Nellie's Missionary by Margaret Hammond Eckerson

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 26, 1885

Nellie's Missionary.

By Margaret Hammond Eckerson

THE sounding of the dinner-horn called Farmer Saunders, his hired hands, and his half dozen children to dinner, and they all entered the kitchen with more or less dispatch and sat down to eat. Things about were decidedly barren and comfortless, and a large cooking-stove that stood out far from the fire-place heated the sultry noon air to a degree almost unbearable. Mrs. Saunders, overworked, overheated, and cross, dished out the meat and vegetables on the coarse blue plates; and all fell to eating, acting on the principle "every one for himself." Courtesy and charm had not the slightest hold there. There were no pleasant amenities, no words spoken beyond what were absolutely necessary. As Farmer Saunders delighted to say, he was "an independent man; if folks didn't like his gate they needn't swing onto it; he didn't believe in airs and nonsense." But, unfortunately for the betterment of his family, decent politeness came under his category of "airs and nonsense."

Mahaly (or Haly, as they called her), the oldest girl, homely, freckled, and thirteen, proved herself endowed with a certain instinctive womanly helpfulness. She it was who saw that the often-emptied bread plates were refilled; that two-year-old Paul had his potatoes mashed; that impatient Mary had her meat cut; that the apple pie was divided into generous pieces and set around; and, in the intervals, she ate with as hearty a zest and as great a lack of table manners as the rest.

"Haly," said Mrs. Saunders, when dinner was about through with, speaking with the acerbity of tone that, poor woman, had become almost second nature with her, "I want you to take Ted and Jack, and go right off and pick them blackberries for jam. Father hain't seen about gittin' me any peaches to do up, and if I don't begin to look after things myself, we won't have no preserves this year, far as I can see. Why we couldn't never have no pears and peaches of our own, I can't see. There's other things in the world besides corn and hay, though some men-folks don't think so."

Father looked up quite oblivious; a bee might as well have buzzed in his hearing. He had an exasperating way of quite ignoring his wife's sayings.

"Come, boys," he said, "its time to git to work."

Haly was glad to obey her mother's mandate, and go to pick berries. The air and sunshine were better than the stuffy kitchen, the greasy dishes, and her mother's perpetual drip of complaint.

About a mile from Farmer Saunders' unshaded, stoopless house was a pretty villa, surrounded by large, beautifully kept grounds. There was plenty of shade, plenty of rustic seats, plenty of flowers; and there were also plenty of handsome, healthy children grouped on a wide veranda, listening eagerly to something papa, a tall man of gentlemanly exterior, was saying.

"Well, dears, all play and no work is not the best thing for Jack. We have had a delightful summer. I am completely rested, and mamma has grown absolutely young. You, Charley, are as round as a dumpling, and John has cheeks like a Spitzenburg apple; so we will all go back to the city next week, for I want you to be at your schools promptly. I expect my Nellie here to take hold and study as I want her to, this fall. To please me she is going to try hard with algebra and composition." Here a tumult of voices drowned his words: "O papa, it's too bad;" "I want to see the colt broken;" "And the cunning little Bantams won't hatch out in two weeks;" "I want to go trouting;" "Mightn't we wait till frost comes?"

"And I don't want to go back to school at all," cried Nellie, the oldest and fairest of the six. "I'd as leave be in jail as that horrid school-room; I hate study, and I wish there never had been such things as composition and algebra. I don't think you ought to make me do things I hate so, papa. It's cruel!"

"Nellie!" said her father gravely. She tried to look bravely at him, but failed; and darted away from them all, her cheeks crimson and a great lump in her throat. She did not care where she wandered, she wanted to go away by herself to have an uninterrupted grumble and cry. She had been dreading this change lately, this edict to say good-bye to the idle, happy summer life she had so thoroughly enjoyed. Naturally disinclined to mental exertion, she wanted to prolong these hours.

There was a dreamy, sensuous enjoyment for her in this pleasant summering. She could swing in an airy hammock for a whole morning, watching the flitting clouds, the lights and shadows on the landscape, the waving of the tree branches; or, at ease in her pony-phaeton, could slowly ride through quiet road—her satisfaction in the warmth and indolence akin, probably, to the feelings of the cow she passed placidly ruminating by the roadside, bovinely conscious that clover was luscious and tender, and the green world capital for grazing purposes. The very thought of fagging again over horrid lessons was sickening. She knew enough for ordinary purposes; nobody wanted to be a walking cyclopedia; as for mathematics and composition, she hated them cordially. Papa was cruel to want to shut her up with dry books. The thought of it made her head ache. The tears began to brim in her pretty eyes. The cry on account of having to learn something, was close at hand.

Just then, in the near-by lot, she caught sight of the pink sun-bonnet of Haly Saunders, picking berries with energy, while Ted and Jack, not so industrious, were speculating as to the whereabouts of a rabbit-burrow. Nellie postponed her weep for a short time. She felt disposed to be friendly with this awkward, poorly-dressed girl, who had often brought butter and vegetables to the house. So she climbed over the fence, and bade her, "Good-afternoon." Haly was unaffectedly glad to see this dainty little maiden, who seemed to move in a sphere so far apart from hers, and she received with real regret the announcement that she was going away next week. "It's too bad," she said.

"Yes, it is too bad," cried Nellie, "and just to think, it all comes from having to go back to that horrid, hateful school. It's abominable, and papa's bound that I shall kill myself studying things I hate. I can't bear to learn. There, now."

Haly stopped picking, her large freckled hand unconsciously crushing a berry. "You don't like to learn? You don't mean it, for fair?" There was an unspoken reproach in her eyes. Her astonishment had an odd effect on Nellie. She hesitated a little about re-asserting her words.

"Yes, but you don't know anything about the awful grind study is, Haly," she said; "you are as free as the birds from such things!"

"O, if I only wasn't," cried Haly with an energy quite at variance with her usual phlegmatic manner. "I'm fair hungry to go to school, and know somethin'. I don't know nothin', and there's such an ache inside me when I think about it, that I can't bear it. I'd just crawl on my hands and knees to go somewhere and learn somethin'. I'd be so happy, if I were you. And yet you don't want to learn?"

"Well, why don't you go to school then, and read lots, or something. I would if I were you!"

"I can't; I've got to stay home and work. There's heaps to do, always. There's the milkin' and butter-makin', a churnin' every other day, and washin', ironin', scrubbin' and mendin' and patchin', and the baby to be tended, and the garden weedin', and sometimes Pop wants me in the fields, and then there's cleanin' times, and killin' times, and patchwork, and—always somethin'," she added with an unconscious sigh. "And, besides, we haunt no books. Yes, there's a Bible and—such a nice book—the Pilgrim's Progress [her face lighting up]; I've read that considerable, only mother is afraid I'll muss it, and the Bible is too big. It lays on the stand in the best room, you know. Now, I'll just tell you. I never was so happy as when I went to the district. It's only a couple of miles off, and the walk ain't nothin'. Miss Lane, she was the teacher—and I bet you, she was smart; she knew everything. And she had such nice ways—never jawed or hollered at you, like mad. I just like to stand by her, and touch her clothes. I got way along in the fourth reader, and jography, and clean through arithmetic, and I wrote compositions. I never was so happy! And we had a exhibition once, and I spoke a piece; and Miss Lane kissed me, and said I did it nice."

"Well?" said Nellie as Haly stopped, her lips quivering, and bent to pick grasses.

"That's all; there never was anything more."

"Where's Miss Lane?"

"Buried," cried poor Haly in a paroxysm of grief; "and I never went to school again. I was eleven years old, big enough to help mother, father said. And I haunt no school books any more. I had to give 'em to Ted and Jack. There'll never be anything more for me."

"Haly Saunders, you poor thing!" cried Nellie excitedly; "and here I am, having so much! Now look here; you come to the house and I'll give you books and papers and magazines to-morrow. I wonder what you'd say to St. Nicholas, and Wide Awake? Mamma brought plenty of books along, and there are histories and story-books; and oh, you'll be just delighted!"

"O," cried Haly, "O dear!" and Nellie left her with her homely face all aglow and her heart in a flutter of glad anticipation.

As for Nellie she never had the cry she had determined to indulge in; but such a new current of thought had been touched to living issues, that she cried out impulsively when she met papa: "O papa, do forgive me for my senseless words. I know I have never appreciated

my advantages. And I will study better than ever. Indeed I will, papa."

"That is spoken like my own little daughter," he said with undisguised pleasure. "I knew you would come to a better mind."

"But it was a missionary who brought me to a better mind," said Nellie archly; "she opened my benighted eyes, and her name was Haly."

—Margaret Hammond Eckerson.