MATILDA TEACHES

MATILDA seated herself bolt upright on one of the kitchen chairs and drew a hard, stiff sigh.

"It'll be a great rest to get away," she said, "more of a rest than any one but me will ever know. You see, she's left all she's got to me in her will, so I'm bound in honor to keep a pretty sharp watch over everything. I can't even take a chance at her sinking suddenly away, with the room not picked up or a cobweb in some high corner. I've seen her will, and she ain't left you a cent, so you won't have the same responsibility. It'll be easier for you."

"I'll do my very best," said Jane.

"The trouble is I'm too conscientious," said Matilda. "I was always conscientious, and she was always slack. It's an awful failing. It's a warning, too, for now there she lays, snug as a bug in a rug, and me with New Asthma in my arm from tending her and the house."

"You'll get over all that very soon," said the niece soothingly.

Matilda glanced at her suspiciously. "No, I shan't. I may get better, but I shan't get over it. It's a nerve trouble and can't never be completely cured. A doctor can alligator it, but he can't cure it. I'll have it till I die."

Jane was silent.

"You wrote that you were some kind of a nurse. What kind did you say you were?"

"I'm a Sunshine Nurse."

"A Sunshine Nurse! What's that? Some new idea of never pulling down the shades?"

Jane laughed. "Not exactly. It's an Order just founded by a doctor. He picked out the girls himself, and he sends them where he chooses for training."

"What's the training?"

Jane looked at her and hesitated a little. "I expect you'll laugh," she said finally; "it does sound funny to any one who isn't used to such ideas. We're to see the sun as always shining, and always shine ourselves, and our training consists in going where there isn't any brightness and being bright, and going where there isn't any happiness and teaching happiness."

"Sounds to me like nonsense," said Matilda, rising abruptly; "don't you go letting up the sitting-room shades and fading the upholstering,—that's all I've got to say. Come now and I'll show you about locking up, and then we'll go to bed."

Jane obeyed with promptness and was most observant and attentive. Matilda loaded her with behests and instructions and seemed appreciative of the intelligence with which they were received.

"I wouldn't go in for nothing fancy," she said, as they completed their task; "the less you stir up her and the house, the easier it'll be for me when I come back. You don't want to ever forget that I'm coming back, and don't put any fancy ideas into her head. There's plenty to do here without going out of your way to upset my ways."

"I'll remember," said Jane.

Then they started up-stairs, and a few minutes later the Sunshine Nurse was alone in her own room, free to stand quietly by the window and let her outward gaze form a bond between the still beauty of a country night and the glad vision of work in plenty, and that of a kind which Miss Matilda couldn't prohibit, because she knew not the world in which such work is done.

"Not—" said Jane to herself with a little whimsical smile—"not but what I'm 'most sure that my teaching will be manifest in a lot of material changes, too, but by the time that she comes back, her own feelings will be sufficiently 'alligatored' so that she'll see life differently also. God's plan is just as much for her good in sending her away as it is for mine in sending me here, and I mustn't forget that for a minute. I'll be busy and she'll be busy, and we'll both be learning and we'll both be teaching and we'll both be being necessary."

She drew a chair close and sat down, full of her own bright and helpful thoughts. Much of love and wonder came flooding into her through the medium of the sweet, calm night without. "It's like being among angels," she fancied, and felt a close companionship with those who had known the Great White Messengers face to face.

Long she sat there, praying the prayer that is just one indrawn breath of content and uplifted consciousness. Not many girls of twenty-two would have seen so much in that not unusual situation, and yet it was to her so brimful of fair possibilities that she could hardly wait for morning to begin work.

When she rose to undress, when she climbed into the plain, hard bed that received her so kindly, when she slept at last, all was with the same sense of responsibility mixed with energetic intention. All that she had "asked" in the usual sense of "asking in prayer" had been "to be shown exactly how," and because she was one of those who know every prayer to be answered, in the hour of its making she knew that to be answered, too. "I'll be led along," was her last thought before sleeping, and it swept the fringe of her consciousness, leaving her to enter dreamland with the happy security of a trusting child.

It really seemed no time at all before Matilda rapped loudly on her door, bringing her suddenly to the knowledge that the hour to begin all the longed-for work was at hand.

"Five o'clock!" Matilda howled gently through the crack.

"Yes, yes," she cried in response.

The door opened a bit wider. "You'd better get right up or you'll go to sleep again," Matilda said, putting her head in, "right this minute."

"Yes, I will."

She sat up in bed to prove it.

"All right," said her aunt—and shut the door.

Jane had unpacked her small trunk the night before, and so was able to dress quickly and get down-stairs without a minute wasted. She found Matilda in the kitchen, very busy with the stove.

"I do hope you'll remember what I said last night," she said, shoveling out ashes with an energy that filled the room with dust. "I can't have her habits all upset. It'll be no good giving me this change if you go and spoil her. Remember that."

"I won't make any trouble," promised Jane. "I'll always remember that you're coming back."

As she spoke, she saw again the thin, hopeless face on the pillow up-stairs and knew that Matilda herself was to know a glad surprise over the change which should welcome her home-coming. It was the learning to instantly realize the better side of those who insisted on exhibiting their worst that was the leading force in the training of that beaming little Order to which she belonged. The Sunshine Nurses were forbidden to consider anything or anybody as fixedly wrong either in kind, conception, or working out. It would be a very comfortable way of looking at things—even for such mere, ordinary, everyday folk as you and me.

Matilda now said, "Ugh, ugh!" over the dust and proceeded to dive into the wood-box with one hand and get a sliver in her thumb.

"In the morning she has tea," she said, going to the window to put her hand to rights. "One cup. Piece of bread. At noon, whatever is handy. Night, cup of tea and whatever she fancies. Bread or a cracker usually. She eats very little and less all the time. The cat eats more than she does. He's a snooper, that cat,—you'll have to watch out."

Jane didn't seem to understand. "A—a snooper?"

"Steals food. Awful thief. Slap him when you catch him at it; it's all you can do. Sometimes I throw water over him. He'll make off with what would be a meal for a hired man, and he's sly as any other thief."

"Can't I help you with your hand?"

"No, you can't. I get lots of them. They bother me a little because Mrs. Croft's cousin died of blood-poison from one. There, it's out. What was I saying? Oh, yes, the cat."

"Where is she now?"

"It's a he. Named Alfred for her husband. He's up in her room now. Always sleeps on her bed. She will have him, and I humor her. She's my only sister and she can't live long and she's left me all her money, and I humor her. It's my plain duty."

"Is it healthy for an invalid to sleep with a cat?"

"No, it ain't. But I promised to do whatever she said about the cat and the garden, and I do."

"I'm sure it's very good in you," Jane murmured, looking out of the window.

"It is. I'm a good woman. I do my whole duty, and there's not many in a town this size can say as much."

"Where is the garden?"

"I'll show you, if you don't mind getting your feet wet. I have my rubbers on already, to travel, so I can go right there now while the fire is kindling."

"Is it wet?"

"Most grass is wet, at five in the morning."

Jane wanted to laugh. "I mean, isn't there a path?"

"Part way, and then you have to climb two fences."

"Climb! Two!" the niece turned in surprise.

"Climb two fences. You never saw such a place. The strip between is rented for a cow-pasture. That's why there's two fences."

"But why not have gates?"

"Don't ask me. Find out if you can. I've lived here five years, and I ain't found out. You try and see if you'll do better. She's very secretive, and so was he before he died. I've just had to get along the best I could. She fails and fails steady, but it don't seem to affect her health none, and now at last it's affected mine instead and give me neophytes in my left arm."

Jane turned her head and looked some more out of the window.

"We'll go now. Might as well. The kettle will get to boiling while we're away, and then we'll have breakfast. It boils slow, because I've got the eggs in it for my lunch. Come on."

The question of the wet grass seemed to have faded. They went out the kitchen door. It was a clear, bright morning. "Weedy weather," commented Matilda, and led the way down the path.

"It's a pretty place," said Jane, her eyes roaming happily.

"Yes, I suppose so. But it takes an artist or some one who hasn't lived in it for five years to feel that way." She paused to climb the first fence. It was three rails high and very awkward. "I'll go over first," she said. "Think of it; I've done this six times a day for five years."

Jane didn't wonder that she was so agile at it. "But how funny to have a garden away off here!" she said.

Matilda was now over on the other side. "Yes, and think of keeping it up. Folks about here make no bones of telling me that they were both half-witted, only as she's my sister, they try to give me to understand as she caught it from him. He was a miser, you know."

Jane was just getting her second leg over. "I don't know a thing about him," she said.

"Well, you will, soon enough. The neighbors'll come flocking as soon as I'm gone, and you'll soon know all there is to know about us all. They'll pick me to pieces, too, and tell you I'm starving Susan to death, but I don't care. Climbing these fences has hardened me to calumny."

They crossed the strip of cow-pasture, and Matilda got over another fence, saying as she did so: "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth," leaving Jane to make the application and follow her at the same time.

Then they found themselves in a trim little garden.

"How sweet," said the niece.

"You can see I've done my duty by it, too," said Matilda; "that's my way. I'm hard and I ain't pretty to look at, but I do my duty, which is more'n most handsome women do. Every last bean here is clawed around like it ought to be, and the whole thing neat as wax. Same with Susan; you'd think from her face I'd murdered her, and yet the Recording Angel knows she's had a cold sponge and every last snarl combed out of her hair every day since I came. I don't boast, but I do work."

"Dear me, it's a long way from the house," said Jane, forgetting her higher philosophy for the minute.

"It's a good ten minutes to get here. A picking of peas is a half-hour's job. And ten to one, when I get back, the cat's been at the cream."

Jane had had time to remember. "I can see you've been awfully good," she said warmly, "and my, but you've worked hard. Everything shows that."

Matilda's face flushed with pleasure, the sudden pathetic flushing of unexpected appreciation. "I just have," she declared. "I've worked hard all my life and done a lot of good, and nobody's ever bothered to thank me. She don't. She just lays there and lets me run up and down stairs and climb fences and dig weeds and scamper back and forth with a extra hike, when I hear the bell of the door, till it'll be a mercy if I don't get neophytes all over, and the New Asthma in both legs, I think."

After a brief tour of the tiny whole, devoted mainly to instructing the novice, Matilda led the way back to the house.

"Does it ever need watering?" Jane asked, lapsing again to a lower level.

"Sometimes," said Matilda briefly. Jane hadn't the heart to say another word until—several steps further on—it occurred to her that the garden also could be only a good factor in God's plan, if she wreathed it and shrined it and saw it in her world, as He saw all His world on the day when it was first manifest and set. "And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good."