A HOME-LY GIRL by Elizabeth P. Allan

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 6, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 18.

A HOME-LY GIRL.

By Elizabeth P. Allan

"WHAT a homely face!" said a lady to her companion, as an ugly girl stepped into the street car, and took a seat opposite.

The person addressed was a beautiful old lady with white hair. She glanced at the newcomer, and saw with pain that the thoughtless criticism had reached her ears, and wounded her.

"I think," then answered the old lady, "that she looks like a home-ly girl in that sweet, old-time sense of a girl who could make a home."

The face across the aisle brightened so responsively that it almost ceased to be ugly, and when the first speaker left the car, the girl, after an instant's hesitation, took the vacant seat by the old lady.

"I wish I knew," she said impulsively, "just what you meant by a girl's making a home; it seems to me that girls find homes ready made for them."

"But not completely made," said the sweet old voice. "There is always need of girl help, I think, in a home; sometimes the need is for baking and brewing, but there is no such need, I fancy, in your home?"

She was looking at the unostentatious but rich dress.

"No," said the girl simply.

"Some other times," continued the old lady, "a great many times, a girl's work is to bring all the members of a family together, and thoroughly interest them in one another."

The bow drawn at a venture was aimed by that blessed Providence who knows when sparrows fall, and went straight to the mark.

"Thank you," said the young girl. "This is my place to get off; good-by."

She bought the yards of ribbon she had come for, in an absent-minded way, and started home.

"I will walk," she said to herself. "I can think better."

Acquaintances bowed to her unnoticed, as with lifted head and farseeing eyes she moved briskly up the crowded way.

"What's the matter with Emily Vane?" said one merry girl to another.

"Oh, she's on some high horse or other!" laughed the girl. "She is away out of sight of us earthly mortals."

And indeed Emily's young heart was overflowing with enthusiastic resolves.

"How strange it was for that old lady to pick out the very thing I ought to have been doing all this time!" she said to herself; and memory pictured before her all the years that she and her home folks had occupied their luxurious house, each one living to himself, and having no real home community of plans and interests.

Emily left square after square behind her rapid feet, all the time planning to do thus and so, with the confidence of youth, nay, with the overconfidence of one who says, "Tomorrow I will go into such and such a city, and buy and sell and get gain," when suddenly a bit of slippery pavement brought her down with a sharp cry.

It was quite a serious accident, one of the small bones of the ankle being fractured, and poor Emily suffered intolerably while kind strangers carried her into the nearest apothecary's. A surgeon was at hand, and by the time the hurt ankle was properly set and bandaged, Mr. Vane had answered the telephone call in a carriage.

All through the trying time, though "the rasp of the flesh was so sore," Emily was passionately regretting her marred plans.

"I can't begin to be a home-ly girl," she moaned to herself. "Oh, how hard to bear!"

But on the third day of her imprisonment to the couch Emily's eyes were suddenly opened.

"Why, it's the very thing!" she said. "I couldn't have managed it better if I had done it on purpose."

"What will you think of me, little sister, if I say I am almost sorry that you are getting well?"

"I think I could find something sweet in that speech," Emily replied, looking up at big brother John from her couch. But the couch was downstairs now, and she was even beginning to walk a little on Grandfather Vane's stick. Decidedly she was getting well.

"Yes," answered John, "somehow this has seemed more like home, since we have had your couch to tie to. We reserved people are getting acquainted with one another."

"We were always ready to die for one another," laughed Ned from the other end of the room. "But somehow we never understood fraternal relations. Did you do it on purpose, sis?"

"What, break my ankle?" she asked archly.

"No; shake us all up together this way?"

Then she told him the story of the old lady in the street car.

"My homeliness had been a bitter trial to me until then," Emily confessed. "I don't think a man can understand what a hard lot it is for a woman to be without any of those personal charms that make a woman loved. But that dear old lady drew out the sting when she told me what compensation might be in store for a 'home-ly girl.'"

"God bless our home-ly girl!" said the father, who had come in unperceived.

"Tell us your old lady's name, sis," cried John. "I'll go and take her a posy for her happy words."

"You can't do that," said Emily, smiling. "I never saw her before, and don't know who she is. Perhaps she will have to wait till we all get to the blessed Home, for the grateful thanks of the 'homely girl.'"—Elizabeth P. Allan, in Congregationalist.