Her Way | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 9, 1882

Her Way.

“I don’t see, for my part, why the Lord allows such people to have the handling of so much,” said Mrs. Trewin, with a snap of her black eyes across the breakfast table! “it’s a great trial to my feelings.”

“What?” asked the doctor rather absently.

“Dr. Trewin,” vociferated the lady, “you don’t mean to tell me that you haven’t heard a word of all I’ve been saying?”

A little anxious smile flitted across the doctor’s countenance.

“I think, my love,” said he, “you were speaking of Miss Deborah Bither.”

“I should say I was,” responded his wife with a spice of grim pleasantry in her tones.

“I told you that when I called on her yesterday with a subscription paper for the Hewetts, who, if you will remember, were burned out last month, and are in very straitened circumstances, she refused to put her name down for a cent. She’s money enough to buy out the whole of us, Deborah Bither has, and no chick or child to take it when she’s gone. And I think it would stand her in hand to make righteous disposal of some of it while she can; shouldn’t you?”

Dr. Trewin maintained a discreet silence. He swallowed his coffee and left the table; and presently his wife viewed his departing figure through the elms, as he took his way toward the village office.

“He’s the strangest man,” said she, when she had brought her work-basket to the breezy keeping-room window; “a body never can tell what he does or what he doesn’t think. But I’m sure he can’t but see that Deborah Bither is the closest fisted old maid that ever lived.”

Her gaze wandered out through the window, and up to the great red-brick house on the hill. There were broad acres on all sides of it; uplands and orchards, just now giving promise of an abundant harvest. It was the finest estate in the county, and Miss Deborah Bither was mistress of it all.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof,” murmured Mrs. Trewin, breaking her thread with a jerk. “Deborah Bither ought to remember that. It goes against my grain to see anybody so stingy.”

She sewed steadily for an hour, and then, folding away her work, she put on her bonnet and shawl.

“I’ll go down and see how Mrs. Hewett is getting on,” said she. “She needs sympathy and help, if ever anybody did.”

She walked rapidly down the street until she reached the little low house into which the Hewetts had moved with the remnant of their household goods that they had saved from the flames. Through an open window sounded the busy hum of a sewing machine, which ceased as she entered the door, and Mrs. Hewett came forward to greet her.

“And how are you getting along?” asked Mrs. Trewin, settling her portly form in a rocking-chair.

“Oh, nicely now, thank you,” was the quick response.

“I was out with a subscription paper for you, yesterday,” continued Mrs. Trewin. “Has Deacon Gregory brought it in yet?”

“No-o,” hesitated Mrs. Hewett. A look in which perplexity and pain were mingled crossed her face. “I am sorry to have given you so much trouble; I think we shall be able to get along now. Oh, Mrs. Trewin,” her voice trembled beneath a weight of tears, “don’t think me ungrateful, but indeed, I—I cannot bear to be a beggar.”

“Tut, tut!” exclaimed the doctor’s wife. “To my mind, it should be a duty and a privilege to help a neighbor who has been unfortunate; and everybody seemed to feel it so, except—” she stopped with a shrug, and a grim closing of her lips, thinking of the red-brick house on the hill, and of its owner.

“I am sure we shall get along now,” reiterated Mrs. Hewett, hopefully, apparently without noticing the break in her visitor’s remark.

“I wish you may, truly,” answered Mrs. Trewin. She looked an interrogation point at the bright, new sewing machine by the window, with the heap of unmade clothing near it. Mrs. Hewett saw the glance, and answered it with tears gathering in her eyes.

“Oh, yes! I’ve all the work I can do now; and the machine is a perfect godsend. I’m to pay for it when I can.”

“Why—what—where did you get it?” asked Mrs. Trewin.

“Let me tell you,” the little woman smilingly said. “Yesterday, only yesterday, it seemed to me that I must give up. I rebelled, oh, so fiercely, against the harshness with which I thought God had treated me and mine. At this dark hour who should come in but Miss Bither. She had just heard of our—necessities. She stayed an hour or more, and you can’t think how she cheered me up. It was she who sent the machine, Mrs. Trewin; and besides giving me all her own sewing to do, she will get shop work for me from town. She has given John work on her farm for the summer; and we’re all so happy, and relieved, and everything! And you won’t think us ungrateful if we do not accept the—the subscription, if we can get along without it?” Here Mrs. Hewett broke down entirely, her blue eyes swimming in tears.

Then the better quality of Mrs. Trewin’s heart came uppermost. She drew the little woman’s head down upon her breast and soothed her as a mother might a child.

“I’ve got back all my faith in God—and man,” said Mrs. Hewett, smiling through her tears, “and I never mean to let go my hold on it again.”

“Amen!” ejaculated Mrs. Trewin.

At the dinner table she related to the doctor the sum and substance of Mrs. Hewett’s recital.

“I am sorry I misjudged Deborah, and I intend to tell her so,” said she. “But she might have said she meant to help them. And why can’t she do things like other people?”

Dr. Trewin pared a potato in silence.

“I suppose it’s her way,” continued his wife musingly.

“It’s a very good way,” said the doctor.—Ada Carleton, in Sunday-school Times.