Our Frank, Amy Walton [best ereader for epub .txt] 📗

fruitless attempts to thread her needle, "I suppose mother will help her to get some money. I shall ask her to let me give her some out of the charity-box--only I'm afraid there isn't much in it now."

"If you really wanted to help her," said nurse, who saw an excellent opportunity for making a useful suggestion, "you might make some things for her baby; she hasn't much time for sewing, poor soul."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly do that," said Penny decidedly, "because, you know, I hate needlework so. I couldn't do any extra, it would take all my time."

Nurse rolled up a tight bundle of clothes and left the room without answering, and Penny, with her frowning little face bent over her work, went on thinking about Mrs Dicks and her six children. She wondered whether they had enough to eat now; if they were to be brought up on nothing, they probably had not, she thought, and she felt anxious to finish her task that she might run and ask mother about it, and how she could best help with the money out of the charity-box. So she cobbled over the last stitches rather hastily, and put the work away; but she found after all that her mother was too busy to attend to her just then. The next step, therefore, was to ascertain the state of the charity-box, and she took it down from the mantel-piece in the play-room and gave it a little shake. It made quite a rich sound; but Penny knew by experience what a noise coppers can make, so she was not very hopeful as she unscrewed the top and looked in. And matters were even worse than she feared, for all the box contained was this: two pennies, one halfpenny, and one stupid little farthing. Penny felt quite angry with the farthing, for it was bright and new, and looked at the first glance almost like gold.

"If you were a fairy farthing," she said, "you'd get yourself changed into gold on purpose to help Mrs Dicks; but it's no use waiting for that."

That afternoon Penny was to go out with her mother, instead of walking with the other school-room children and the governess. It was a great honour and delight, and she had saved up so many questions to ask about various subjects that she had scarcely time to tell her about Mrs Dicks and the state of the charity-box.

They had just begun to talk about it, when Mrs Hawthorne stopped at a house near their own home.

"Oh, mother!" cried Penny in some dismay, "are we going to see Mrs Hathaway?"

"Yes," answered her mother, "she has promised to show me her embroideries, and I think you will like to see them too."

Penny did not feel at all sure about that, she was rather afraid of Mrs Hathaway, who was a severe old lady, noted for her exquisite needlework; however, it was a treat to go anywhere with mother, even to see Mrs Hathaway.

The embroideries were, indeed, very beautiful, and exhibited with a good deal of pride, while Penny sat in modest silence listening to the conversation. She privately regarded Mrs Hathaway's handiwork with a shudder, and thought to herself, "How very little time she must have for reading!"

Scarcely any notice had been taken of her yet; but presently, when everything had been shown and admired, Mrs Hathaway turned her keen black eyes upon her, and said:

"And this little lady, now, is she fond of her needle?"

A sympathetic glance passed between Mrs Hawthorne and Penny, but she knew she must answer for herself, and she murmured shyly though emphatically:

"Oh, _no_."

"No! Indeed," said Mrs Hathaway, "and why not?"

She was a very upright old lady, and when she said this she sat more upright than ever, and fixed her eyes on Penny's face.

Penny felt very uncomfortable under this gaze, and wriggled nervously, but she could find nothing better to say than:

"Because I _hate_ it so."

"I am afraid," put in Mrs Hawthorne, "that Penny doesn't quite understand the importance of being able to sew neatly; just now she thinks of nothing but her books, but she will grow wiser in time, and become a clever needlewoman, I hope."

Mrs Hathaway had not taken her eyes off Penny with a strong expression of disapproval; she evidently thought her a very ill brought-up little girl indeed. Now she turned to Mrs Hawthorne and said:

"I question whether all this reading and study is an advantage to the young folks of the present day. I do not observe that they are more attractive in manner than in the time I remember, when a young lady was thought sufficiently instructed if she could sew her seam and read her Bible."

She turned to Penny again and continued: "Now, the other day I heard of a society which I think you would do well to join. It is a working society, and the members, who are some of them as young as you are, pledge themselves to work for half an hour every day. At the end of the year their work is sent to the infant Africans, and thus they benefit both themselves and others. Would you like to join it?"

"Oh, _no_, thank you," said Penny in a hasty but heartfelt manner.

"Why not?"

"Because I never could fulfil that promise. I shouldn't like to belong to that society at all. I don't know the Africans, and if I work, I'd rather work for Mrs Dicks." Penny spoke so quickly that she was quite out of breath.

"And who, my dear child," said Mrs Hathaway, surprised at Penny's vehemence, "is Mrs Dicks?"

She spoke quite kindly, and her face looked softer, so Penny was emboldened to tell her about the whole affair, and how Mrs Dicks was a very nice woman, and had six children to bring up on nothing.

"I wanted to help her out of the charity-box," concluded Penny, "but there's scarcely anything in it."

Mrs Hathaway looked really interested, and Penny began to think her rather a nice old lady after all. After she and her mother left the house she walked along for some time in deep thought.

"What are you considering, Penny?" asked Mrs Hawthorne at last.

"I think," said Penny very deliberately, "that as there's so little in the charity-box I should like to work for Mrs Dicks' children."

Mrs Hawthorne knew what an effort this resolve had cost her little daughter.

"Well, dear Penny," she answered, "if you do that I think you will be giving her a more valuable gift than the charity-box full of money."

"Why?" said Penny.

"Because you will give her what costs you most. It is quite easy to put your hand in your box and take out some money; but now, besides the things you make for her, you will have to give her your patience and your perseverance, and also part of the time you generally spend on your beloved books."

"So I shall!" sighed Penny.

But she kept her resolve and did work for Mrs Dicks. Very unpleasant she found it at first, particularly when there was some interesting new story waiting to be read.

Gradually, however, there came a time when it did not seem quite so disagreeable and difficult, and she even began to feel a little pride in a neat row of stitches.

The day on which she finished a set of tiny shirts for the baby Dicks was one of triumph to herself, and of congratulation from the whole household; Mrs Dicks herself was almost speechless with admiration at Miss Penny's needlework; indeed the finest embroideries, produced by the most skilful hand, could not have been more praised and appreciated.

"Penny," said Mrs Hawthorne, "have you looked in the charity-box lately?"

"Why, no, mother," answered she, "because I know there's only twopence three farthings in it."

"Go and look," said her mother.

And what do you think Penny found? The bright farthing was gone, and in its place there was a shining little half-sovereign. How did it come there?

That I will leave you to guess.


STORY SIX, CHAPTER 1.

THE BLACK PIGS--A TRUE STORY.

"I know what we must do--we must sell them at the market!"

"Where?"

"At Donnington."

"We shall want the cart and horse."

"Ask father."

"No. _You_ ask him--you know I always stammer so when I ask."

The speakers were two dark, straight-featured little boys of ten and twelve, and the above conversation was carried on in eager whispers, for they were not alone in the room.

It was rather dark, for the lamp had not been lighted yet, but they could see the back of the vicar's head as he sat in his arm-chair by the fire, and they knew from the look of it that he was absorbed in thought; he had been reading earnestly as long as it was light enough, and scarcely knew that the boys were in the room.

"_You_ ask," repeated Roger, the elder boy, "I always stammer so."

Little Gabriel clasped his hands nervously, and his deep-set eyes gazed apprehensively at the back of his father's head.

"I don't like to," he murmured.

"But you must," urged Roger eagerly; "think of the pigs."

Thus encouraged, Gabriel got up and walked across the room. He thought he could ask better if he did not face his father, so he stopped just at the back of the chair and said timidly:

"Father."

The vicar looked round in a sort of dream and saw the little knickerbockered figure standing there, with a wide-mouthed, nervous smile on its face.

"Well," he said in an absent way.

"O please, father," said Gabriel, "may Roger and I have the cart and horse to-morrow?"

"Eh, my boy? Cart and horse--what for?"

"Why," continued Gabriel hurriedly, "to-morrow's Donnington market, and we can't sell our pigs here, and he thought--I thought--we thought, that we might sell them there."

He gazed breathless at his father's face, and knew by its abstracted expression that the vicar's thoughts were very far away from any question of pigs--as indeed they were, for they were busy with the subject of the pamphlet he had been reading.

"Foolish boys, foolish boys," he said, "do as you like."

"Then we may have it, father?"

"Do as you like, do as you like. Don't trouble, there's a good boy;" and he turned round to the fire again without having half realised the situation.

But Roger and Gabriel realised it fully, and the next morning between five and six o'clock, while it was still all grey, and cold, and misty, they set forth triumphantly on their way to market with the pigs carefully netted over in the cart. Through the lanes, strewn thickly with the brown and yellow leaves of late autumn, up the steep chalk hill and over the bare bleak downs, the old horse pounded steadily along with the two grave little boys and their squeaking black companions.

There was not much conversation on the road, for, although Gabriel was an excitable and talkative boy, he was now so fully impressed by the importance of the undertaking that he was unusually silent, and Roger was naturally rather quiet and deliberate.

They had to drive between five and