A Modern Cinderella, Amanda Minnie Douglas [free ereaders .txt] 📗

listening to music that stirred every pulse of her soul, haunting art galleries with loving companionship that somehow saw the best and most beautiful in everything if it was not always high art.

And then she returned alone. It seemed more of a loss than the death of her mother. She remained awhile in California settling up some business and then the longing seized her to return to the home of her youth, to have a real home where she could make the center she was still dreaming of, surround herself with friends and do something worth while with her money.

Newton had changed as well, enlarged its boundaries and made itself beautiful at the northern end. The shops and factories were kept down by the railroad center where two important lines crossed, and the river was navigable. Then Main Street was devoted to really fine stores, Brandon to offices and men's businesses, the Postoffice being there. A handsome library building adorned Broadway, there were Orphan Homes, an Old Ladies' Home, a Social Settlement.

Miss Armitage liked the aspect of it. Boarding at a hotel for awhile she looked about and decided on Loraine place. The houses stood in a row, but they had a pretty court yard in front, and a real stretch of ground at the back for grass and flowers and two fine fruit trees.

Of course old friends sought her out. Perhaps the fortune helped. The young girls of her time were matrons with growing children. How odd it seemed! She thought sometimes that she felt reprehensibly young, as if she was having girlhood over again in her heart, but it was a richer, wiser and more fervent girlhood, with the added experiences of the woman.

There were many things for her to take an interest in but they finally settled around the babies and little children's hospital, and the Settlement House. In a way, she was fond of the sweet, helpless babies who seemed so very dependent on human kindness. If there was one of her own flesh and blood it would take possession of her very soul, all her thoughts, all her affection. But it should have been hers earlier in life. Now she wanted companionship. She could not wait for it to develop and then find unpleasant traits that had come from alien blood. No, she could not adopt a baby and wait a dozen years to know whether it would satisfy or not.

She had helped two or three girls to better things. One through the last two years of High School and who was now teaching. And there had been one with a charming voice and an attractive face who had been injured in a mill and who would never have perfect use of her right hand. If she could be trained for a singer!

She and Doctor Richards came to words about her. He said plainly she would not be worth the money spent upon her. But Miss Armitage insisted on spending it a year when the girl threw up her friend and joined a concert troupe, slipping presently into vaudeville where she _was_ a success.

And out of the dispute came a proffer of love and marriage. Alvah Richards had begun life at the opposite pole from Miss Armitage. There had been a fortune, a love for the study of medicine, a degree in Vienna and one at Paris. Then most of the fortune had been swept away. He returned to America and some way drifted to Newton. They were just starting the hospital and he found plenty to do. He could live frugally. To help his still poorer fellow creatures in suffering, to restore them to strength and teach them to be useful members of society, or to comfort them and make the path easier over the river to the other country; this was his highest aim.

Miss Armitage was almost dumb with surprise. She raised her hand in entreaty.

"Oh, don't! don't," she cried. "It is quite impossible; it cannot be. I like you very much, but I am not in love. And then----"

"Then what?" with eager eyes and incisive voice.

"You had a birthday last week. I heard you telling it. You are thirty-one."

"Well--" There was a proud smile on his manly face.

"And when my birthday comes, I shall be thirty-six. When you are sixty, rich in experience, famous, a real man among men, I shall be quite an old woman. No, I shouldn't do it for your sake."

"As if a few years made any difference! Why you could discount seven years at least. Have you been loved so much that you can throw away a man's honest, honorable, tender love that will last all his life, that wear it as you like, in any stress, you can never wear out."

"Oh," she cried. "You have spoiled a splendid friendship. I liked you so much, I have no love to give in return."

"Then let us be friends again. I would rather have you for a friend than any other woman for a wife. I simply will not give you up."

So the pendulum went on swinging evenly between the two points, when Cinderella entered both lives.

And now it was Sunday morning and the chimes were pealing--"Oh, come all ye faithful." Marilla listened with a throb of joy, though she did not know the words they were saying in sweetest melody. Miss Armitage came and stood by the cot with a cordial good morning.

Marilla stretched out her hand and glanced up with an entreating sort of smile.

"Was I very bad last night?" she asked in a wistful tone.

"Bad? Why--what was it?"

"I've been thinking it over. Oh, I didn't want to go back to Mrs. Borden. It is so lovely and quiet and beautiful here. But it _is_ right. I am her bound-out girl, and I _was_ glad to go there. You wouldn't like me to be always looking for what was nice and pleasant and shirking other things, would you?"

"Dear." She stooped and kissed her. She had been going over some arguments fitted for a child's understanding, and she was afraid of a rather painful time. And the worst to her was the fact that she had come to love the child and really desired her.

"The babies, you know, are so fond of me, and they are all very good. So I wouldn't have any reason for not staying with them. And it will be only five years more, then I shall be eighteen. And I thought--" flushing daintily, "that maybe Jane might marry, and you would want some one in her place and if it was--me," rather tremulously--"I could come--I love you so. I'd be your Cinderella always. And when I go back it will be like the King's ball--I shall keep thinking how lovely it was for you to bring me here instead of sending me to a hospital, and it will comfort me just as the music did."

Miss Armitage bent over and kissed her but there were tears in her eyes. She was touched with the child's reasoning that was so like heroism.

"Yes, dear," she said. "We will think of it that way. And if you should be ill at any time, I will have you brought here, and you shall stop when you take the babies out and let me see them, and rest a little."

"Oh that will be just lovely. You are so good," and she kissed the white hand lying on her shoulder.

Then Jane came in and she had her bath. How delightful it was to be rubbed so carefully, to have her curly mop brushed.

"I ought to dress myself now. Why I'm not sick at all only I get tired easily, but I am stronger every day."

The breakfast was so nice. And to be waited upon! Marilla gave an inward laugh of delight.

And while Miss Armitage was at church, Dr. Richards came and bundled her up, carried her downstairs and deposited her in the buggy. He was very merry, somehow. He was going out in the country and, oh, how beautiful everything was! There had been a shower in the night and the air was full of fragrance from the grass, the pines and cedars, the orchards, wild flowers, and newly cut hay, that had not all been gathered in. Children ran about or swung in hammocks. Hens were fairly shouting with no regard for Sunday. Birds were caroling all sorts of joyous tunes and the tree twigs were gaily dancing. And here and there such beautiful drifts went over the sky, ships, she called them. They were going to fairy land--something that was not quite heaven, but a lovely place for all that. There must be so many lovely places in this great world! Over the ocean where Miss Armitage had been, and she recalled the castles and palaces and beautiful woods, and peasants dancing on the green and laughing; that she had seen in the portfolio of engravings. And the legends she had listened to! Oh, if she could go to school and learn ever so many things _now_, for when she was eighteen she would be too old, and a kind of perplexity settled in her smooth forehead.


CHAPTER VII

A DAY TO BE REMEMBERED

Dr. Richards had been studying the changes in the child's face. It was like reading a book, but it had many variations. Her thoughts must have traveled far and wide. What were they?

"Are you very happy?" he asked.

"Happy?" she echoed, wonderingly. "Why it is a beautiful Sunday. One ought to be happy--here with you and watching all these lovely things."

"Are Sundays happier than any other days?"

"Well--" slowly. "They ought to be. It seems as if it was the day of the Sun, and that's always glad and merry."

"But when it rains or is cloudy?"

"Oh, you _know_ it is there, and maybe He is fighting away the clouds. And He draws up the water. I read that in a book--and when He gets enough He lets it fall down as He did last night and that makes the world so fresh and sweet. And there are fifty-two Sundays when you ought not----"

"What?" watching the shadow in her eyes.

"Well, I think you ought not work very much. I suppose some people have to when you have meals to get and babies to see to. I go to Sunday school with Jack and I like it so much. I've learned ever so many of the songs. But the lessons puzzle me. They are about God--we had them in the Home, you know, and God seems so big and strange. Do you know all about him."

"No, child, and no one, not even ministers can know all, so you need not worry about that. God has the whole world in His keeping. Don't you like the week days?"

"Well, they don't seem to have the same joy in them, only at Miss Armitage's every day seems like Sunday. But I keep counting them. You see, I'll be thirteen in September. Then when we've had fifty-two Sundays I'll be fourteen and so on, until I am eighteen."

"And then?" in a sweet kind of tone.

"Why I won't be bound-out any more. It's right for me to stay, _she_ said so, but it would seem such a long while if I was just counting the years. And Sunday comes so quick, most times, and then you can be glad."

What a touch of philosophy for a child!

"But--they are good