

Maybelle sat thoughtful for a moment, then she drew a long sigh.

"I suppose I must," she said. "Indeed, there is no other way for me at present; only—I am to graduate, you know, in a few days, and I thought—but of course I ought not, contrary to Aunt Mamie's wishes. But I do not know what she wants me to do for the summer. She has not seemed to remember it. I have always spent the summer vacations with her."

"You are not to forecast anxieties about the summer," Mrs. Burnham said, trying to make her voice sound cheery and free from all anxiety, though it struck her like a physical pain, the fact that she could not say to this girl who was growing dearer to her with every passing day, "Come home with me, child, of course;" that she could never invite her to her home, and could never explain to her why she must not. She must simply be silent and trust to Maybelle's shrewd guessing that there were reasons why this new friend of hers did not feel at home in her own home, and was not at liberty to take her friends there.

It was true that summer was upon them, and the air of the boarding school was athrob with the plans of eager girls getting ready for the home-going. Maybelle was almost the only one who had not some sort of home to plan for. And yet Maybelle was to graduate! If only Mrs. Burnham could say to her, "Come, we will make home together, and you may do for me all that your heart prompts." There were hours when she was tempted to do something of the kind. But her words to Maybelle revealed none of her pain.

"There are lovely schemes maturing for the summer. 'Good times,' my dear, and unlike the illustrious Gloriana McQuirk you are 'in 'em.' I am not to divulge them before the appointed hour, but I empower you to say to those envious schoolgirls that your summer plans are a delicious secret even from yourself, being locked in the heart of that blessed little schemer, Mrs. Roberts."

Maybelle's face was still serious, but, after a moment, she laughed softly.

"I am the strangest girl!" she said. "I don't think there can be another girl in the world who lives my kind of life. I have not what Madame Sternheim calls a 'relative' this side heaven to care what becomes of me, and I have the dearest company of people, on whom, according to Madame again, I have not the shadow of a claim, who never weary of doing for me! What more, for instance, could you and that dear Mrs. Roberts and those girls and boys of hers do for me, even though I had that potent charm, some of 'the same blood' in my veins? And yet, do you know, selfish creature that I am, the Madame has so instilled her principles into me that if I only had a sister or brother of my very own to love and care for, I think I could give up joyfully all other luxuries."

"Are you not forgetting your aunts in England, my dear?"

Maybelle shook her head and spoke resolutely. "I want to forget them; I do not claim them as aunts of mine." Then, in response to Ruth's look that might have meant reproach, she added:—

"They did not like mamma, Mrs. Burnham, and they were not good to her. Papa told me as much as that. He said she was young, and away from all her home friends and unhappy, and they led her a hard life. Papa could not help feeling hard toward them for that. It was the reason why he never went to England again after Grandmother died. He took me to see Grandmother, did you know that? But she did not seem like a grandmother. She wasn't dear, you know, and sweet, like the grandmothers in stories, and in real life too,—some of the girls at school have lovely ones,—but mine was stately and cold. She and my two aunts used to talk about mamma right before me.

"'She looks like her,' one of them said, with a strong emphasis on the 'her' a contemptuous emphasis it seemed to me. And the other aunt replied, 'But she isn't like her in disposition, apparently.' Then Grandmother said quickly, 'Heaven forbid!' Could one love people who talked in that way before a child about her dear dead mother? Not that they meant me to understand," she added thoughtfully, after a moment, as one who must do full justice even to one's enemies. "I don't think they did; they were the kind of people who think that a child is deaf and blind and stupid. I understood hints and shrugs of the shoulders and curls of the lip and exclamations a great deal better than they thought I did. I have no relatives, dear Mrs. Burnham, that I care for, but I have friends whom I love with every bit of me. May I ask just one little question?—and you need not answer it if it is part of the secret. Do the summer plans include you? Because if they don't, and there could be a way for me to have you for just a little piece of the summer, I—"

The tremble in her voice had grown so marked that she stopped abruptly. She looked up, after a minute, with her eyes swimming in tears, and said with a queer little attempt at a laugh:—

"I'm not going to cry, Mrs. Burnham, don't you be afraid. And I'm not going to be selfish and babyish; I mean to be just as glad and happy and grateful as I can be, even though you have to be away from me all summer long."

It was just at that moment that Ruth resolved upon yielding to Flossy's entreaties and spending at least part of the summer with them at their new seaside cottage, which was to be a surprise to all the young people, Maybelle included. Erskine expected her at home, but what were Erskine's needs compared to this deserted child's?—and the child clung to her. But she would not tell Maybelle, not just yet; so she spoke lightly, commending the child's resolve to count her mercies, and then admonishing her that she had better also count her stitches, as she was making a mistake in the row she was crocheting.

There was a thoughtful silence on the part of both for a few minutes, then Maybelle spoke again in what Mrs. Burnham called her grown-up tone.

"There is one strange question I have wanted to ask of somebody for a long time. I tried to talk to Erskine about it without letting him know that it was really a question in my mind; but Erskine is like all boys, very wise and very positive, without being always able to give a reason for what he believes."

"Which means," said Ruth, smiling, "that Erskine did not agree with you."

"Well, he didn't," and Maybelle stopped to laugh at herself; then spoke earnestly.

"That is, so far as I may be said to have an opinion on that subject; I am not sure what I think, or at least I do not know why I think it. Mrs. Burnham, do Christian people ever pray for their dead? And if they do not, why not? Does the Bible say we must not? I have tried to find something in the Bible about it, and I could not."

Ruth was much startled. This was very different from the question she had expected. The young people argued vigorously upon every live question of the day, not excepting interesting theological points, but this was out of the regular line. While she considered just how best to answer it, Maybelle explained.

"I suppose that seems to you a strange question; young people do not often discuss such things, I suppose; but it interests me very much because I have such a longing, sometimes, to pray for mamma, that I can hardly keep her name from my lips; yet I thought perhaps it was wrong. I began to have that feeling almost as soon as Aunt Mamie taught me to pray. I had said my prayers before that time; papa taught me to say: 'Now I lay me down to sleep,' and 'Bless thy little lamb to-night.' I used to like to say them, but I did not understand what praying really was, until long after that time. But when Aunt Mamie made it plain to me, and my heart took hold of the fact that I was really talking with God, and that I could talk to Him about papa, and in that way help him, I cannot tell you how glad I was! And then, very soon, I wanted to put mamma in."

Nothing that the girl had said had ever startled Ruth as much as this. Was there a woman living who needed prayer more than this child's mother? Yet how could she counsel her daughter to pray for her?