Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/846



T so happened that the Lady Bountiful had reached the ripe age of seven before realizing that her previous life had been given over wholly to the vanities of the world. Ever since she could remember she had been "oversolicitous"—that had been the bishop's expression—"about the things of earth." To the Lady Bountiful "the things of earth" meant the dessert to which she was always helped twice and sometimes three times, the delicious chocolate mice that sold for a cent apiece, and if eaten slowly—by a long-drawn-out, lapping process sternly disapproved of by grown-ups,—would turn beautifully white without losing their shape—at least for some time.

Undoubtedly she had been "oversolicitous" about these things; they "had entered into her heart and had dominion over it." She saw it all now, her "wilful blindness, her hardness of heart, the cry of the hungry making no sound in her deaf ears," as she sat very straight and still at the end of the pew, convicted of these things by the ringing voice of the bishop. Only now and then was her attitude of almost penitential rigidity rewarded by a glimpse of the great man in the pulpit,—the backs of the pews being high, and the Lady Bountiful having the brevity of stature to be expected at her time of life.

But now he turned and seemed to look directly at her as she sat rigid and a little pale, thrilled with the consciousness of those seven selfish years. She felt that he knew all about them, and that in his look there was something of personal accusation. Five cents had gone for chocolate mice the week before she had left home—five cents that might have bought bread and meat and fire and warm clothing for the poor. For the bishop had told a story about a Samaritan, and how he had found a poor man on the street, and had given a penny to an innkeeper to take care of him; and if a penny had been enough to pay the poor man's hotel bill and his doctor, and to set him on a horse, how much further would not five pennies have gone? She hung her head; she could not meet the bishop's eye; and as she cowered before that accusing glance, again his deep-toned voice rang out, "And he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." With these words the bishop concluded his sermon and left the pulpit, his sweeping robe of silk rustling softly sacerdotal, as unlike as possible the impatient hissing of silk from the adjoining pews as the ladies turned and twisted in nervous relaxation from the strain of the great charity sermon.

But for the Lady Bountiful there was no relaxation,—too long had she been comfortable "in the mire of selfish content"; but those days were past, and in outward sign of her change of heart she would show no mercy to her spinal column. It was, indeed, no time for laggard acquiescence. Besides, by sitting very straight she was sometimes rewarded by a glimpse of the bishop who had wrought her conversion, as he sat on the raised scarlet dais at the right of the high altar.

The nose of the convert was on a line with the pew in front, and over this barrier peered two small bright blue eyes set wide apart, under what threatened to develop into a massive forehead. The pale yellow hair, fine as corn silk, was bisected by a tiny white alleyway that vanished into the line of the neck. Two infinitesimal braids, no thicker than wrapping-cord, tied with small knots of blue ribbon, protruded from beneath the round, flopping brim of the gray beaver hat. Not the most partial of parents could have called her pretty, but in the eager little face, in which nothing was defined but the big forehead, there were intelligence and the capacity for assuming responsibility.

The Lady Bountiful was on a visit to