N OBODY C A RE S


Nobody
Cares

BY
CRONA TEMPLE
AUTHOR OF “MILLICENT ’S HOME,” AND “SEA LARKS.”

CHANHASSEN
Published by Curiosmith.
Chanhassen, Minnesota.
Internet: curiosmith.com.

Previously published by the Religious Tract Society in 1876.

Definitions are from Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913.

All footnotes have been added by the publisher.

Supplementary content, book layout, and cover design:

Copyright © 2023 Charles J. Doe
 C ON TE N TS

NOBODY CARES
1. THE SCHOOL-TREAT DAY . . . 7
2. IN THE WOOD . . . 17
3. BROKEN CHINA . . . 23
4. PERHAPS IT WAS LIZZIE . . . 31
5. LADY WINTER’S OFFER . . . 37
6. STEPHEN GILMORE . . . 43
7. REUBEN’S DEPARTURE . . . 49
8. STEPHEN’S STORY . . . 55
9. A LIFE’S LESSON . . . 67
10. WATCHING . . . 73
11. WHAT HAD COME TO THE CHILD? . . . 81
12. AND LAST . . . 89

COUSIN LILY BY ELIZA COATES . . . 99

 Chapter 1

THE SCHOOL-TREAT DAY

ome, Rhoda, you must be quick!”

“Do help me, Lizzie; I can’t fasten my frock;
please wait two minutes, and hook it for me.”
“I can’t wait,” said Lizzie impatiently; “I
shall be late myself; mother will help you”; and
she snatched up her gay cotton parasol, and
ran out of the house and down the lane.
Lizzie Warren was the daughter of the bai-
liff at Woodlands, a dark-haired, sturdy girl, twelve years of
age, the head of the first class at the day school, the leader of all
the village fun, and her father’s chief pride and pleasure.
Rhoda Leigh and her little brother Reuben were orphans.
They lived with their aunt, Mrs. Warren, “ for the present,” as
she took care to say to her neighbors when they spoke of the
desolate children. John Leigh was a sailor; his ship had been
lost at sea; his widow had not long survived the news of his
death, leaving Rhoda and Reuben all alone in the world. Their
aunt brought them to Woodlands; she could not leave them
to starve, but she was vexed at having to provide for them,
and the poor children were not welcome there. Rhoda was old
enough to know it.
8 NOBODY CARES

She was a sensitive child, with shy, awkward manners, and

great grey eyes looking out from a pale little face. Mrs. Warren
and the neighbors called Rhoda Leigh “an ugly little thing,”
and perhaps they were right; she certainly did look both ugly
and unhappy as she stood watching Lizzie run down the lane.
It was a great day at Woodlands, the day of the school-
treat, and the children had been long looking forward to it.
Anxious eyes had studied the sky to guess from the winds and
the clouds if it were likely to rain; busy fingers had trimmed
hats, and ironed out dresses and pinafores; grave voices had
talked over what was best to be worn on the eventful occa-
sion; and little heads had thought about the treat by day, and
dreamed of it by night, for weeks past.
There was small likelihood of rain in the blue sky which
bent across in one vast dome, unbroken by a trace of cloud;
and the wind which whispered in the tree-tops was so faint
that it hardly kept the air from being too hot and oppressive.
The birds were dumb in the depths of the wood, and the cattle
had stopped grazing on the dry, yellow grass, and had sought
shadow and coolness among the willows which grew down by
the water.
The children were to meet at the schoolroom by half-past
two, and it was almost that time when Lizzie called to Rhoda
to make haste.
“Oh, Lizzie, do wait for me!” pleaded Rhoda; but Lizzie
did not heed. “If I waited for her I should never get there at
all!” she said to herself contemptuously; “she’s always late.”
The tears started to poor Rhoda’s grey eyes, and her lips
quivered with the sobs which she felt rising in her throat. She
had never been to a school-treat before; perhaps if she were late
they would not let her come at all! Her fingers struggled with
the hooks of her frock, but they trembled so that it seemed
 THE SCHOOL-TREAT DAY 9

fairly impossible to fasten those which were at the top of the

garment between her shoulders.
A very small pair of hands came to her aid. Reuben had
entered the room, climbed on a stool, and put the refractory
hooks in their places.
Rhoda stooped and kissed him silently.
Reuben Leigh was deaf and dumb. He was two years
younger than his sister, and loved her fondly, partly because
she seemed the only person in all the world who loved him,
and partly because it was his nature to love everybody. He too
was going to the school-treat; his simple preparations were all
complete, and he was half-way to the school when he turned
back to look for Rhoda as he saw that she was not with Lizzie.
His help was very welcome. Rhoda dried her tears,
smoothed down her brown hair, and tied on her little white
sun-bonnet.
“Are you ready, child?” said Mrs. Warren, coming into the
wide kitchen with an empty tin can in her hand; “you ought to
have been off half an hour ago. Run along, and take care that
Reuben don’t tear his clothes. If you soil your frock you’ll have
to wash it out yourself, that’s all!”
Mrs. Warren was not really unkind, although her words
were sharp and her voice rough. It was hay-making time; her
husband and all the farm-servants were busy in the fields, and
she herself had been obliged to carry down a can of coffee
through the hot sun. She particularly wanted to be able to
accept Lady Winter’s invitation to come up to the house to
see the children at their play, and to take tea afterwards in the
housekeeper’s room; but it hardly seemed as if she would be
free to leave home that afternoon; even her little servant-girl
was out in the fields. Perhaps it was this which added a sting to
her speech to Rhoda.
10 NOBODY CARES

Once in the lane, with its sunshine and rustle of leaves,

Rhoda forgot all her sorrows. Her brother’s hand was fast
locked in hers, and she talked to him as they went along.
It was a habit she had, that talking to Reuben. Of course
he could not hear her, but as she spoke she moved her features,
and made signs with her hands.
He could not talk on his fingers—no one had ever taken
the trouble to teach him—but this sign-language of Rhoda’s
he understood perfectly. So she talked to him of the butter-
flies which went flickering by, and of the shining wreaths of
bryony which clung to the hedges. Those two children noticed
and loved the common sights of everyday country life in a
way which made their Cousin Lizzie marvel exceedingly; they
had lived in dusty streets in dingy seaport towns, and the trees
and flowers and birds were very beautiful and precious in their
eyes.
A few turns and twistings of that shady lane brought them
to the village, where groups of boys and girls were hurrying
along, for it was after the appointed time, and they, like the
Leighs, were late.
The schoolmistress and her pupil-teachers were busily
marshalling the long line which stretched all across the yard.
Each child carried a cup or mug. Each face was grave with the
importance of the occasion, and every eye was bright with the
excitement of expected pleasure. Only Rhoda felt shy, and half
wished herself back with Aunt Warren; she saw, with the quick
instinct of her feminine vanity, that her rusty mourning frock
was the shabbiest there, and her cotton bonnet looked out of
place (so she thought) among the gay hats, crowned with flow-
ers and wreathed with ribbons, which the other girls wore.
Besides, she dreaded what the day might bring. She had
never been within the gates of Sir John Winter’s house, and,
 THE SCHOOL-TREAT DAY 11

much as she longed to see the wonderful things of which she

had heard, Lizzie’s account of the romping games which took
place on the “treat-day” had somewhat affrighted her. How
terrible it would be if Reuben did really tear his clothes! What
would Aunt Warren say?
“Now then,” exclaimed the schoolmistress, ringing her
bell, “march!”
So the long file of children moved on, the girls foremost,
with their many-colored garments; the boys bringing up the
rear, their dark jackets being brightened up by knots of ribbon,
and here and there a flower in a buttonhole. Reuben Leigh had
a spray of wild clematis; Rhoda did not dare to pluck a posy
from Mrs. Warren’s garden, but she could not have found a
sweeter or more graceful flower had she had the choice of all
that grew in Woodlands itself.
The procession entered the great gates, and proceeded
up the drive. Little voices which had been chattering merrily
enough grew silent now, for here was the house itself coming
in sight, with Sir John and my lady standing on the lawn, and
through the evergreens they could see the white canvas of tents
and the flutter of flags.
It was the custom to march all round the grounds into the
kitchen-garden, between the rows of gooseberry and currant
bushes, through the forcing-houses and conservatories, past
the long low shed where the bees stored their honey in hives
with glass backs, which showed all the wonders of their waxen
cells, then back again to the south side, where the children
seated themselves in lines and circles, and where huge baskets
of cake and plates of bread-and-butter were awaiting them.
Rhoda watched her opportunity, and managed to draw
Reuben from his place to a spot where they could sit side by
side without remark, she at the end of the ranks of the girls,
12 NOBODY CARES

and he where the boys began. They clung to one another, those
two strangers in a strange scene.
Lady Winter and her little girls, some ladies who were
staying in the house, and all the servants, were moving about
amongst the children, handing cake, and pouring scalding hot
tea into their mugs.
Two or three gentlemen stood in the shade of the laurels,
watching the pretty scene, and amused to see the quantities of
currant cake the village urchins could consume.
“They will never be able to play after eating all that!” said
one young man, gazing at the large baskets which had been
heaped up half an hour ago, but which were now beginning to
show the wicker-work at the bottom.
“Play! indeed they will be able to play, as you will soon
see,” said Sir John, who had been busy fixing swings in the
great trees on the lawn. And he was right. The children rose
from their seats on the grass to sing their simple grace—the
shrill, childish voices coming mellowed and softened through
the summer air—and then with glad shouts they rushed off in
every direction. All restraint was over now—fun, fast and furi-
ous, was the order of the day.
The boys eagerly claimed the cricket-bats and wickets
which Sir John Winter’s thoughtfulness had provided; the girls
crowded round the swings, or divided themselves into groups
to play at different games. Rhoda and her brother were among
those who lingered on the lawn.
Lady Winter suggested that they should run races, offering
some toys, and little cotton frocks and pinafores, as prizes for
the winners. This seemed very popular, and several parties ran
from end to end of the wide lawn, receiving from Lady Winter
what they had won.
“All winners disqualified from running again!” said a
 THE SCHOOL-TREAT DAY 13

gentleman who was assisting the hostess to manage the races.

“That means I’m not to try again,” said Lizzie Warren to
Rhoda, “but I mean to all the same. I want to get something
better than this stupid thing,” and she held up a little pincush-
ion which had fallen to her share.
“But you may not try again,” replied Rhoda doubtfully.
“Hold your tongue, do!” was the angry response. “Come,
they’re taking their places!”
“Are you going to run?” said Lady Winter to Rhoda. She
had noticed the girl’s shy ways and wistful eyes, and spoke
kindly and encouragingly.
“Please, ma’am.”
“You should say ‘my lady,’ ” corrected Lizzie, in an audible
whisper. The bailiffs daughter appeared quite shocked at her
cousin’s ignorance.
Lady Winter heard the whisper, but she did not even glance
at Lizzie. Rhoda was hanging back, her hand on Reuben’s
shoulder.
But somebody pushed her forward; she heard the “One:
two: three: off !” and then she did as her companions were
doing—rushed on as fast as she could. Her slim little frame
had great powers of speed; she had never run a race in her life
before, and yet she found herself distancing the others one by
one. Presently only Lizzie was before her—Lizzie, whose swift
feet kept her in the first place.
The next minute the panting flock reached the goal, Lizzie
first, Rhoda second.
Lady Winter held out the reward: it was a knitted scarlet
tippet, very pretty and fluffy and warm, hardly to be appreci-
ated on that hot summer’s day, but a prize indeed in the cold
weather, when the bushes were white with rime and the bitter
wind swept down the lanes.
14 NOBODY CARES

Lizzie stepped up to receive it, smiling, rosy, and breath-

less. Rhoda’s face grew dark. It was rightfully hers, that pretty
scarlet thing, for Lizzie ought not to have been in the race at
all.
But Lizzie took it in her hands quite composedly; her con-
science did not prick her in the least. Lady Winter gazed at her
rather sharply, she thought, but she said nothing, and Lizzie
fancied herself quite secure. Amongst so many girls how was
her ladyship to remember who had run and who had not? So
she argued.
Poor Rhoda! She had not dared to say a word, but she felt
herself most unjustly treated. One of the beaten ones advised
her to try again, but she had no heart left for it. She turned
away to seek Reuben, feeling as if the day had grown darker,
and that all the world was against her.
But Reuben was not in sight. She ran here and there look-
ing for him. He was not with the cricketers, nor at the swings,
nor could she see him among the merry groups scattered about
the lawn.
Even Reuben had forsaken her! He was amusing himself
elsewhere, and had forgotten her, she thought; no one cared
for her.
Feeling very miserable, weary, and overheated, she turned
into a shrubbery path which led towards a side of the park
far away from the house, where there was a wood filled with
broom and foxgloves and a tangle of blackberry bushes—a
wood which gardeners never invaded, and where human foot-
steps seldom came.
She threw herself down on the green velvet carpet of moss
at the foot of a great larch-tree. She was only a poor, untaught,
desolate child, and her heart was full of anger; she quite hated
Lizzie Warren; she was hurt with Reuben; this day, which she
 THE SCHOOL-TREAT DAY 15

had so longed for, and so looked forward to, had turned out
horrid and disagreeable. No one had ever taught her to restrain
her bad tempers, or to conquer the evil impulses of her heart;
she turned her face down to the cool, soft moss, and wept
aloud.
Her tears were no gentle drops, but an angry storm of pas-
sion. The consciousness that she was alone made her throw off
all restraint; her sobs and cries startled a little brown squirrel,
who was dozing on the bough of a beech, and made the birds
flutter farther and farther away into the recesses of the wood.
Presently the fit of sobbing passed, and she lay quiet from
very exhaustion. She ceased to think of her troubles, and of the
wrong that Lizzie had done her; she could hear the sighing of
the breeze in the trees, and she watched the feathery top of her
great larch swing slowly against the deep blue of the sky.
That sky was so pure and calm and beautiful! It seemed to
smile down at Rhoda lying there, to smile and whisper some-
thing about “Peace.” What was it the child had once heard
about Peace? She could not remember; it must have been long
ago that some one had told her about voices in the sky which
sang of “Peace on earth.” Ah, yes! it was the Christmas song
of the angels; but that was in the Bible, and did not seem real
at all. Besides, it was not Christmas now, but the hot sum-
mer time—the school-treat day. And, sorrowfully, the child-
ish thoughts came back to herself, and the world that lay just
outside the quiet wood, beyond the tall grass-stems and the
foxgloves.
A voice made her start.
“Hullo!” it said, “what are you doing here, my little maid?”
 Chapter 2

IN THE WOOD

ith a violent start Rhoda sat up. A man, dressed

in rough fustian garments, with a thick stick
in his hand, and a dog following closely at his
heels, was standing near her. A bush of reddish
hair came from below his fur cap, his face was
dark from exposure to sun and rain, and an ill-
kept beard hid his mouth and chin; but his eyes
were kindly, and so was his voice.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Nothing, sir,” Rhoda answered, getting on to her feet, and
feeling very much ashamed.
“Rather a queer place to do nothing in,” he said; “but I
expect you’ve been setting a trap to catch rheumatism, haven’t
you? Well, it is my business to prevent any traps being set in
these woods; so, my maid, you had best run away home.”
“I—I haven’t been setting traps,” stammered Rhoda, in a
mystified tone.
“Never mind,” he said kindly, “you have got into trouble,
anyhow; you have about cried your poor little eyes out, I see.
Would you like to come down and let my wife comfort you
up a bit? I’m one of Sir John Winter’s under gamekeepers, and
18 NOBODY CARES

I live just over yonder.”

“No,” answered Rhoda, “I can’t go with you, I must find
Reuben.” Then, thinking she had spoken rudely, she added,
“Thank you.”
“Who’s Reuben?” asked the man, turning to walk by her
side along the narrow path through the trees.
“My brother; he has nobody but me, you know; and I
couldn’t find him, though I was looking for him ever so long
before I came out here.”
“Was that what made you cry?” he said.
“No.”
“Well, whatever it was, don’t fret about it. Time enough to
be unhappy when you grow old; children ought always to be
merry,” said the gamekeeper.
“Ought they?” she said doubtfully.
“For certain they should; that’s what they are made for; like
the birds, and the pretty dumb creatures that live out in the
woods with nobody to look after them but God. There, hark
at that mavis! Don’t you think he must be happy, to sing like
that? And watch those gnats whizzing and whirling under that
nut-tree; they only live one day, I fancy, but they are happy
enough, it appears.”
Rhoda looked up in her companion’s face. “Ah, but they
have no one to cheat them, and they are not told that they
are stupid and naughty, and—and—” Poor Rhoda paused; the
troubles of her little life were too deep for her simple words to
express. How could she tell her new friend all the half-compre-
hended things which made her life a sorrowful one? She was
only a child, and knew she was unhappy, but to say why she
was so was beyond her power.
“Ah, well,” said the gamekeeper, “the wild things have their
bothers too, I’m sure. They don’t like to be cold and hungry, and
 IN THE WOOD 19

they don’t like bloodthirsty martins and foxes prowling round;

they find a hard battle of it betimes, I dare say; but the good God
looks to them, spite of all, and they are merry—ay, they are!”
He stood still, for they had reached the edge of the wood,
and he held back the blossoming boughs of broom for her to
pass through.
“Do you know your way now?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” she replied, pointing towards where the chimneys
of the hall showed above the trees; “I’m going there; it’s the
school-treat day.”
“So ’tis. Well, my maid, good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” she answered, looking up to meet the light of
his kind eyes. And she smiled, and repeated, “Good-bye.”
She looked back before she had gone many yards, but the
broom, with its burden of golden flowers, had fallen together
again, and her friend had disappeared.
The glad shouts of the children came down through the air;
the sun was stooping westward through a gleaming purple haze;
the birds had aroused themselves from their mid-day rest, and
were beginning to sing their thousand songs from every shrub
and tree. Rhoda’s lips still wore the smile which had come there
in answer to the gamekeeper’s look and words. Her sorrows
were almost forgotten; she was thinking of the wild creatures he
talked of, “who have nobody to look after them but God”; who
were merry although they were sometimes hungry, and cold,
and frightened, and wounded.
She reached the grounds of the hall, and slipped amongst
the school-children unnoticed. Almost the first figure she saw
was Reuben’s, his eyes bandaged, groping about in the game of
blind-man’s buff; she ran towards him, and he caught her frock,
making with his fingers the sign which he always used to signify
his sister.
20 NOBODY CARES

Groping about in the game of blind-man’s buff.

 IN THE WOOD 21

Rhoda joined in the sport, and Reuben followed her about

as joyously as a young lamb who had found its mother.
“Who is that child?” asked Lady Winter of the
schoolmistress.
“Her name is Rhoda Leigh, my lady,” was the reply. “She
is a new girl, a niece of Mrs. Warren. That boy is her brother,
and he’s deaf and dumb.”
“Ah, I thought their faces were strange to me,” Lady Winter
said.
“They have only been in this part of the country for a short
time,” the schoolmistress continued. “They are orphans, and
Mrs. Warren has taken them for charity.”
“Poor children!” murmured Lady Winter pityingly; and she
turned to glance at her own two little girls, who were skipping
about the lawn. The contrast between them and the “orphans
taken in for charity” was very great; it made her feel yet more
for Rhoda and Reuben Leigh.
Lizzie Warren was standing near, and Lady Winter beck-
oned to her. The bailiff ’s daughter was rather a favorite at the
hall; her quick ways, her neat sewing, and her teacher’s praises
had won her good opinions; she was proud of her place as head
of her class, but that pride easily passed itself off as intelligence
and a wish to excel in her studies. She certainly knew how to
make the best of herself in the eyes of others.
Lady Winter asked her about her cousins, and she answered
readily that they had been left without any means of support,
and that her mother had brought them home “for the present.”
“My uncle was lost at sea, and he had not saved a penny,”
said Lizzie; “my aunt, who had always had ill-health, died last
year. She was always a poor thing, mother says, and neglected
her children shamefully.”
The Leighs truly had a neglected air, and Lizzie’s words
22 NOBODY CARES

might be true enough. A simple story, but a very dreary one

it seemed to Lady Winter, as she stood there in the comfort
and the tranquil happiness of her own sunny life, and looked
out from its harmony and blessings to those desolate young
things—too young, almost, to know how desolate they were.
She knew a little of her bailiff ’s wife, and fancied that that
timid-looking child could hardly find it easy and pleasant to
live as a dependant on her bounty. Mrs. Warren was a model
housewife, cleanly, shrewd, direct, and truthful; but Lady
Winter knew by instinct that she could also be sharp and hard,
perhaps even cruel, to any defenceless thing which was within
her power. Lizzie, too—it was easy to believe that the head of
the village school was not always so smiling as she appeared at
that moment.
“Something must be done for those two,” thought Lady
Winter. “The boy, at any rate, must be got into an asylum. I
must talk to John about it.”
The mistress of Woodlands fully intended to see about
helping the Leighs, but there was a great deal to draw off her
attention just then. There was the singing to listen to, the
speeches to hear, and there were her own friends to entertain;
and when the school-treat was over, when the children had
gone, and the soft, still twilight had fallen over the gardens,
Lady Winter had quite forgotten all about the matter.
 Chapter 3

BROKEN CHINA

izzie had not been much mistaken when she called

her Aunt Leigh “a poor thing.” Rhoda’s mother
had been ailing for years; she would sit by the fire
resting her aching head upon her hands, starting
at every noise, and shrinking from every breath of
air. She could not teach her little ones, nor take any
interest in them; she paid a neighbor to do the house-
work and the necessary sewing; and as for the chil-
dren, they early learned to take care of themselves.
Her husband had been able to supply money enough “to
keep things together,” as he said; he was a steady, kind-hearted
man, who loved his sickly wife dearly. He had sailed for a long
time in a vessel in the New Zealand trade, and his “spells of
home-time” were short, and his children knew very little of
their father. When the news came that the Puffin had gone
down with all hands on board, they were told they should
see him no more, and they cried a little, but more because of
their mother’s grief than from any feeling of their own. On
the widow the blow fell heavily. She had no strength to bear
it, and day by day she grew weaker, and her wan face paler and
thinner.
24 NOBODY CARES

Then the end came. Mrs. Leigh died, and the neighbors
wondered what Rhoda and Reuben would do. The few things
belonging to them were sold; the proceeds paid all debts and
expenses, but there was nothing over.
“There is the workhouse,” suggested the grocer’s wife, who
had feared that her own bill would not have been settled.
“Or perhaps the girl could go out to service,” said Mrs.
Brown, the charwoman.
“Service, nonsense! a mite of a thing like her!” said Mr.
Brown, who stood by; “you will be for sending out babies as
servants next. Why, Rhoda Leigh could not black my boots!”
“Then they must go to the workhouse,” responded the gro-
cer’s wife, “or else they will starve. Poor little souls! there is no
help for it!”
“What is the workhouse?” asked Rhoda, rising from her
stool in the corner, where she had overheard this conversation,
and appearing suddenly before the neighbors’ startled eyes.
“Oh, it is a place where you will be taken care of,” said Mrs.
Brown hesitatingly.
But Rhoda looked anxiously from one to the other.
“Are we to go away? Must we starve, Reuben and me?” she
asked piteously.
They said what they could to comfort her, and tried to
make her believe that folks could be very happy in the work-
house; but the words she had heard had thoroughly frightened
her. They had had but a doleful life, those two children; yet
the future in the workhouse seemed full of unknown horrors.
Whatever it might be, they were not to endure it then, for
their aunt, Mrs. Warren, heard of her sister’s death, and wrote
for Rhoda and Reuben to come to Woodlands. So Mrs. Brown
and the grocer’s wife felt quite relieved; they had been very
sorry for the orphans, and it was a pleasure to know that they
 BROKEN CHINA 25

had somebody belonging to them who was able and willing to

take charge of them.
Rhoda wondered sometimes if she should have found the
mysterious workhouse harder to bear than her new home.
Her mother had never interfered with her; she and Reuben
had amused themselves much as they chose; and if nobody
taught them or cared for them, at least nobody found fault
with them. At Woodlands it was different. It was “Rhoda,
come here!” “Rhoda, do this!” all day long. Sometimes Mrs.
Warren would scold and storm outright, but oftener she would
make Rhoda’s eyes grow yet more frightened by such remarks
as, “Those who won’t work shouldn’t eat”; or, “Whatever is to
become of you two, I can’t think.”
It was the day after the school-treat, and Warren and all the
farm-hands were busy with the hay-carrying.
Rhoda was indoors, wearily rubbing away at the great tin
dish-covers, which it was the pride of her aunt’s heart to keep
as bright as polishing could make them. It was baking-day, the
kitchen was very hot, and filled with the steamy odor of new
bread; the little girl looked longingly out of the window; it was
hard to have to be indoors such weather, but she must stay to
“mind the house” until somebody else came in.
She could hear the rumble of the wagons as they passed
into the rick-yard, and the voices of the men calling to their
horses; she left the dish-covers unfinished, and climbed on the
broad window-seat, wishing that she might loiter away the
afternoon among the fragrant hay. Surely somebody would
come in soon and set her free!
She had sat there idly for about a quarter of an hour when
she heard a sound in the parlor which made her start. It was a
loud crash like breaking glass or china. Who could be there?
She stood in silent dismay, and then she heard a window close,
26 NOBODY CARES

and quick footsteps patter away down the gravel walk.

The “parlor” was a sacred place in Mrs. Warren’s house; it
was seldom entered except by the mistress herself, armed with
brushes and dusters. Big portraits of the bailiff’s father and
mother hung solemn on the walls; a shade, with a cluster of
waxen flowers, stood upon a side-table; white floor cloths pro-
tected the carpet from being soiled by boot-marks or faded by
the sun. The door was opposite the kitchen, and the windows
looked out on the other side of the house.
Rhoda felt very much alarmed. The thought of robbers
entered her little head, and she glanced around with the notion
of hiding herself. But if there had been danger it seemed to
have passed, for not a sound broke the stillness of the house.
Presently a cricket chirped from beneath the fireplace, and
Rover, the old spaniel, turned slowly round on the hearth-rug.
He had pricked up his ears at the noise of that crash, but evi-
dently he did not think it could have been caused by robbers,
for he had not taken the trouble to rise from his nap.
Rhoda’s terror was a little calmed by seeing the dog’s indif-
ference. If Rover was quiet and content, it was not possible
that strangers could be in the house. Softly she went out into
the passage; no one was there. The front door stood widely
open, but the door of the parlor was shut. Everything looked
so much as usual that the child felt her courage coming back;
she crossed the passage, and boldly entered the other room.
The sun came with a subdued light through the drawn
blinds; the portraits looked down on her, grave and grim as
ever; the wax flowers bloomed unchanged beneath their glass
shade; but Rhoda stood aghast as she saw the wreck of a china
bowl lying on the carpet.
This bowl was the chief glory of Mrs. Warren’s heart; it had
been her grandmother’s, and her grandmother’s grandmother’s,
 BROKEN CHINA 27

for anything she knew to the contrary, as she often said. It was
very large, and bright with gold and delicately painted lines of
purple and scarlet; valuable as a specimen of china to any one,
but priceless in Mrs. Warren’s eyes.
It had stood enthroned upon an old bureau filled with
drawers; and evidently some person, in hastily dragging one of
these drawers open, had knocked the bowl upon the floor by
accident. The side window was unfastened; it must have been
through this that the mischief-worker had entered and escaped
again. Who could it have been?
Down on her knees went Rhoda to examine the broken bits,
to see if there was any possibility of the bowl being mended.
Clever fingers might perhaps join all those pieces together
again, but it would be a difficult job; and Rhoda knew that
her aunt would never care for it now, were it mended ever so
deftly.
A quick tread came across the yard and entered the passage.
It was the bailiff. As he came towards the kitchen he noticed
the open door of the parlor, and the next instant saw Rhoda
with the shattered bowl in her hands.
William Warren was a man of but few words; he had a great
opinion of his wife’s cleverness, and never interfered with her
in any way. He had been quite willing that she should bring
her dead sister’s orphan children home to Woodlands, and he
was kind to them in his slow, distant way. They were not equal
to his Lizzie, of course, he thought; but then, poor things, they
had had a grievous upbringing. It was a pity poor Reuben was
afflicted, and it was a pity that Rhoda had that dazed, shifting
look; but a little country air, and draughts of good pure milk,
would do wonders for them both.
So he thought when he thought about them at all, and
meanwhile Rhoda felt him to be as much a stranger as any one
28 NOBODY CARES

of the ploughmen who came on Friday nights to receive their

week’s wage.
“What have you done?” he said sternly, looking down on
her as she knelt there by the bits of glittering china. “Have you
broken grandmother’s bowl?”
“No,” said Rhoda, getting upon her feet; “I found it
smashed, just as it is now!”
“Found it smashed!” he echoed; “and who smashed it?”
“I don’t know!”
“Look here, Rhoda,” said Warren, “it was a careless thing,
and an unfortunate thing to break an article that is as much set
store by as that bowl was; but it is downright wicked to tell lies
about it. Confess it bravely, and meet your scolding bravely—
that’s all you can do now; and, believe me, you will find it a
better plan than trying to patch up an ill deed with lies.”
The child’s face grew crimson—crimson with guilt, it
appeared to Warren. “I didn’t break it,” she murmured, almost
in a whisper.
He looked at her with more sorrow than anger. “Very well;
take your own way,” he said. And then he walked off into the
kitchen to get the whetstone he had come up to the house to
fetch; and presently Rhoda heard him cross the yard again on
his way to the ricks.
She crept back to her dish-covers, feeling bewildered and
stupid, almost as though somebody had struck her and stunned
her by the blow. Of course, she had not broken the bowl, but
her Uncle Warren thought her obstinate and wicked because
she had not said she did. Oh, what would become of her when
her aunt came in!
She rubbed away at the tin, not quite knowing what she was
about. Old Rover snored on the rug. Happy Rover! Nobody
was going to scold and punish him.
 BROKEN CHINA 29

How strange it was that in this moment of her fear her

thoughts should fly back to the larch wood where the fox-
gloves reared their graceful bells, and the gnats played in the
shade. “No one to look to the wild creatures but God,” the
gamekeeper had said, “and yet they are happy, in spite of hun-
ger and cold and pain.”
“Should ever she be happy?” she wondered.
 Chapter 4

PERHAPS IT WAS LIZZIE

rs. Warren’s anger at the loss of her bowl was

greater even than Rhoda had thought it would
be.
She was not surprised that the child denied
having done it, for she thought it was natural to
children to tell lies—to girls especially. Her daugh-
ter Lizzie had no particular love for truth and how
could Rhoda, with her bad rearing, be expected to
confess? It was the actual loss which made Mrs. Warren half
beside herself with rage.
“Be off to your room!” she cried, when she had scolded
herself hoarse. “Out of my sight, for I feel as if I could not keep
my hands off you!” and she moved her fingers, as though they
were coming the next moment in a ringing slap upon poor
Rhoda’s ears.
“Gently, gently, wife,” said Warren, himself seizing Rhoda
by the arm, and drawing her out of reach. “The child deserves
punishment, and she shall have it; but not when wild blood
is up.”
“Let her be off, then!” said Mrs. Warren again. “The lit-
tle viper, to serve me so! me, who took her in and fed her,
32 NOBODY CARES

little thinking how I should rue the day she ever entered these
doors.”
“But,” said the shivering Rhoda, “indeed, indeed I did not
do it!”
Her aunt only answered by a kind of snort, but Warren
repeated the question he had asked before, “If you did not,
who did?”
“Somebody who came through the window,” sobbed
Rhoda. “I heard the footsteps running on the gravel.”
“A likely story!” said Mrs. Warren. “Who would come
through the window on purpose to smash my grandmother’s
china, I’d like to know! You’ll say it was Lizzie next, I sup-
pose; for she is the only one I saw near the front garden this
afternoon.”
A light broke over the tear-stained little face.
“Perhaps—” she stammered.
“Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps it was Lizzie.”
Even the bailiff ’s brows grew dark at this audacious
suggestion.
“A daughter of mine would hardly sneak away and leave
another to be blamed for her doings,” he said. “Your aunt is
right, you’d better go off to your bedchamber.”
So, glad to be released, she ran up to the attic in the roof
where she usually slept, and throwing herself full length on the
floor, wept, but not in the passionate way she had sobbed and
moaned in the shelter of the larch-trees.
There was anger in her grief then, there was despair now. It
seemed so hard that none should believe her—that this trouble
should come for no fault of hers. If it really had been Lizzie
whose footsteps she had heard, was it probable that she would
come forward and acknowledge it? Rhoda thought of the
 PERHAPS IT WAS LIZZIE 33

school-treat races, and the way her cousin had gained the scar-
let tippet; and her good sense told her that it was very unlikely
indeed that Lizzie would own to anything, the blame of which
she could let another bear.
No, there was no help for it!
After a while the servant girl came up to the attic, which
she shared with Rhoda, to tie on a clean apron. She had been
in the hay-field all the afternoon, and had heard nothing of the
accident. She was accustomed to see the orphan in tears, for
Rhoda Leigh was a silly little thing, in her opinion, and “cried
if you did anything more than look at her.” Yet Ellen Sims was
not hard-hearted, and she tried to give some words of comfort
as she bustled about the room.
“Come down and have a cup o’ tea,” she said; “the heat is
fairly enough to upset anybody.”
“I may not go down,” replied Rhoda, “and I don’t want to
either. The big bowl is broken, and they say I did it.”
“The big bowl in the parlor!” exclaimed Ellen, stand-
ing with a hair-brush suspended above her rough head.
“My—gracious—me!”
She tried no more to comfort Rhoda. She knew too well
what her mistress’s wrath must be. She went to prepare tea
without another word.
Reuben was the next visitor to the attic. He came creep-
ing up to look for his sister, with a strange look of fear on
his face. She noticed it at once, even in the midst of her own
grief.
“Oh, Reuben, what is it?” she asked, her hands making
rapid signs as her lips uttered the words.
He crouched down beside her, and then, in the sign-
language which she understood so well, he told her that
some terrible thing had happened—that he had broken
34 NOBODY CARES

something—that he was in fear and trembling lest his deed

should be discovered.
Rhoda jumped to her feet.
“Reuben, Reuben! was it grandmother’s bowl? Was it you
who broke grandmother’s bowl?”
She asked the question with eyes and fingers, and her heart
sank as she saw his token of assent.
Then it was Reuben who had entered by the side window;
Reuben who had meddled with the drawers of the bureau;
Reuben whose clumsy hand had thrown the china on the
floor. Poor Rhoda! in her distress at finding this out she wished
that it had really been herself who had done the mischief. She
could bear Aunt Warren’s anger and her Uncle’s grave looks
better than Reuben could. She had always been accustomed
to watch over her brother; she had always tried to shield him
from all grief and harm. She must watch over and shield him
still. No one must ever know that it was he who had done it.
He saw her troubled look, and he clung more closely to
her side as he explained how he had wanted some whipcord,
and remembering that there was some in the drawers of that
old bureau, he had entered the parlor to get it. In his haste he
had flung down the precious bowl, and then, appalled by the
sight of the ruin he had caused, he turned and fled.
She forgot her own disgrace as she soothed him, and
stroked down his hair with her little feverish fingers. It was
evening now, and the rooks came homeward across the sky
in noisy groups. The shadows were lengthening over the
meadows—bare and tawny-colored meadows where the
mowers had passed. On the roof two grey pigeons stood coo-
ing softly to one another, and stretching their shining necks
till the pale light fell back from the feathers in tints of purple
and green.
 PERHAPS IT WAS LIZZIE 35

An hour afterwards the rooks were silent in the chestnut-

trees; the pigeons had crept back to their nest long ago; the
evening star had begun to shine in the sky where daylight was
fading.
Ellen Sims came up to the attic, and found the children
asleep.
 Chapter 5

LADY WINTER’S OFFER

izzie,” said Mrs. Warren, “did you go into the par-

lor this afternoon?”
“Me? No, I didn’t. Why?” said Lizzie, in evi-
dent amazement.
“There’s been damage done there, and Rhoda
wishes to lay it on you,” answered Mrs. Warren.
When Lizzie heard the whole story, her indig-
nation knew no bounds. “The idea of putting the
blame on me! I wonder she is not ashamed, the meddling
thing!” she said. And many more like hard words she used
about her absent cousin.
“Send her away, mother,” she said at last.
“Where to? No, no, Lizzie. She must stay here till she is old
enough for service, and after all she is my sister’s child; but one
thing I’m determined on—I’ll cure her of telling lies!”
Life for Rhoda was very miserable the rest of that hot sum-
mer time. She was treated as an ungrateful culprit, and Lizzie
took no pains to conceal her dislike. She could not forgive
Rhoda for trying to fix the breakage of the china bowl upon
her.
The bailiff shook his head when he met the poor child’s
38 NOBODY CARES

wistful glance; and as for Mrs. Warren, her mode of curing the
vice of telling lies was a very unpleasant thing to undergo.
Slowly it dawned upon Reuben that his sister was being
blamed for his misdeed, and he meditated in his little head
what he could do to set things straight. To bravely confess to
his aunt that it was he who had done the mischief was beyond
his courage, but yet he could not bear to see Rhoda suffer.
They kept out of the house as much as they could; the
school hours were spent out of sight and sound of their aunt’s
shrill tones and sharp looks; but even here the story of the china
bowl had been repeated, and the girls in the class said they
thought Rhoda very sly and ill-natured to have behaved so.
On Sundays the three children went to school, both morn-
ing and afternoon. Lizzie was in the first class, and took great
pains to learn her Scripture lesson perfectly, and to answer
as many questions as she could. Lady Winter often took this
class, and Lizzie generally sat at the end of the form next to her
ladyship, and strove hard to earn approval and praise.
Rhoda had never learned any Scripture at all; indeed, she
could hardly read; she had never learned much in Plymouth;
her mother had been too ill to care about it, and the child
shirked going to school as much as she possibly could. So now
at Woodlands she sat in one of the lower classes, silent and shy.
One of the rector’s daughters, a girl scarcely older than her-
self, was her teacher, and she thought Rhoda Leigh the most
stupid child in the room. Her lessons were never learned by
heart; she could not repeat any hymns, and if she knew a text
of Scripture she was too timid to say it aloud. So after a few
Sundays poor Rhoda was passed over, and she sat amongst the
little ones almost unnoticed.
Reuben could learn nothing in the Sunday school. His
affliction made it needful for him to be taught in the peculiar
 LADY WINTER’S OFFER 39

manner used for the deaf and dumb. But he came to school
partly because Rhoda did, and partly because it was an amuse-
ment for him.
In church the school-children sat in a gallery at the west
end, apart from the congregation, and they kept their seats
until the rest of the people had gone. One Sunday, as Rhoda
was coming through the churchyard, lingering for Reuben to
join her, she noticed Lady Winter standing talking to her aunt
at the little hand-gate leading to the park.
“I will write and make inquiries at once,” she was saying.
“I’m much obliged to you, I’m sure, my lady,” Mrs. Warren
replied. “It is time the boy was taught to earn his own living,
if such a thing is possible; and learning comes easier to folks
when they are young.”
“Yes. I fully intended to have spoken to you about him
before,” Lady Winter said. “I think I have more interest in the
—— Institution than in any of the country ones; so if we are
successful he will have to go to London.”
“There he is!” cried Mrs. Warren, catching sight of Reuben
coming out of the church-porch with the other boys. “Rhoda,
bring your brother here.”
Rhoda obeyed; laying her hand on Reuben’s shoulder, she
brought him close to where they were standing, and the dumb
boy, as he had been taught, doffed his cap to the mistress of
Woodlands.
Lady Winter looked at him with kind pity. It was useless to
speak to him, so she turned to Rhoda.
“You would like your brother to be taught to read and
write, and to do useful things with his hands, I am sure, my
dear,” she said.
“Must he go to London to learn?” asked Rhoda, forgetting
to be civil in her anxiety.
40 NOBODY CARES

“Rhoda!” cried her aunt severely.

But she did not heed, her eyes were fixed imploringly on
Lady Winter’s face.
“I hope we shall be able to send him to London,” Lady
Winter replied; “and, my dear child, it will be a very good
thing for him indeed; you ought to be very glad.”
“And may I go too?” said Rhoda earnestly. “Please, ma’am,
let me go.”
“Such nonsense!” said Mrs. Warren angrily; but Lady
Winter spoke more kindly than ever.
“I don’t think you could go with him,” she said. “You must
try to be happy without him, and remember how nice it will
be for him to grow up a clever, useful boy; and learning-time
will soon be over, and then you will have the pleasure of being
together again.”
Rhoda turned to Reuben, and her hand tightened its hold
on his shoulder. “He cannot go without me,” she said, in a low,
measured tone. “He has no one but me.”
The boy looked from one face to another. He could not
hear what they had said, but he knew that they were speaking
of him; and he saw that Rhoda was troubled. He put his arm
round her with a quick movement, as if to protect her. Poor
child! how weak he was, how unable to do anything for Rhoda
but love her!
Lady Winter was touched at the sight of the affection they
had for each other. Not so their aunt. “It will be a good thing
to part them, my lady,” she said, “for, though I am sorry to
have to say it, Rhoda don’t teach him much good. There, take
yourselves off home!” she continued, giving the children a
slight push. “Run off; but before you go, thank her ladyship
for thinking about you at all.”
Rhoda curtseyed as she was bid, and turned away; but
 LADY WINTER’S OFFER 41

Lady Winter caught the look which was in her eyes, and
noticed its fierce determination. It was plain that Rhoda would
not tamely submit to be parted from her brother.
The memory of that child’s face remained with Lady
Winter for a long time. She scarcely attended to the rest of Mrs.
Warren’s fluent discourse, and as soon as that good woman
had left her, she slowly walked up through the park to the hall,
thinking as she walked about Rhoda and Reuben.
She remembered the day of the school-treat, and her res-
olution then to do something for the desolate children. She
blamed herself that she had let the time slip by without that
“something” being done.
The letter of inquiry should be written tomorrow, she
thought to herself; and if Reuben went to London she resolved
to try and brighten his sister’s lot a little bit. The poor child
looked sadly neglected, as if every one’s hand was against her.
Lady Winter wondered if she had ever been told of the blessed
Savior, Christ Jesus, who took children within His arms with
holy words of love. Had anybody ever been kind to Rhoda
Leigh for His dear sake, poor little stray, homeless lamb as she
was?
He loved her, although He was the Son of God, now far
above the world, beside His Father’s throne. He loved her,
although she did not know it, and perhaps would hardly care
to know it, for they called her stupid and hardened; but, what-
ever she might be, the Savior cared for her, had lived and died
for her, and for His sake she should no longer be left to be
unhappy, ignorant, and forlorn.
There must be a way to that dark little heart, and Lady
Winter resolved to find it.
 Chapter 6

STEPHEN GILMORE

hoda managed to tell Reuben the meaning of

what she had heard. He understood her indig-
nant signs perfectly, and his gentle, grey eyes
lit up with pleasure, as she held him tight,
exclaiming with hands and lips, “You shall not
go; you shall not, Reuben! It is bad enough to
be among strangers together; what would it be
alone!”
But, in spite of the children’s resolve that nothing should
part them, they soon saw that the Warrens took it for granted
that Reuben was to go to London immediately. The bailiff said
it was a capital chance for the boy, and would be the making of
him. Mrs. Warren repeated over and over again what a blessing
it was that Reuben should be taught something at last, and if
he had any sense at all in his head he might be able to pick up
a trade, so as not to be a burden on his friends all his life.
Lizzie had disliked Rhoda ever since the day of the break-
age of the bowl, and it was from a desire to tease her cousin
that she constantly talked of London, and what Reuben would
see there, asking what sort of places institutions for the deaf
and dumb were, and if people were kept shut up in them as
44 NOBODY CARES

they were in prisons. “I saw a mad asylum once,” said Lizzie,

in a careless tone, “and it looked just like a jail.”
Rhoda quivered with anger as she listened, but she began
to think that if it was decided that Reuben was to be torn from
her, she should have no power to keep him at Woodlands, and
she should have still less power to follow him.
“London is so far away,” she thought drearily. “I could
never get there by myself, and if I did I could not climb over
walls which Lizzie says are like a prison.” But she said nothing
of her thoughts to Reuben.
They were sauntering along the lane one evening looking
at the blackberries, which were turning from green to red, and
from red to black, and watching the white moths which came
fluttering from the hedges to beat their downy wings through
the air. They perceived a figure advancing to meet them—a
figure clad in loose garments and tight gaiters, and bearing a
gun over its shoulder. With a glad cry Rhoda recognized her
friend of the larch wood.
He, too, knew her again, and stopped as he reached them.
“Well, my little maid,” he said, “have you been telling your
troubles to the trees since I saw you?”
“No,” answered Rhoda shyly, feeling pleased to hear again
the kind tones of his voice.
“Because you have no trouble to tell, I hope?” he said.
“Oh yes, indeed I have—plenty; more than I had that
time,” she exclaimed. “You said ——”
“What did I say? Is this your brother?”
“Yes, and he’s deaf and dumb, and they’re going to take
him away from me!” faltered Rhoda, looking as though she
was going to cry.
“Deaf and dumb, is he?” said the gamekeeper, holding out
his brown and horny hand to Reuben. “That is a sad case.
 STEPHEN GILMORE 45

And why are they going to take him away?”

“To send him to a ’sylum,” replied Rhoda; “and Lizzie says
it’s like a jail; and he’ll never do without me, I am sure, for
nobody can talk to him, and nobody can know what he means
but me.”
The gamekeeper gazed down at the eager little face which
was uplifted to his. “My dear,” he said, very softly, “be sure that
the good God will manage for him, and care for him better
than ever you could do.”
Rhoda was mystified; her mind could not grasp that
thought.
“You said something about the birds and the flies being
happy because God looked after them,” she said slowly. “Will
God look after Reuben too, do you mean?”
“Yes, I mean just that same thing!” cried the gamekeeper.
“Heaven is a good way over our heads, but the care of God can
reach down here to every bit of a thing which He has made.
He knows about you and your brother, bless ye! better than
you do yourselves, and He would like nothing better than to
take you into His good care, and make you as happy as all the
creatures are that trust to Him.”
The homely words came like a new thing to Rhoda’s ears.
She had heard of God, and the Savior Christ, but the story of
the Gospel had hitherto passed above her head; she neither
knew nor cared anything about it. It was a wonderful notion
that a Being in the far-away heaven would stoop to think about
her and Reuben!
“But,” she said, “if God can make us happy, why doesn’t
He, sir?”
“Did ever you ask Him?” responded the gamekeeper.
“No, I don’t know how.”
“ ’Tis mighty easy. He can heed the smallest whisper that
46 NOBODY CARES

comes straight from a body’s heart. You just talk to the good
God as you’d talk to your father, and try if you aren’t the hap-
pier for it.”
“Rhoda, Rhoda!” called a voice in the distance, “mother
says if you don’t come in you will get no supper this night!”
“It is Lizzie,” said Rhoda; “we must go.”
“You’re Mrs. Warren’s niece, be’ant you?” said her friend.
“You must come down to see my old woman and me; would
you like it?”
Like it! indeed Rhoda would like it! Although the twilight
was growing dim he could read her answer in her face.
“Well, well, I’ll see about it; run in to supper now.
Good-night.”
He shouldered his gun, and strode rapidly away down the
lane. The children stood gazing after him.
“Rhoda!” called Lizzie again, “wherever have you got to?”
She sighed. Ah, it was very well to think about being happy;
but how could she ever be happy with Lizzie Warren’s sharp
tongue and “superior” manner always making her feel what a
“stupid, useless little girl Rhoda Leigh is?” How could she be
happy if they took away her brother—the only thing in all the
world that cared for her?
The gamekeeper took his way to his cottage, which was at
the other side of the park. His name was Stephen Gilmore, a
man who had served the Winters since he was a lad old enough
to run on errands, and strong enough to carry buckets of water
to the horses. He was a man of fifty now, grey streaks mingled
with his red hair, and he had almost forgotten the old stable-
lore, for he had deserted the horses long ago for the keeper’s
gun and dogs.
His first meeting with Rhoda had interested him very
much. He had made inquiries about her, and found out where
 STEPHEN GILMORE 47

she lived and whom she belonged to. “Poor little bird!” he said
to himself, “ ’tis a sorrowful thing to see the like of her sobbing
fit to break her heart.”
He thought of her often afterwards, and fully intended
making some errand to the bailiffs house to see her again;
but he hesitated a little, for he knew by experience that Mrs.
Warren was not one to be interfered with causelessly. He was
glad, therefore, to meet her in the lane; and her distress at the
idea of parting with her afflicted brother made him resolve to
brave the chance of her aunt’s anger, and ask permission for
her and Reuben to come and spend the day at his cottage.
No little children made his hearthstone noisy with their
play. He and his wife were alone in their home. Years ago a fair-
haired, laughing baby had tottered about upon the floor, and
pulled the honeysuckles from the wall with its chubby fingers;
but when the cold, dark days came the blue eyes grew dull and
heavy, and the firm white limbs limp and languid, and instead
of rippling laughter came a low wailing of pain.
On Christmas morning, when the bells were ringing
from the tower of Woodlands Church, and the neighbors
were exchanging hearty greetings, and wishing each other joy,
Stephen Gilmore and his wife stood by the side of their dar-
ling’s bed, and saw the light of life fade out from that tiny face.
And from that day they were alone in their childless home.
Perhaps it was the remembrance of that short life, the
knowledge that God was keeping his child for him safe from
all earthly trouble and toil, which caused Stephen Gilmore’s
rough voice to grow so gentle when he talked to the children,
and his heart to be so pitiful when he witnessed their tears.
“They will find the ills of the world heavy enough when
they are bigger,” he would say. “Let us help them to be happy
while they’re young.”
 Chapter 7

REUBEN’S DEPARTURE

ady Winter’s interest was sufficient to get Reuben

into the institution. She came down from the hall
herself to tell Mrs. Warren that his name had been
entered there, and that he must be ready to start
for London the first of the coming month.
It was September now, and all over the uplands
the reapers were cutting the yellow, rustling corn.
Reuben was pleased to be out in the fields, helping
to bind the sheaves, filling his hands with Scarlet poppies and
the brilliant blue blossoms of the corn-flowers; and his sister
lingered near him with a sharp pain at her little heart—in a
few days the wheat would all be carried off the lands it had
made golden by its stately growth, the flowers would all be
trampled and faded, and Reuben would be far away!
She knew it now; it was useless for her to fight against
power which was stronger than she could be. If Lady Winter
and her aunt said he must go, why she supposed he must, and
there was no more to be said.
She watched Mrs. Warren put his wardrobe in order,
and even took a brief pleasure in seeing the two strong
suits of clothes—very grand they were, in the children’s
50 NOBODY CARES

opinion—which had been sent home for Reuben. Mrs. Warren

had given her two or three pocket-handkerchiefs to hem, of a
deep crimson-and-black pattern; but poor Rhoda was always
very bad at her needle, and the hemming got on so slowly
and so unevenly that Lizzie took the handkerchiefs out of her
hands and finished them. Rhoda hardly knew whether she was
angry or grateful when she saw them duly completed, with
rows of white stitches with which even Mrs. Warren could find
no fault. Of course it was kind of Lizzie to do them, and to
take so much pains; but, oh dear! she thought she should have
liked Reuben to use her work, even if it was uneven.
The boy himself was pleased to think he was going to
London to become a wise man some day! He did not want
to leave Rhoda, for he was affectionate, and loved his sister
dearly; but he was not so old as she, and the idea of a change
was delightful to him; besides, it was not in his nature to feel
things as keenly as Rhoda did.
The first of October came, and Rhoda stood in the yard
watching the boy harness the bay mare which was to take her
brother to the station. The small box was lifted up into the gig;
then Warren himself came out and looked the harness over, as
was his usual prudent custom. His stable-helper was not fit to
be trusted to buckle the straps properly—at least so the bailiff
thought.
Reuben’s great coat was buttoned up to his chin, and in his
pocket was a thick packet of sandwiches cut by his aunt’s rapid
fingers.
Lizzie had gone to school. Rhoda had a holiday that she
might see her brother off.
So she stood there watching it all, listening to her aunt’s
words of direction to the bailiff, who was to take Reuben all
the way to London, by Lady Winter’s express desire.
 REUBEN’S DEPARTURE 51

“Rhoda!”
“Yes, aunt.”
“Come, bid him ‘good-bye’ now, for it is time they were
off.”
So Rhoda pressed her cold lips again and again to Reuben’s
sobbing ones, soothing him meanwhile with her loving touch,
wiping off his tears, and managing to smile at him when he
had been hoisted to his seat in the old yellow gig.
Then Warren climbed up too, and took the reins. The bay
mare lay back her ears, and started with a rush, as she always
did; and the gig and her uncle and Reuben all disappeared
from Rhoda’s straining eyes.
“She bears it better than I thought for,” said Mrs. Warren
to herself. “Here, Rhoda,” she added aloud, “hurry round, and
help Ellen wash up. Nothing like a bit of bustle to keep a body
from feeling lonely.”
The child obeyed; she dried the plates which Ellen Sims
rinsed through the steaming water, and then she helped the
servant to fold and damp a large basket of linen ready for the
morrow, which was ironing-day.
Ellen talked to her cheerily meanwhile, and even her aunt’s
sharp voice was kinder than usual. Rhoda might be a naughty
girl, and a stupid girl, but then it was but natural she should
grieve at being parted from Reuben for the first time, and Mrs.
Warren did her best to be good to her.
“I thought she’d take on ever so!” Mrs. Warren said to Ellen;
“and she hasn’t cried a tear. That child beats me! I can’t under-
stand her; sometimes she don’t show no more feeling than
that doorstep, and then again she’ll shiver and shriek from the
slightest word. She’s a little like her mother in that last; my
poor sister Liza wasn’t a bit like me, not a bit! To think of her
marrying that seafaring man Leigh, and then giving herself
52 NOBODY CARES

over to die by inches. No sense—nor energy, for that matter”;

and Mrs. Warren rubbed away at the mahogany table she was
dusting in a way which said a great deal for her own energy at
least.
Rhoda did not show any feeling because she had no feeling
to show. She seemed as if she was asleep, and would soon wake
up out of a bad dream. So she moved about the house, and did
as she was bid, and wondered why the sparrows were making
such a noise in the thatch.
Then as the evening came on her head ached painfully, and
her hands grew hot and dry, and she lay down on her bed in
the attic. She tried to think about Reuben, tried to fancy where
he was now, and what sort of people were near him; but, some-
how, she could not manage to think very well, even about her
brother. Then she fell asleep in earnest.
When she awoke the night had come, and through the
pale, grey square of the attic window she could see one bright
star, which shone and sparkled like a diamond in a robe of blue
velvet.
The star seemed to be looking straight down at Rhoda with
blinking, peaceful, kindly eyes. Queerly enough, it reminded
her of her friend Stephen Gilmore. She remembered his words,
“Heaven is a good way above our heads, but yet the care of
God can reach down here to every bit of a thing which He
has made. He knows all about you and your brother, and He
would like nothing better than to take you into His good care
and make you happy, as all the creatures are that trust in Him.”
The gamekeeper had said, “Did ever you ask God to make
you happy?” No, certainly Rhoda never had; she had knelt by
her bed sometimes, when she was not too tired, and repeated
a brief prayer, as she had seen Lizzie do; but it was merely a
meaningless form.
 REUBEN’S DEPARTURE 53

Would God hear her, poor little Rhoda Leigh, if she spoke
to Him? Would He, far away in His own grand heaven, stoop
down to listen to her foolish words? Would He really do for
her what she asked of Him? She would try.
She rose from her low bed, and, kneeling just where the
starlight fell upon her, she clasped her hands and said—
“O God, good and great God, please take care of Reuben.
Please make Reuben happy. And, if you have time, please make
me happy too.”
The child looked up with a sort of awe in her face, as if
she thought her simple prayer might perhaps win a sign from
the silent sky which spread across above the trees. But no; the
star shone down with the same uncertain gleam—there was no
sign for her!
“Did God hear that?” whispered Rhoda; “and if He did,
will He care to look after poor children like us?”
She knelt there for a minute more, and then, slowly
undressing, she lay down in her bed. The throbbing at her
forehead was quite gone, her sleep had done her good. “I won-
der if He will make us happy,” was her last thought that night;
“I hope He will!”
 Chapter 8

STEPHEN’S STORY

tephen Gilmore did not forget his promise of

inviting Rhoda to spend a day in the cottage on
the other side of the park.
Mrs. Gilmore stepped up to the bailiff ’s house
a few days after Reuben’s departure, for the pur-
pose of carrying the invitation.
Aunt Warren was in “a bit of a taking,” as she
herself phrased it, over some fine linen sheets which
had been scorched in the ironing, and poor Ellen Sims had
suspiciously red eyes, and Rhoda’s pale little face was paler
than usual when Mrs. Gilmore entered the kitchen. Lizzie was
folding up the damaged sheets, ostentatiously displaying the
yellow marks of the over-heated iron, shaking her head gravely
as she did so. She had had no hand in the mischief, therefore
she made the most of it. It was not an amiable thing to do, but
Lizzie Warren’s was not an amiable nature.
Mrs. Warren tossed her head when she heard on what
errand the gamekeeper’s wife had come.
“I’m sure I didn’t know that you had any acquaintance
with the child,” she said.
“It is Stephen,” explained Mrs. Gilmore. “He met her a
56 NOBODY CARES

time or two, and took a fancy to her, you see. If she could come
on Saturday—”
“Saturday’s a busy day,” objected Mrs. Warren grimly.
“Besides, I don’t hold with children getting a taste for gadding.”
Rhoda was sitting in a corner peeling potatoes; she had
ceased her work, and looked and listened with a half-smile
dawning on her lips while Mrs. Gilmore had been making her
request; but at her aunt’s words her head sank again, and she
wearily took up her knife.
The gamekeeper’s wife was a quick-sighted woman; she had
a ready wit, and a pitying heart; she noticed Rhoda’s mute ges-
ture of resignation, and she determined to have her way, and to
carry the child off for one long, peaceful, idle day, if she had to
invite Lizzie too.
“If you’d kindly spare your daughter as well, you could fix
the day most agreeable to yourself,” she said. “Certainly it is but
little we have in our cottage to amuse young girls, but Stephen
has a tame squirrel, and a talking starling, and one or two more
odd pets, which perhaps they would like to see; and I remem-
ber how clever your Lizzie is at her sewing—she would admire
to see a patchwork quilt as I have had given to me. She might
have the pattern, and any old bits of silk and print which you
may have would make up a quilt beautiful.”
This timely compliment worked wonders. Mrs. Warren’s
voice was much more gentle as she replied—
“Well, surely Lizzie can stitch as well as most of her age, and
she takes after me in the way she can catch up a pattern after
seeing it once. As you’re so civil as to ask them, I don’t know
whether it mayn’t come as easy to spare them on Saturday as
any other time. Cleaning is mostly finished up by Friday night,
and Ellen ’ll have to look a bit sharper, that’s all.”
She darted a look at Ellen which might sharpen up anybody,
 STEPHEN’S STORY 57

and turning to Rhoda, she bade her not to forget, but to be

ready to go with Lizzie to Mrs. Gilmore’s on Saturday.
There was small chance of the child forgetting!
“Let them come early,” said the gamekeeper’s wife. “I’ll
look for them somewhere about ten o’clock, and we shall have
a spell of time to ourselves before Stephen comes in from his
rounds.”
Rhoda was more excited and gladdened by the idea of going
to spend a day with her friend the gamekeeper than she had
been by anything since Reuben had left her. Often she thought
of him, and wondered if her prayer to the great far-off God
that night when her brother had gone had been heard. Would
Reuben be happy away in London? Would God remember to
make him so? Would He take care of the poor dumb boy now
that Rhoda could be with him no longer?
She missed him dreadfully. The days seemed long and dark;
it was no use hastening over her share of the housework, for if
she had a spare half-hour after all was done she had no one to
stroll with down the lane, or to wander with across the fields.
The hawthorns were reddening in the autumn sun, and the
berries were scarlet upon the wild-rose wreaths. Rhoda hardly
cared to look at them by herself. “How Reuben would have
delighted in them!” she thought; and the thought made her
sadder yet. It was very dreary to be alone.
To go to see the Gilmores would be nice. She should see
Stephen again, and perhaps he would tell her something about
the best way to speak to God; maybe he could say if her prayer
had been strong enough to reach beyond the sky to His throne.
Stephen seemed to know about God, and to talk about Him
as if He were something nearer and plainer to him than what
other folks deemed Him.
Stephen’s words had taught her more than all the lessons
58 NOBODY CARES

her outward ears had heard in the Sunday school; and it was to
Stephen that her puzzled mind turned now. Oh, it would be
nice to go to spend the day at the Gilmores’!
Lizzie was very disagreeable about it. She declared she did
not want to go; that it was sure to rain, and she did not see the
need of spoiling her new blue frock by wearing it for the sake
of such people as the under gamekeeper and his wife.
“Then go in your old frock,” said Rhoda, thinking that her
own raiment would be very old indeed.
But to this remark Lizzie vouchsafed no sort of reply.
Soon after ten o’clock on Saturday the two girls arrived at
Mrs. Gilmore’s door. The hearth was brushed clean, the table
spread with a snowy cloth, whereupon was a tall-necked bottle
of homemade wine, and a plate of seed cake.
The patchwork quilt lay folded on a chair ready for Lizzie’s
inspection, and on a wide window-seat stood sundry cages of
birds. Mrs. Gilmore had her hands full of chicken-weed and
groundsel and lettuce leaves, all of which was to form part of
her pets’ morning meal. She laid the greenstuff on the table as
she welcomed her visitors.
Rhoda looked round in vain for Stephen; she felt shy and
ill at ease, and gladly sheltered herself behind the unconcerned
Lizzie. Mrs. Gilmore, with ready tact, gave her something to
do, which at once made her feel at home.
“Will you feed the birds for me, dear?” she asked; “they
want cleaning up a bit, and they must have fresh water and
seed, and then these bits of green go in all over the cages to
make them look smart.”
Rhoda had never tended birds before; there were no such
things at her aunt’s house, for old Rover was the only pet that
Mrs. Warren had ever permitted. When she lived at Plymouth
she had seen a blackbird hanging in a wicker cage at a neighbor’s
 STEPHEN’S STORY 59

door, and watched him hopping discontentedly from one perch

to another. But the gamekeeper’s birds were very different
from that Plymouth blackbird. They were merry little things,
with bold, bright eyes, and saucy heads, which they cocked on
one side to stare at Rhoda. They knew she was a stranger, but
they were not a bit afraid of her, and presently one jumped
on her hand as she was arranging their canopy of green.
“Pretty thing!” said Mrs. Gilmore. “That is a diamond
sparrow, a foreign bird he is. Young Master Edward gave it to
Stephen as a keepsake when he went to school. Stephen is very
proud of it.”
“And this one?” asked Rhoda.
“Ah, that’s a common bird enough; it’s a linnet that got
its leg broke and its wing hurt somehow. Stephen found it in
the woods, and managed to cure it by care and time. He has a
wonderful way with him, has Stephen!”
Then Mrs. Gilmore marched Lizzie off to show her her
bantam pullets, and Rhoda remained alone by the cages chir-
ruping to their inmates, and trying to coax the diamond spar-
row to venture upon her hand again. He was very pretty, with
his scarlet and white patches upon his black satin suit, and his
bright eyes looked at her in a very friendly way; but she turned
from him to his unpretending neighbor, the linnet whose leg
had been broken.
It was merely a little brown bird, but it pressed up to the
side of the cage with a confidence which was touching to see.
It allowed Rhoda to stroke its tiny head and elegant neck as
if it knew that she too liked Stephen Gilmore—the man who
had cared for it, and tended it, and prolonged its innocent life.
The gamekeeper came in to his early dinner, and he wel-
comed his visitors heartily. Rhoda felt as if she had stepped
out into the sunshine when she felt his great firm hand close
60 NOBODY CARES

around her little fingers, and heard his kindly voice saying how
“right glad he was to see her.”
She was content to sit quietly at the table, eating her share
of the baked meat and potatoes, and letting Lizzie do most of
the talking.
“I’m to learn dressmaking, mother says,” remarked Lizzie,
towards the end of the meal; “and I am to go to Westhampton,
to be apprenticed there; it is always best to get a good start, and
to learn a thing well.”
“Yes, you are right there,” Mrs. Gilmore responded; and
her husband, turning to Rhoda, asked—
“And what are you going to do with yourself when you
grow a big lass?”
A bright flush rose over her neck, reaching up to the very
roots of her hair, as Lizzie answered for her—
“Rhoda? Oh, mother doesn’t know whatever is to become
of her; she must go out to service, of course; but mother thinks
she will never be fit for a place that is worth anything.”
“Wife,” said Stephen quickly, “when dinner’s done put on
thy bonnet and come through the Long Wood for a bit of a
walk. The girls will like it, I’ll be bound; and the dishes will
wait for washing up till ye get home again.”
Lizzie officiously helped Mrs. Gilmore to clear away the
dinner-things and pile up the dishes—which were to “wait”—
into orderly array; and Stephen took Rhoda into the little gar-
den to look at the bees.
The hives stood in the shelter of the cottage wall, well pro-
tected by the warm thatch of straw from the cold of the coming
winter. The summer’s work was over, and the bees were prepar-
ing for their life indoors; only a few of the stragglers buzzed
about the hives, and a murmuring within told of industry to
be continued only for a few weeks longer.
 STEPHEN’S STORY 61

As Stephen and Rhoda stood there in the garden they

heard through the open cottage window words which they
were never intended to hear.
Mrs. Gilmore was speaking: “Are you not rather hard on
your cousin?” she said.
“Hard on her?” repeated Lizzie’s voice, “hard on her? Oh,
you don’t know what she is! People say she is shy and quiet,
but it’s ‘nothing but slyness!’ ”
“Slyness!”
“Yes, she broke a valuable bowl which belonged to grand-
mother, and which was worth guineas and guineas—by acci-
dent—I dare say she didn’t mean to break it; but although she
was found with the bits in her very fingers she laid the blame
on me, and said I did it!”
What Mrs. Gilmore answered Rhoda did not hear, for
Stephen led her away from the window, along a narrow path
bordered with tall hollyhocks, towards a wooden seat which
stood at the end of the garden. He sat down upon this, and drew
her down beside him; and not until then did he look at her.
Her face was dull and wretched; but when she met his eyes
hers lighted up suddenly. At the bailiffs house no one believed
in her; besides, in this matter, by clearing herself she would
have to accuse Reuben. But she felt that Stephen would believe
her.
“I did not do it,” she said simply.
“Poor little maid!” he replied. “It is bad enough to be
blamed for what one does do, without having to bear the ill-
doings of other folks.”
“Ah, but I’d rather bear the blame of this, for”—and her
voice sank low—“for it was Reuben!”
“Did he break the basin?”
“Yes; but oh, please, please don’t tell Aunt Warren!”
62 NOBODY CARES

“Bless the child!” exclaimed the gamekeeper; “for what

should I tell her? But, my maid, did you lay the blame on your
cousin when you knew at the time it was your brother who
had done it?”
“No; I didn’t know who did it when I said it was Lizzie,”
she answered.
“That’s well. But you know now, so you’d better state it;
d’ye see?”
She shook her head as if she did not understand him.
“I mean,” he said, “that you ought to tell your aunt that
Reuben did it, for as you accused Lizzie you should right
Lizzie. Don’t cry, my dear. Cheer up; I don’t know all about it,
so I can’t speak much to comfort ye; but as I told you the other
day, God above knows, and He will make all come right.”
“Does He make everything right?” asked Rhoda, wiping
away the tears which had gathered in her eyes, and looking
wistfully at the hollyhocks waving to and fro their spears of
white and yellow and maroon-colored blooms.
“Well, I reckon He does in the end of all, though there
are plenty of things at this present time which are all wrong,
sure enough. But ’tis certain that never yet man, woman, nor
child asked Him to help them, and He shut His ears. He loves
all on earth; and it’s just them that love Him best that are the
happiest.”
“I asked God to take care of Reuben and me, and to make
us happy,” said Rhoda, in a low tone. “Do you think He did
hear?”
“Certainly He did,” the gamekeeper answered positively,
bringing his big hand down on the board beside him with a
force that made Rhoda start.
“And when will we be happy?” she said as she lifted her
grave eyes to his face.
 STEPHEN’S STORY 63

“Whenever you can feel that you love Him, child. You
needn’t wait a minute after that, for He loved you long ago.”
They sat silently for a while; and within doors Mrs.
Gilmore was displaying to Lizzie the contents of an old-fash-
ioned cabinet that had been given to her by a lady with whom
she had lived as housemaid. She knew that her husband was
making friends with the pale-faced little girl, and she wisely
kept Lizzie away, although the bailiff ’s clever daughter found
but little favor in her eyes.
“My maid,” said Stephen Gilmore presently, “I’ll tell you
a tale which I heard when I was a young man. I was heedless
and careless enough, going on my own way, neither thinking
myself better nor worse than other people, but forgetting that
there was a God on high who was looking down on me, and
waiting for me to seek His face, and serve Him out of gratitude
for all He had done for me. Well; the old missus, Sir John’s
mother, lived at the hall then, and I heard her talking to the
children one day—I was leading the donkey-chaise in which
she used to go about the park, and the children were walking
aside of her. ‘And,’ says she, ‘there were two little ones that
had a long journey to go. The way was a slippery and danger-
ous one, beside steep cliffs, and along the banks of dark, rapid
rivers. Well, the two children started. One was gay and light-
hearted; he trod fearlessly, singing as he went. By-and-by he
snatched at the flowers which grew in the hedges, and then he
burst out a-weeping because the thorns wounded his fingers.
He was asked if he would like to have a guide to show him the
road and to take care of him, but he refused. He thought it
would be easy enough to find the road, and he could take very
good care of himself.
“ ‘By-and-by he lost the path, and, stumbling amongst the
rocks, fell, bruised and wounded. “Never mind,” he cried, “I
64 NOBODY CARES

would rather please myself and act as I choose than submit to

be led by a guide. Even if I do get a fall or two, the pleasure
of roaming as I like is worth the pain of a few bruises.” So he
went on; turning aside sometimes to chase the butterflies and
the birds, stopping to watch straws and sticks floating down
the current of the river; reaching up to gather a kind of fruit
which grew in that country, which appeared quite lovely to
his eyes, but when he tasted it he found it dry as ashes, and
gritty as dust. He wandered on hour after hour, and then the
evening came, and he felt frightened to know that he was far,
far from home, and that darkness was coming and he was quite
alone. The night set in. There was no moonlight or starlight.
I do not know if in the darkness he slipped into the river, or
if he fell from some high rock and was dashed to pieces, but
he never reached his journey’s end, and the “welcome home”
which awaited him there.
“ ‘The other child looked at the dangerous way, and knew
he should not be able to tread it by himself. When one stepped
up to him and offered to be his guide, the child turned round
to him, and clasped his outstretched hand. This guide knew
the path perfectly, for he had trodden it himself before. He
softly lifted the child over the rough places, and warned him
of the dangerous spots; and he was so gentle and so strong
that the child felt quite content to be within his arms. Once
he gathered the flowers which grew by the path, and the sharp
thorns tore him as they had torn his brother; but his guide gave
him sweet roses to comfort him, and these roses had beautiful
names, such as “Love,” “Joy,” “Hope,” and “Peace.” And the
way, although long and rough and sorrowful, was yet made
sweet and bright through the care of that tender guide. And
when the evening fell, the child was safe at home.’ ”
Stephen Gilmore’s voice shook as he spoke the last words;
 STEPHEN’S STORY 65

perhaps he was thinking of his own little child who had been
carried in the Savior’s arms “safely home.”
“That is the story the old missis told; and I never forgot it,
dear. It seemed as if I was on just such a journey; that I had my
years of life to live, and that in my foolishness and ignorance
I should never find the path that leads to God. So what could
I do but turn to the Lord Jesus, who can show me how a man
should walk, for He has been a man Himself? And He died on
the cross for me, that I might be reconciled to God through
Him. And He can help and guide you, too, my maid, for He
remembers how He felt when He Himself was small and feeble
and stood at His mother’s knee.”
“Does He?” said Rhoda. “Then perhaps He will help
Reuben and me; for we don’t know anything about God, or
the path that leads to Him.”
Years afterwards Rhoda remembered that talk in the gar-
den, and Stephen’s rough face and gentle tones; she remem-
bered the sunlight on the hollyhocks, and the linnet singing
by the cottage window. And she remembered the plain, loving
words which told her about the Savior, the Lord Jesus, who
Himself has been a little child, and is the Savior even of little
children.
 Chapter 9

A LIFE’S LESSON

hen Lizzie and Rhoda returned from the

Gilmores’ cottage, they were surprised to hear
from Ellen Sims that her mistress was in bed.
“She’s been shaking and sick-like ever since
morning,” said Ellen; “so she says she will try to
sleep it off, and no one is to disturb her.”
The bailiff had gone to make preparations
for a cattle-show at Westhampton, where Sir John
Winter’s shorthorns were expected to take the first prizes, so
the girls sat down by the fire alone. Lizzie began to tell Ellen
about what she had seen and heard at the gamekeeper’s, and
Rhoda, after listening for a little time, crept away to her attic.
Her prayer that night was no faint cry, uttered on the chance
of its finding its way to the ears of the great God who lived
and reigned in distant glory beyond Rhoda’s sight and knowl-
edge—it had love and trust in it now, and it was whispered in
the name of Jesus.
The next day was Sunday, and long before the Woodlands
church-bells rang out their morning peal, Rhoda had come
downstairs to do the share of the housework which her aunt
always expected from her.
68 NOBODY CARES

“Mother’s very ill,” was Lizzie’s first speech; “whatever is to

be done?”
She said this more as an exclamation than with any thought
of asking advice; but Rhoda suggested that the doctor should
be sent for.
“Doctor, indeed!” responded Lizzie; “as if mother would let
a doctor come to worry her about! Put on your hood, Rhoda,
do, and run and ask Widow Smith to step round as soon as
she can.”
Widow Smith was the wise woman of the village. Most of
the inhabitants of Woodlands had sought her advice, and swal-
lowed her “herb drinks” at one time or another. She could cure
babies of the “thrush,” or grandfathers of “pains”; consequently,
everybody in Woodlands thought a great deal of Widow Smith,
and considered that the doctor from Westhampton himself
might learn a vast deal from her, if she only chose to teach him.
But Widow Smith, learned as she was, could make noth-
ing of Mrs. Warren’s illness. She shook her head dolefully, and
made the patient swallow a large cupful of stuff which was very
black and very hot.
“Light a fire in the bedroom, and keep her as warm as you
can,” she said; “and I’ll step up again in an hour or two. Put
another blanket over her, and keep the door close.”
Mrs. Warren was not very easy to manage. The three
girls had a hard time of it until Widow Smith returned. Mrs.
Warren kept ordering them to open the window, she flung off
her blankets, and objected so strongly to a fire, that although
Ellen Sims had brought wood, coals, and matches, she did not
dare to light it. When Widow Smith returned, her patient was
undoubtedly in a high fever.
Lizzie bustled in and out of her mother’s room, and, usurp-
ing her authority, ordered Ellen about, and scolded Rhoda so
 A LIFE’S LESSON 69

often that the child was glad when school-time came, and
Lizzie bade her “go, for she was no sort of use at home.”
She took her usual seat at the bottom of one of the lower
classes; her shabby black dress was the same as ever, her man-
ner as silent and shy, but Rhoda Leigh was not the same girl as
had sat in that place Sunday after Sunday through many by-
gone months. There was a light in her eyes—a look as if she
had come there for some purpose, and not merely because she
was obliged, or to pass away the hours.
A stranger addressed the children that afternoon. He was
a guest staying at the rectory, a tall, erect old man, with a sil-
very beard and bald head. He told them he was a soldier, and
had served the Queen in distant countries, and followed the
colors of his regiment to battle many a time. He said his day
was almost done, and his work almost over, but that as he was
at Woodlands, he thought he should like to speak to the chil-
dren, to tell them what his long life had taught him.
“I don’t expect you will take my experience,” he said;
“people always must read their lives’ lessons for themselves,
but mine may help you a little, perhaps. And it is this: we are
placed here in the world for a purpose, and, little and mean
as we are, it is a grand purpose too! We are placed here to do
God’s will. What is His will? That we should render Him glory
and praise, that we should lovingly serve Him as His children,
and should do happily and hopefully the work He has given us
to do. You, young things, have your work. Sin is around you,
and you ought to do your part in withstanding it; you ought
to help the cause of truth and uprightness, kindness and char-
ity. Sorrow and pain are around you; you ought to do your
share to cheer the grieving ones and soothe the suffering ones,
to bring smiles instead of sighs, and thanksgiving instead of
tears. You were not sent into the world to please yourselves.
70 NOBODY CARES

God intends you to be happy; but it is by loving Him and lov-

ing each other that you are most certain of being so. I am an
old man now, and I can truly say that the best and brightest
days in my life are those in which I have not tried to please
myself, but to please my Father in heaven. I have often forgot-
ten Him, often grieved Him and denied Him, but in spite of
all my wrongdoing, He loves me, and I am sure that He will
pardon my guilt and shortcoming for the sake of His blessed
Son, who loved me and gave Himself for me. You are sinful;
He died to be your Savior from sin. You are weak and igno-
rant; His Holy Spirit will make you strong and wise, humble
and holy and happy. You need God’s help to resist temptation,
and to overcome the evil of your own hearts; pray for grace to
help you in time of need, and pray in Christ’s name; He has
promised that you shall not pray in vain.
“Your path may be dark and rugged, but He will sustain
you till the end. You are young, and your life lies before you.
Don’t seek your own pleasure in some blind, silly way, but seek
to learn God’s will, and to do it. I know you will often find
the battle against sin very hard and terrible; you will perhaps
find your fellow-men very ungrateful and unkind; but don’t
despair. ‘God’s work hath sure wages.’ The lesson which my
life has taught me is simply this: I am only a sinful man, one
amongst many millions; but my Father in heaven loves me,
and the Savior never forgets me. Look out on your lives, dear
children; face them bravely and earnestly. They are not given
to you to waste, nor are they given you for your own pleasure
or profit. They are given you for God’s glory, to be used for
Him against His enemy—sin. The more you think of Him as
your loving Father in heaven, the more you will love Him, and
the more you love Him the happier you will be.”
The white-haired old gentleman ceased his little speech;
 A LIFE’S LESSON 71

and it seemed to Rhoda as if his glance rested upon her as he

uttered the last words. She sat there listening with an eager-
ness which showed itself in every line of the little face; a great
deal of what he said was quite plain enough even for her to
understand.
She was no longer the indifferent, stupid child whom the
rector’s daughter had thought it useless to try to teach. Rhoda
Leigh had an object now; she would try to find the path to
God; she would try to please Him who had loved her “long
ago.”
The address she had heard was exactly what she wanted.
She had her life to live, and she felt, in her dim, childish
fashion, she should never be happy in the cold, dark world
without some one to love her and care for her. Reuben was
gone; she had neither father nor mother, nor dear friends, to
smile when she was pleased and sigh when she was weeping.
Stephen Gilmore had told her of the great God who cared
about her, and of the tender Guide who was willing to lead her
to Himself, and now this old soldier spoke of being forgiven
for all wrong-doings, of being pardoned for forgetfulness and
for sin for the sake of Jesus Christ.
Rhoda was but a little child, and she did not understand
it all with her head; but she felt it in her heart, and the Good
Shepherd, who looks down upon His lambs, knew it, and was
satisfied.
 Chapter 10

WATCHING

rs. Warren was very ill indeed. The bailiff came

home, and, in spite of the general trust in Widow
Smith’s skill, he sent for the Westhampton
doctor.
This gentleman looked grave, and pro-
nounced it to be fever of a very bad kind. “She
must have a nurse,” he said.
“Widow Smith will stay,” said the poor bailiff,
who felt terribly alarmed, both by his wife’s ravings and the
doctor’s solemn face.
“No,” replied the doctor sharply; “that woman is of no use
at all. I must have somebody who will do as I order without
questioning or disputing. Widow Smith thinks she knows bet-
ter than I do, and she shall not nurse any case of mine.”
“I know of no one else,” said Warren, walking up and down
the parlor floor in his perplexity. “I must do the best I can, and
there’s the girl, and my daughter—I suppose, if there’s danger
of infection, the mischiefs done already?” he added, suddenly
breaking off in the midst of his sentence.
“Can’t say, I’m sure,” replied the doctor; “but it would be
safer for only one person to enter the room. You must see that
74 NOBODY CARES

sheets dipped in vinegar and water are hung over the door and
in the passage. Send your daughter to me and I’ll tell her about
it.”
Warren opened the parlor door and called in Lizzie. The
doctor looked surprised.
“I thought you were older, my dear,” he said; “but perhaps
you are old enough to attend to what I say.”
He proceeded to give her his directions; but he had not
said more than a few words when he stopped short and took
her hand in his. “Do you feel ill?” he asked.
“No—o,” gasped Lizzie, who was as white as her ruddy
face could possibly become. “But I heard you say mother had
the fever.”
“And you are afraid of catching it? Dear, dear, that will
never do! People who dread it run twice the risk, remember.
Go out of doors into the open air, and I will send you a drink
which will fortify you against it as much as a drink can do.”
He waited until Lizzie had left the room, and then he turned
to the bailiff. “Warren,” he said, “that child is useless, even if
she has not caught the infection already—which I half believe.
I will try to get you a nurse at Westhampton. Meantime you
must do the best you can. I will go up to your wife again before
I leave.”
Warren led the way upstairs. The shutters were partly
closed in his wife’s room, but there was light enough to see
Rhoda’s little figure standing by the bed holding a cup of milk
to the patient’s parched lips.
“Is this also your daughter?” asked the doctor.
“No,” replied Warren; “only a niece of my wife, and not of
much use at any time, least of all at a time like this.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said the doctor, who had seen
Rhoda’s quick look of grief at her uncle’s words. “You are not
 WATCHING 75

afraid of the fever?” he added, turning to the child.

“Afraid?” she repeated.
“Yes, afraid. You will stay here, and do what you can to
nurse Mrs. Warren until I send some one to take your place,
won’t you?”
“Indeed I will, sir!”
“Then listen to me. You see this bottle? You must pour out
a portion of the medicine in it into a glass; pour until you have
got down to one of these marks. Do you see? Then shake into
the glass a powder out of one of these papers, and let your aunt
drink it while it is fizzing. This you must do every four hours.
Remember she must take it. If she refuses, send for your uncle.
Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Rhoda.
“That is well. And now about food. Don’t worry her to
eat, but let her drink as much milk as ever she likes. Keep the
room cool, and don’t be alarmed at anything she may say. Do
not mind her words at all. She is too weak to know what she
means, and too weak to dispute even with a mite of a thing
like you.”
Much more did the doctor say; and Rhoda listened, with
her great grey eyes fixed on his face, to every word.
“But Lizzie—” she said at last.
“Lizzie won’t interfere with you; she won’t come into the
room at all. No one need come in but you and your uncle.
Now, good-bye; you are a courageous little thing, and may
make as good a nurse as a woman twice your size.”
The doctor did not find it so easy to get a nurse at
Westhampton; he had not heard of anybody willing to under-
take so bad a case when he came the next morning to see Mrs.
Warren. He found the fever higher than ever. The patient was
quite unconscious, and kept tossing restlessly about, beating
76 NOBODY CARES

her hot hands upon the bed, and muttering words which had
no connected meaning. Her husband was in great grief.
“Can you save her, sir?” he said.
“I hope so,” replied the doctor cheerily. “But the worst has
not come yet. How is your daughter?”
So Lizzie came to be examined. “You are all right as yet,”
the doctor said to her. “Nothing ailed you yesterday but fright.
Keep yourself busy, and don’t be afraid, if you can help it.”
“There’s no fear but she will be busy enough,” the bailiff
said, “for our girl, the only servant we keep, went off yesterday
to her own home. She said her parents would not let her stay.
Folks could not avoid us more if we had the plague!”
Rhoda had followed the doctor’s instructions exactly, and
he was very pleased with her. Her eyelids were swollen from
want of sleep, and her pale face looked weary; but she said she
could sit up again that night. “Indeed I can,” she urged. “It is
only to give the medicine, and try to keep her comfortable; I
am sure I can do very well.”
“I believe she will,” the doctor said admiringly. “I have seen
many grown persons with not half her patience or tact. Really
the way that mite manages Mrs. Warren is marvellous to see!”
But Rhoda was not put to the test of another night. Soon
after the doctor’s departure, Mrs. Gilmore knocked at the door
of the sick room, and without waiting for Rhoda to answer she
walked in.
“I have come to help you, dear,” she said; and then she
quietly removed her bonnet, and taking Rhoda’s hand made
her sit down and repeat the doctor’s directions. “I have been
accustomed to nursing,” she went on; “and when we heard that
your poor aunt had no one but you couple of children to look
to her, I said to Stephen that I would come up for the night-
watching now and then.”
 WATCHING 77

Warren felt greatly relieved. He was of very little use as a

nurse himself, and he could not help thinking that Rhoda was
quite unable to do what needed to be done. He thanked Mrs.
Gilmore with a voice made husky by his emotion.
“She’s been a good wife to me,” he said, “for nigh upon
eighteen years, and it goes hard to think I may lose her now.”
“You won’t lose her, Mr. Warren. Take heart! It is my belief
she will soon get the turn for the better. Doctors sometimes
make the worst of their cases, you know. Then if folks die it is
no blame to them, and if they get well all the more credit to
their skill. Don’t you see?”
Her cheerful tone made him call up an answering smile.
“You are a good woman, and a kind neighbor,” he said. “It is
not many who would dare to enter a fever-room like you. I
wonder your husband can allow you to do it.”
“Stephen? Oh, he is always willing to help anyone who
fears to see death enter the home. You know he has felt grief
himself.”
“Ay, ay; there is a brotherhood of sorrow sure enough,” said
the bailiff musingly.
Not that night alone, but for more than a week, did Mrs.
Gilmore watch by the fever-stricken woman; and during the
daytime Rhoda took her place. The child had grown wonder-
fully self-reliant and useful. She found that she was no longer
called stupid, no longer looked upon as a useless encumbrance.
Lizzie treated her much in the old manner, and was jealous of
her doings in the sick room; but Rhoda seemed somehow to
be lifted above the worry and the pain which Lizzie’s conduct
had often caused her.
Stephen’s story was constantly in her mind. She sat by her
aunt’s bed and busied herself with a hopeless-looking pile of
stockings which Lizzie had given her to darn. A short time
78 NOBODY CARES

since it would have been a great grievance to have had to draw

her needle slowly in and out of all those stitches; but now
she looked on it as a little bit of her “pathway,” which would
have to be travelled across. She did not like it certainly, but
Stephen had said there were many rocks and stony places in
“the child’s” journey, and it was just there that the Heavenly
Guide would draw near to lift the traveller in His strong and
tender arms.
“Seek to learn God’s will, and seek to do it,” the gentleman
at the Sunday school had said. And Rhoda had sought both to
know and to do. It appeared to be God’s will that she should be
active and helpful now, that she should quit her vague, child-
ish way of slipping through the days, and take upon her duties
which had hitherto been untouched and unknown.
Lizzie never came upstairs. She must not run into unnec-
essary danger of infection, the doctor had said, and she had
enough to do in cooking and cleaning in place of the faithless
Ellen Sims. So Rhoda did everything for her aunt, and saw no
one excepting her uncle and the doctor, until Mrs. Gilmore
came of an evening.
But she did not find it dreary.
Her aunt’s mind was wandering. She did not know whose
hands smoothed her pillow and bathed her hot forehead; she
did not recognize the meek little voice which tried to coax her
into quietness. Yet Rhoda was quite content. The bailiff came
upstairs constantly, but he spoke but rarely to the little nurse
who watched so untiringly at the bedside. It was not that he
was not grateful to her, and pleased at her attention to his sick
wife; but he was not much of a talker at the best of times, and
it never occurred to Rhoda to seek a word of praise from him.
She did not want praise. The thought that she was doing
rightly and bravely never entered her head. It was “God’s will,”
 WATCHING 79

and she often asked the dear Lord Jesus to show her how to
do it so as to please Him, and so as to bring her nearer to the
beautiful end which was to come for those who had taken His
helping hand.
She had learned to pray now. Heaven, the home of the great
and holy God, did not seem so very far beyond the stretch of
sky which sank away behind the autumnal trees. God was no
unknown word to her now, but a real Power, a real Love. His
Holy Spirit, unknown to herself, was working in her heart,
changing and renewing her whole nature. She was but a weak
and silly little child, but not more weak and silly than the birds
and the dumb creatures which God cared so much for. And
surely, if the Lord Jesus Himself would trouble to help her, and
comfort her, and teach her—surely there must be a reason why
Rhoda Leigh was precious in His eyes.
Reuben too. How constantly she thought of him! and the
prayers which she uttered were always full of his name.
That the Lord Jesus would lead Reuben, and help Reuben,
and show him the best path through the journey of his life; that
Reuben might be happy, and see that God cared very much for
him; that Reuben might learn to do God’s will—these things
were asked in Rhoda’s prayers more often than blessing and
help for herself.
When little babies first begin to talk and to understand
what is said to them, then they begin to learn. Day by day they
discover something new and strange. Day by day their minds
expand and improve, and they begin to live a life of reasoning,
which is a very different thing to the life they lived before. They
existed, and slept, and ate hitherto; now they have learned to
think, and to ask, and to hear.
Something like this change had come to Rhoda Leigh.
When once she had learned to speak to her Father in heaven,
80 NOBODY CARES

when once she had listened for His voice, her whole life was
altered. She was learning rapidly now.
Ay, she was learning what all the wisdom upon earth could
not teach her—to know the will of God, and to do it.
 Chapter 11

WHAT HAD COME TO THE CHILD?

s that you, Lizzie?”

It was Mrs. Warren who was speaking, but
no one would have recognized the voice for hers,
it was so faint and hesitating.
“No, aunt,” Rhoda answered timidly. “No,
aunt; Lizzie is downstairs.”
The invalid tried to raise herself upon her elbow,
but she was too weak, and she fell back helplessly
with a sigh which was almost a gasp for breath.
Rhoda put a glass of lemon-juice and water to her lips, and
then carefully arranged her pillows, so as to support her in the
most comfortable manner possible. Mrs. Warren looked at her
wonderingly. It seemed strange to her that Rhoda should be
capable of such dexterous and gentle tending.
“Have I been ill long?” she said presently.
“More than a week,” replied Rhoda, “and for almost the
whole time you have been wandering in your head. Are you
better now?” she added gently.
Mrs. Warren sighed impatiently. “I suppose I must be bet-
ter, since I know where I am,” she said wearily; “but I feel bad
enough. Will nobody come but you?”
82 NOBODY CARES

“The doctor will come this evening, and Uncle Warren

will be upstairs presently. But please, aunt, ought you to be
talking?”
Perhaps her weakness made Mrs. Warren more ready to
obey Rhoda’s gentle rule. She closed her eyes, and presently her
regular breathing showed she was in a natural sleep, very dif-
ferent from the feverish slumbers which had been her nearest
approach to rest.
Rhoda sat by, hardly daring to move for fear of disturbing
her. How delighted her uncle would be to know that the fever
was over, and that the poor suffering one had come to herself!
And Rhoda bent over her aunt’s pale face, and looked at the
thin lips and the blue-veined eyelids with a strange warmth
of love in her heart. The child had nursed the woman, had
tended her, and ministered to her, and she forgot all the harsh
words, and the sharp, quick ways which had terrified her in
the by-gone time, and she hung over her as fondly as if she had
never known anything but kindness in that house.
Mrs. Warren gained strength rapidly. Stephen Gilmore’s
wife had ceased to come at nights, but she often looked in for
an hour or so to see if there was anything in which she could
assist little Rhoda. She helped to lift Mrs. Warren into an easy
chair, where she could sit by the window and look out on the
trees, whose leaves were thinner and browner than when she
saw them last. Winter had made many strides since she had
been ill!
And Mrs. Gilmore helped Lizzie too. Clever as Lizzie
thought herself (and Lizzie was not entirely wrong, for clever
she certainly was), things were rather “at sixes and sevens”1
downstairs. Her mother had been such a famous manager, and
had used her own active hands to such good purpose, that
1 At sixes and sevens—to be in disorder.
 WHAT HAD COME TO THE CHILD? 83

there had not been much need for other people to exert their
thoughts or their strength. Now that she was laid aside, Lizzie
hardly knew how to keep the house bright and shining as it
used to be. She did not like to work all day in the scullery,
or over the washing-tub; preparing her lessons for school had
been a much pleasanter sort of thing. Besides, then she got
praise and approval—now it seemed that work as she might
nobody praised her, or thought a bit the better of her for her
efforts.
She was very glad for Mrs. Gilmore to come and help her
a bit. It was surprising to see how quickly the gamekeeper’s
wife could wash up the breakfast-things, and peel potatoes for
the dinner, and apples for the pies. It was wonderful to see
how daintily she would cook some little tempting dish for the
invalid, and serve it up on linen as white and spotless as Lady
Winter herself could have.
Mrs. Gilmore did these things and many more, and Lizzie
felt really grateful to her.
A few days more and Mrs. Warren was strong enough to
stand, and even to walk about for a few minutes together. The
doctor said Lizzie had better not go into her room yet, but that
Rhoda might be set free, and that now the close watching was
over, she might run about a little and enjoy herself.
“Enjoy herself?” Rhoda knew that never in all her brief life
had she been so happy as during that time in her aunt’s sick
room.
So true is it that happiness comes rather from within than
from without.
Late one evening Rhoda had assisted her aunt into bed,
and had built up a bright little fire in the grate; she had drawn
the white dimity curtains over the window, to shut out the
light, if they failed to deaden the sound of the rain which was
84 NOBODY CARES

splashing against the glass. Then she glanced round the room
to see if there was anything else she could do before going
downstairs to supper.
Mrs. Warren held out her hand.
“Stay a while, child,” she said; “stay a while, I want to talk
to you.”
Rhoda sat down obediently.
“You have been a good girl to me,” her aunt said, “a very
good girl, and shown sense and feeling which I never expected
from you. Why, if you can be like this, did you use to behave
so differently?”
But this question was more than Rhoda could answer. She
shook her brown head gravely, and did not speak.
“For you know, child,” Mrs. Warren went on, after a pause,
“you know you were very idle, and careless, and shiftless. You
got into furies of temper, too; and you told lies.”
This catalogue of her evil deeds fell sorrowfully on Rhoda’s
listening ears. Every word was true, and she knew it.
“Yes,” she murmured, “but the gentleman said that he was
wicked too, and yet God loved him, and pardoned him for the
sake of the Lord Jesus.”
“What gentleman?”
“It was the Sunday when you were first ill,” Rhoda replied.
“He spoke to the scholars at the school, and he said that.”
“But,” said Mrs. Warren, in a puzzled tone, “what that has
got to do with you I don’t see.”
“No,” answered the child, “but I think if God forgave him,
He will forgive me too. I am very bad, though,” she added,
hanging her head down till it was almost hidden from Mrs.
Warren’s eyes by the edge of the bed.
“No,” said her aunt, “you were bad enough, but now no
child on earth could be kinder or handier, and it is just that
 WHAT HAD COME TO THE CHILD? 85

change that makes me wonder at you. What is it that has

changed you, Rhoda?”
“I don’t know, only everything is different now. Somehow
nobody loved me; even Reuben forgot me sometimes; every-
thing seemed of a tangle; I couldn’t do a single thing well, it
was no use to try. But now—”
“Well, but now?” said Mrs. Warren, as Rhoda hesitated.
“Oh, now I found that I could get you things, and you
were kind to me, and seemed to like my being by. And besides,
I found out that God had been loving me all the time.”
She spoke in a low, awestruck tone, but Mrs. Warren
caught every word.
“What can you mean, child?” she questioned.
“Indeed it is true, Aunt Warren,” said Rhoda, lifting her
grey eyes to meet the invalid’s gaze. “God does love every-
body, and He loves even me, and He cares for me to tread on
through my path so as to get to heaven; Mr. Gilmore said so.
And He wishes me to learn what is His will, and He wishes
me to do it.”
Mrs. Warren was too astonished to speak. She could hardly
believe the evidence of her own ears. Here was little Rhoda
Leigh, poor dead Eliza’s child, the little stupid, shrinking,
“shy” thing, talking like the minister himself about God and
about heaven. What had come to the child? What had Stephen
Gilmore been saying to her? And could any words, either of
Stephen or of the gentleman at the Sunday school, bring such
a change in a few—a very few—short weeks?
Mrs. Warren lay silently wondering about it all, and Rhoda
paused for a minute, then she left the room and softly closed
the door.
But long after those words rang in the sick woman’s ears,
“God had been loving me all the time.” Could it be true?
86 NOBODY CARES

Was the knowledge of this enough to turn a timid, ignorant

child into the patient nurse, who had watched in that room
through so many weary hours? Yet it was a marvellous thing to
think of—that God could really love a pale-faced orphan chit
like that! The bailiff ’s wife had heard a great deal about the
love of God before now; she sat Sunday after Sunday in her
seat in Woodlands Church, and she knew plenty of texts, and
odds and ends of hymns which she had learnt long ago when
she was a girl. She had often listened to Lizzie reading aloud
from the books she got as school prizes—and perhaps there
were not many women in the parish, excepting the inmates of
the hall and of the rectory, who knew more about “religion”
than Mrs. Warren did. But what sort of religion was it?
It was a head-knowledge which never interfered with her
heart. It was a thing to put on once a week with her shiny black
alpaca dress and her Sunday bonnet. It never made her words
softer; it never stayed sharp scoldings or bitter reproaches. It
never made her humble, or forgiving, or self-forgetting. No;
Mrs. Warren’s religion, like that of many other people, was a
thing written about in her unread Bible, heard about in the
church on Sundays, and then left out of her daily life altogether.
She lay there in the silence and pondered over the child’s
sayings. The fever must have made her head queer, she fancied,
for she could not get over the impression of Rhoda’s grave little
face, and the quiet light which shone in her eyes as she said,
“Everything is different now; God loves even me.”
Could this indeed be so? Had the child entered on a path
where she, shrewd woman as she was, could not follow her?
Mrs. Warren had been very near the gates of death; she had
been raised by God’s mercy from the very edge of the grave, but
at first she had been raving in fever, and of late she had been
too weak to think much about anything. Now she was getting
 WHAT HAD COME TO THE CHILD? 87

better, she was about to resume her work, about to manage her
house again, to bustle about the kitchen and the dairy, to work
as she had been used to work before she had been ill. But what
use would it all be? Some years hence she would have to break
off again. She would be ill again, and they would carry a coffin
down to Woodlands Churchyard, and the place that had been
hers would know her no more. When that time came it would
not be much comfort to remember that no butter had been
firmer and sweeter than hers, that no boards were whiter, no
windows more brilliant than those at her house. These things,
over which her life was spent, would be very worthless to her
when that time came. Better, far better, that she should be able
to say, as Rhoda had said, “God loves even me.”
The love of God. She had heard of it often before, but the
words bore a meaning now which they had never borne hith-
erto. She knew what love was. She loved her only daughter very
dearly, although her sharp nature did not show much affection
outwardly, and she could fancy what it must be to have the
full, near, untiring love of a Being who must always be good,
watchful, and long-suffering. The world looked now to her as a
landscape looks in the grey gleam of the twilight, when the fair-
est flowers are dim, and the distant scene is veiled in the mists
which night has brought.
The love of God! It seemed to her that this love would be
as the daylight, the sunbeams, which could change the dark-
ness to glory—the dull, sad, useless monotony into light and
happiness.
Would ever it come to her?
Hard and cold she had always been, and busy about her
own affairs. She had been harsh to others, selfish and exacting.
What had such as she to do with God?
In her despair she turned her face to the pillow and groaned
88 NOBODY CARES

aloud. She had thought herself so just, so upright; she had

thought that her respectability and her thriftiness was beyond
that of any other housewife in Woodlands. She had been proud
of her house, proud of her management, proud of herself!—
and now? She remembered that she had read of righteousness
being as filthy rags. Her righteousness was just like that now.
She felt for the first time deep down in her heart the need of
that “blood which cleanseth from all sin.”
And the child she had despised and disliked, whose pres-
ence in the house had been a continual fret and worry to her—
she, silly little Rhoda Leigh, had spoken of the “tangle” having
been made straight—of learning God’s will, and of doing it.
 Chapter 12

AND LAST

ady Winter had had a letter from the Deaf and

Dumb Institution in London, and there was an
enclosure in it directed in uneven, odd-looking
writing to “Rhoda Leigh.”
The superintendent wrote in high terms of
Reuben. He was industrious, teachable, and amia-
ble, and he showed a great deal of intelligence. They
were teaching him the printing trade, and he was
getting on rapidly.
Lady Winter was very pleased; she sent Rhoda’s letter to
her with a little note from herself, to say how glad she was to
know that Reuben was well and happy, and adding that when
all danger of infection was over she intended to come herself
to see Mrs. Warren, and to talk over some plans she had in her
head for Rhoda.
Mrs. Warren sniffed a little contemptuously when she
heard that Lady Winter talked still of infection.
“There cannot be any risk now,” she said “why, I am better
than ever I was in my life.”
She was downstairs now, and almost as active as ever
she had been. “She got tired of nights,” she said; “but it was
90 NOBODY CARES

nothing, nothing at all.”

Yet there was a change in Mrs. Warren, which few could
fail to notice.
Her quick voice was harsh still, but the sting had died out
of her words; the sweeping blame which she had bestowed
upon all who differed from her in opinion or in action was
never heard now. Her manner to Lizzie was almost tender, and
she treated Rhoda with a sort of rough kindness which had in
it something pathetic.
Rhoda herself was changed too; her smile was bright, and
her face had lost its restless, wistful look. She did not creep
about in the way which Lizzie had called “sly”; she was confi-
dent, and busy too, after a fashion.
She was delighted with Reuben’s letter; it was the first she
had received in all her life. And then it was so clever of him
to write it so nicely, she thought—for those uneven characters
were quite beautiful in her eyes—and it was good to know that
he was happy away there in London.
She carried the sheet of paper up to her attic-room, and
read it over and over. The contents were brief enough—

“Dear Rhoda,
I hope you are quite well. I am. London is a big place, and
more busy than Plymouth. Did any more plums fall off the
tree at the end of the house, or did the rest get ripe? I shall
be glad to see you again. I am sorry I did not say that it was
me that broke the big bowl in the parlor; it is not fair that a
girl should be blamed for what a boy does. When I grow big I
mean to work for you. I am learning to set type for printing.
Sometimes I get tired, but I like to know how to work. We do
lessons every day. I like writing. I am quite happy here, and
I like to be here, but I would like it more if you could come.
 AND LAST 91

How is Rhoda?
“Dear Rhoda, I am
“Your affectionate brother,
“Reuben Leigh.”

That was all; yet to Rhoda no letter could have seemed

more eloquent or more beautiful. Her dear brother had not
forgotten her, he was happy, he thought of her and wished her
to be with him. What more could any letter on earth say to
please her than this?
She remembered the night when she had knelt in that very
room by her bed and prayed the unknown God to bless Reuben
and care for him. She remembered how she had wondered if
her prayer had reached to the throne of the great Power she
had addressed. Ah! she knew now that God always hears His
children’s prayers, and grants them abundantly when they are
according to His will.
The kind and good Father whom Stephen had told her
of had proved Himself kind and good to Rhoda and Reuben,
as well as to the wild things which lived in the woods where
the gamekeeper spent his days. It was true, quite true, that
the prayers of a little ignorant child could be acceptable in
God’s sight, and that He would send His light and love to
make bright and happy even such insignificant lives as those of
the dumb boy and his orphan sister.
“I will ask the Lord to guide Reuben on the road,” said
Rhoda, as she wrapped up her precious letter and smoothed its
folds flat with her hand; “I wish I could write out that beauti-
ful story which Mr. Gilmore told me for him to read! But I
never could, I’m sure. Perhaps the Lord will take him to His
care, and carry him just as safely even if he does not know it
now. I’ll ask Him.”
92 NOBODY CARES

And so she knelt, and in her childish fashion asked that her
brother might be borne in the arms of the Good Shepherd safe
to His blessed fold.
A step came up the narrow stairway which led to the attic,
and Rhoda rose to her feet hurriedly. It was Mrs. Warren who
entered; she brought some linen to place in the linen closet
which stood in that room.
“Why are you here?” she asked; “does anything ail you?”
“Oh no,” replied Rhoda, coloring a little; “I came here to
read my letter.”
“Ah, to be sure, Reuben’s letter. Let me see it”; and Mrs.
Warren held out her hand.
Rhoda quite forgot the reference to the broken bowl, and
to Reuben’s being the cause of that disaster; there were such
much pleasanter things written on that little sheet that she had
hardly thought about that sentence at all. Without a word she
gave her aunt the letter.
Mrs. Warren’s sight was not very good, and the prepara-
tions she made for reading that short note were interesting to
Rhoda. She first laid the piles of linen on the closet shelves,
and then she seated herself where the wintry light would fall
best upon the paper. She doubled her apron corner-wise across
her knees, smoothed her smooth hair yet smoother beneath
her cap, and, holding the letter at arm’s length, began to read it.
Suddenly she looked up.
“Is this true?” she demanded, in a tone which made the
color rush again into Rhoda’s face, so sharp and stern did it
sound.
“What, Aunt Warren?” she said; then, remembering the
allusion to the china, she added hurriedly, “Oh, don’t be angry
with him; he didn’t mean to do it!”
“Then it was Reuben who broke grandmother’s bowl?”
 AND LAST 93

said Mrs. Warren, staring hard at the downcast face before her.
Rhoda did not answer.
“And you bore the blame instead of him, eh? Can’t you
speak, child?”
“Yes,” said Rhoda.
Mrs. Warren’s look seemed very like admiration, as she
thought of the weak little creature who had bravely borne so
much to shield her brother. Then it changed suddenly, as she
remembered the explanation which Rhoda had given of the
accident.
“Why did you say that Lizzie had done it?” she asked
gravely. “Was it not very wicked and very lying to say any such
a thing?”
The tears rushed unbidden into Rhoda’s grey eyes.
“I didn’t know it was Reuben then,” she said pleadingly; “I
heard steps, and I thought it might have been Lizzie.”
It was Mrs. Warren’s turn to be silent. Was it indeed the
entire truth which she was hearing now? It had been a settled
thing in the house that Rhoda told lies, and Mrs. Warren’s
gratitude towards her, and new-born love for her, could not
quite uproot the feeling of distrust.
“Mr. Gilmore told me I ought to tell you all about it,”
Rhoda went on; “but—but I couldn’t.”
“Mr. Gilmore! What had he to do with it?”
“It was that day at his house when Lizzie went, and me.
Lizzie told about the basin; she said as how I’d laid the blame
on her, and she said I was sly, and told lies.”
“Well?”
“So I told Mr. Gilmore that it was Reuben,” continued
Rhoda, who was sobbing outright; “and he bade me tell you
and clear Lizzie, but I didn’t like to.”
“Clear Lizzie! Clear yourself, you mean. I never thought
94 NOBODY CARES

for a minute that it was Lizzie,” said Mrs. Warren.

“But I had said that perhaps it was her, you know,” Rhoda
murmured, in a voice which was only half audible.
Mrs. Warren got up from her chair.
“Well, the rights of the story are known now, I suppose.
Dry up your tears, child. If you are to blame for charging it on
Lizzie, I am a hundred times more to blame for charging it on
you. I spoke very hardly to you, and of you, about that broken
bowl, Rhoda; and I tell you now that I am very sorry for it.”
Rhoda glanced up, amazed. She had never heard her aunt
speak like that since she had come to Woodlands.
“You had better not stay up here in the cold,” Mrs. Warren
added presently. “There’s plenty to do downstairs.”
The words were not very gracious, but as the child turned
to leave the room her aunt put her hand on her shoulder and
stooped to kiss her.
* * * * *
“I say, Stephen, are you never coming in to tea?”
The speaker was Mrs. Gilmore, and she stood at her cot-
tage door calling to her husband, who was busy hammering,
and sawing, and screwing, in a small shed which was on the
other side of the garden.
“Coming, coming!” called back Stephen, in reply, “and
Rhoda Leigh is coming too, and that is one over and above
what you bargained for.”
“She is heartily welcome, though,” Mrs. Gilmore said, as
Rhoda emerged from the shed and followed the gamekeeper
into the house, “and the oftener she comes the more welcome
she will be.”
“I came to tell you my good news,” Rhoda exclaimed gaily.
“My brother is coming to see me.”
“You don’t say it! How good that will be for you both!”
 AND LAST 95

said Mrs. Gilmore, cordially entering into the girl’s joy. “How
long is it since you saw each other?”
“Three years—almost four,” answered Rhoda. “Reuben
won’t know me again, I am afraid.”
“Trust him for that,” remarked Stephen. “Folks don’t forget
so easily; nor other things either, for that matter. There is my
old starling Jacko there; I loaned him to a friend of mine in
Westhampton, and he was away for seven months, but he was
right glad to get back to home and to me. Weren’t you, Jacko,
boy?”
The bird hopped up to its master, and bobbed its little
speckled head knowingly.
Rhoda laughed, and took her seat at the tea-table.
She had some excuse for thinking that her brother would
hardly recognize her when he saw her again. It was difficult to
believe that the tall, well-built girl who sat in Stephen Gilmore’s
cottage, with the evening sunlight falling on her happy face,
could be the same being whom he had once found sobbing in
the larch wood. Her eyes had lost their pained, wistful look;
her mouth was a soft curve of happy lines which seemed to
need but slight excuse to break into a smile.
Rhoda Leigh had been called “an ugly little thing.” No one
would venture to call her that now. If she was not beautiful,
she was very pleasant to look upon, and her sweet face was
alight with a look which was better far than mere beauty.
She had something of the timid, shy manner left still; but
here, with her friends the Gilmores, she was as gay and natural
as a squirrel in its native woods.
Her home was at the hall now. Lady Winter had taken her
as under nursery-maid, but she had lately been promoted to
wait on the young ladies exclusively. She had learned to set
stitches more evenly than the clever Lizzie herself, and could
96 NOBODY CARES

even undertake the mysteries of “cutting-out,” with a little

help from Mrs. Whitely, my lady’s own woman. She often
went down to the bailiff ’s house, and she liked to see the way
in which her aunt turned to her and leaned on her now. Mrs.
Warren’s words of kindness were scant as ever, but she “had not
been the same since that fever,” so the neighbors said, and they
were right. Since that time Mrs. Warren had discovered many
things, and the greatest of all was that she herself was a poor
helpless sinner, whose only trust for happiness, either in earth
or heaven, must be in the blood of Christ, which taketh away
the sins of the world.
Rhoda walked slowly back through the park that evening.
The air was filled with the drowsy song of the birds and the
hum of insects in the blossoming lime-trees. Sweet, rich scents
stole across the dewy grass, and in the sky a crescent moon
hung like a strip of silver.
“How beautiful the world is!” she thought. “God made it,
and saw that it was good. And to think that He cares for me—
for me. Oh, it is wonderful! If earth can be so fair, if I can be so
happy here, what will the fairness and the happiness of heaven
be like? Ah, Lord, shall I see it soon?”
Cousin Lily

BY

ELIZA COATES
 COUSIN LILY

argaret Leslie was an only child, and although her

parents had her a great deal with them, and did
all they could to make her happy, she could not
help wishing sometimes that she had a brother
or sister, or young companion of her own age to
play with. It is a lonely thing to be an only child
in a large country house, or indeed anywhere; and a
solemn thing too, calling for much care and watchful-
ness. They may be thought too much of, or be led into thinking
too much of themselves. But Mr. and Mrs. Leslie were earnest
and sincere Christians, and endeavored to do what was right.
Having no one else to play with, Margaret soon learned to
make friends with every living thing around the place. She fed
the birds, tended the flowers, played with the kitten, and was
one of the happiest children in the world. Nothing Margaret
liked better than to watch the bees, or that wonderful little
architect the garden spider, or to learn a lesson from some
industrious colony of ants. As soon as she was able to ride, her
papa bought her a beautiful little bay pony, which used to fol-
low her about like a dog wherever she went.
Whether it was because she took so much exercise, and was
102 ELIZA COATES

so constantly in the open air, I do not know; but Margaret was

singularly strong and healthy, and could not remember having
a day’s illness in her life. She did not know what illness was,
or suffer any thing beyond feeling a little tired at times when
she went to bed, which a good night’s rest never failed to cure.
How thankful Margaret ought to have been. How thank-
ful we all of us ought to be when this is the case; how tender
and kind towards those for whom sorrowful days and nights
are appointed. But I am afraid that it is not always so. We need
pain and sickness occasionally to make us sympathize with
others. Doubtless that is one of the reasons why God sends it.
We may be sure that he has a reason, and a good reason, for all
that he does, however painful it may appear to us at the time.
We cannot understand this while upon earth, but we shall
understand it in heaven. Meanwhile we must be content to be
still, and trust in the Lord, whatever he does, and to listen for
his loving voice saying unto us, “It is I; be not afraid.”
As Margaret grew older, she found plenty of employment
among the poor and sick and aged; and what with her studies,
and her light household duties, the days seemed all too short
for what she had to do. Mrs. Leslie was not only her daugh-
ter’s instructress, but her friend and companion. Happy child,
where such is the case.
About the period of which we write, Mrs. Leslie had
undertaken the charge of a sister’s child, who had been sent
over from India on account of her declining health, but not,
it was feared, until it had become too late. Her name was Lily;
and a little, white, drooping lily she did indeed appear. She was
not only ill, but very fretful and impatient, the one being in all
probability partly the consequence of the other. Sickness and
suffering are hard trials for a little child, or indeed for any one
who has never learned where to go for strength to bear their
 COUSIN LILY 103

heavy burden aright: not but what Lily had been taught these
things by her parents; but then she was so young and weak,
and they so far away now, and she needed some one to remind
her of them.
Margaret having, as we have said, no brothers or sisters
of her own to love, grew much attached to her cousin; but
not knowing anything about illness herself, she had little sym-
pathy with that of others, and frequently rebuked when she
ought rather to have soothed the poor weary child. She used
to tell her that it was no wonder she looked so pale, remaining
indoors all day as she did; it was enough to make any one pale.
If she would only exert herself, and run and jump about in the
fresh air, she would soon be strong and well. It was in vain that
poor Lily declared she had no strength to run and jump about;
Margaret persisted in affirming that she was sure she could, if
she would only try.
She told her that the languor of which she complained was
merely the effect of her residing for so many years in the ener-
vating climate of India; she had heard others say the same, and
that the sooner she exerted herself and endeavored to shake it
off the better. It was easy for Margaret to talk thus in the pride
of her own health and strength; but poor Lily found it hard
to bear. It was no wonder that she did not always bear it well.
Sickness and suffering, as we have before said, and perhaps
the way in which children are almost unavoidably brought up
in India, had not tended to improve a naturally violent temper.
Nevertheless Lily was generous hearted and affectionate, and
really did try to cure herself of her faults, and pray too that
God would help her to be good and patient for Jesus Christ’s
sake. But no one knew it for a long time, save that loving and
compassionate Savior to whom the poor child seemed to have
clung for shelter amid all her weakness and shortcomings—the
104 ELIZA COATES

great Rock in a weary land: and when did any one ever cling
to him in vain?
Months passed away. Margaret grew accustomed to the
sight of the pale face and large, heavy eyes, and the sound of
that low, complaining voice. It is wonderful how those who
are much with a sick person grow accustomed to what at first
seems painful and distressing to witness, especially when the
sickness is of long continuance. We seem to think that it can
go on thus forever; and when the end comes, suddenly per-
haps at last, we are sorry for it, and wish that we had done
more for them, and been kinder to them, while they were
with us.
Margaret was the only one who did not perceive how
the little delicate Lily faded day by day, becoming gradually
weaker and weaker, until she was at length entirely confined to
the couch in their pleasant sitting room, where Mr. Leslie used
to bring her down every morning in his arms; and how little
prospect there was that she would ever be strong again. But
even Margaret could not help perceiving and declaring that
she really did think that Lily was growing better tempered; and
Lily confessed, with a deep crimson flush upon her thin cheek,
that she had been trying for a long time, but she was afraid she
had not made much progress. Upon which Margaret kissed
her, and called her her own dear, good little cousin. It may be
that she thought in her heart, although she forbore to say so,
that the poor child had not really made much progress after
all. But she did not know how difficult it was. It is easy for the
healthy and happy to be good-tempered, especially when, like
Margaret, they have nothing to try them.
One day—Margaret never forgot that day as long as she
lived—she came into the sitting room with her bonnet and
shawl on, and a little basket in her hand containing a bunch of
 COUSIN LILY 105

fine grapes, which she was about to take to one of her father’s
parishioners who had been seriously ill.
“What beautiful grapes,” exclaimed Lily, raising herself
with difficulty from the couch, and looking wistfully at them.
“I think I never saw finer.”
Margaret lifted up the bunch and held it before her. It cer-
tainly did look very tempting.
“I am going to take it to poor Hannah Brown,” said she.
“Does Hannah know about it? Has she seen them?” asked
Lily eagerly.
“Of course not. How should she? I have only just had them
given to me. I intend it as a surprise for her.”
“Oh, Margaret dear, I wish that you would let me have
them,” pleaded the little invalid. “Do give them to me, please.
I should like them so much.”
“But you are not ill, that is, not very ill, as she is,” added
Margaret.
“Yes, I am,” replied Lily earnestly. “You can ask my aunt
if you do not believe me. I heard Dr. Hastings tell her yester-
day that I was very ill, and that he feared I should not be here
much longer. I do not think they intended me to overhear
what was said; but the door was half open, so that I could not
help doing so.”
“Nonsense, child,” exclaimed Margaret. “You must have
been dreaming.”
“No, I was not dreaming. It is quite true, cousin Margaret,
indeed it is. Wont you give me the grapes?”
“Surely you would not take them from poor Hannah?”
“But she does not know about it; she will not be disap-
pointed,” persisted Lily.
Margaret shook off the thin, burning hand which sought
to detain her; and putting the fruit back again into the basket,
106 ELIZA COATES

Margaret lifted up the bunch of grapes.

 COUSIN LILY 107

turned impatiently away without another word. She heard

Lily’s low pleading voice calling after her as she went out,
“Oh, Margaret, my mouth is so parched. If you would only
give me one or two of the grapes—Hannah would not miss
one or two. Oh, Margaret, dear Margaret!”
But her cousin never turned back.
It so happened that the poor woman for whom the grapes
were intended had had a relapse, and was too ill to touch them
after all. Margaret thought of Lily; but she did not like to take
them away again after Hannah had seen them, so they were
left to spoil perhaps, or be eaten by those who did not need
them. Margaret wished now that she had let Lily have them
when she asked her. Oh, how she wished it a few hours after-
wards, when, on returning home from her district, she heard
that the poor child had been taken suddenly ill during her
absence, and was not expected to live.
Silent and conscience-stricken, Margaret crept in and stood
unnoticed by the bedside of her dying cousin, the little fading
Lily. She was, lying quite still, with her large dark eyes wide
open, looking straight before her, but seeing nothing. And
so she lay for two weary days and nights, the parched lips of
which she had complained occasionally moistened with wine
and water, but not able to swallow. They were the longest days
and nights that Margaret had ever known. On the third day
she said to her mother,
“Mamma, I think I know what would do poor Lily good. I
do believe that she would eat some grapes. She was asking for
them just before she was taken so ill.”
Margaret did not tell her mother any more then. She had
trouble enough, she thought, without that; but she told her all
afterwards.
Mrs. Leslie shook her head sadly.
108 ELIZA COATES

“May I fetch her some, dear mamma? May I try? Do let

me try.”
Her mother told her that she might if she pleased. She felt
that it would be a comfort to Margaret to know that she was
doing something, and was glad of any excuse that took her for
a time from that close chamber into the fresh air.
There were no grapes to be procured in the neighborhood,
and Margaret had upwards of two miles to walk before she
reached the house of the kind friend who had previously given
her some. It seemed to be double that distance in her impa-
tience. The fruit was readily bestowed, especially when the
owner understood for whom it was intended.
Poor Margaret scarcely waited to thank her, so anxious
was she to reach home with her treasure. What if it should
be too late! What if cousin Lily should be dead! What if she
should die without recognizing, without forgiving her! What
if she should have been the cause of hastening her death by
her unkindness; for Margaret had not ventured to inquire into
any of the particulars of that sudden illness. As she approached
the house she scarcely dared to look up, for fear of seeing the
shutters closed. But no, the windows were still open, with the
white muslin curtains fluttering in the breeze.
There was no one in the way when Margaret entered. She
went straight to her own chamber, and fastening the door, sunk
upon her knees and prayed as she had never prayed before,
confessing her sins, and asking forgiveness for Christ’s sake—
“for Christ’s sake.” Oh, the unspeakable comfort of those three
words, that all-prevailing plea.
“If the Lord would only restore Lily to life,” she said, “how
differently she would treat her in future. Nay, if he would only
restore her to consciousness, that she might get her forgiveness:
she did not deserve it, she deserved nothing but punishment;
 COUSIN LILY 109

she dared not ask it; she dared not ask anything save for Christ’s
sake.”
Margaret rose up refreshed and strengthened, and went
into Lily’s room with the grapes in her hand. While she was
praying a change had come over the invalid. The large dark
eyes were still open, but no longer fixed on vacancy, and their
restless glance fell upon the fruit as her cousin once more held
it temptingly before her.
“It is for you, dearest,” whispered Margaret in a faltering
voice. “Are they not beautiful? Wont you try and eat some?”
A faint smile flitted for a moment over the face of the dying
child as she pointed feebly to her mouth, that poor parched
mouth. She was too weak to do more.
Margaret knelt down by the bedside and fed her with them,
pressing out the cool, delicious juice. She ate them eagerly at
first, but was soon satisfied; and then Margaret put them aside,
and bending tenderly over Lily, asked her to forgive her. Upon
which the poor child put her little thin arms round her cousin’s
neck and kissed her.
After this she lay quite still again, breathing heavily. She
appeared to be conscious of their presence, and to listen to
the earnest prayers which were offered up by Mr. Leslie in her
behalf at the throne of grace. Once only she tried to speak.
“Mamma” and “Dear Lord Jesus” were all they could distin-
guish, the last being uttered with a sudden joyfulness. But they
knew by that glad cry, and by the radiant smile upon her pale
face, that the Savior in whom she trusted was passing with her
through the dark valley of the shadow of death.
That evening the blinds were drawn down and the shutters
closed. The Good Shepherd had taken home the poor weary
lamb to his heavenly fold.
Margaret never forgot that solemn lesson. Many a time
110 ELIZA COATES

in after life, when she had retired for the night, has she been
known to rise up and leave her chamber, in order to entreat
forgiveness or exchange a loving word with some member of
her family with whom she fancied that she had been impatient
during the day. It was touching to hear her, when old and grey-
headed, asking meekly,
“Did I speak unkindly to you this morning? I hope not. I
did not intend to be unkind. I thought it right to say what I
did; but I ought to have said it more tenderly.”
It is not every one who is permitted, as Margaret was, in
answer, as she always believed, to earnest prayer, to receive the
forgiveness of those to whom they have been harsh or unkind,
and atone in some slight measure for the past. May this con-
sideration serve to render us more gentle and forbearing to all
with whom we are connected, either by kindred or association,
while they are with us.

—————

Who ever spoke an unkind word,

And wished it not again unsaid?
The loving and the living now,
May shortly be the changed and dead.
We sit in sadness and alone,
That word once more we would recall;
But burning tears cannot atone,
Though fast and silently they fall.
From those who uttered, or who heard,
Such things are slow to pass away;
The memory of an unkind word
May haunt us to our dying day.