HOW JOHN PAID NAN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 2, 1904

HOW JOHN PAID NAN.

THE family were at the supper table when John came in with his skates. After supper father said to him:— "John, you have been gone all the afternoon. You did not get your work done. It must be finished to-night, you know."

John went out into the shed with a gloomy brow. It was not long, however, before the tones of his voice came in very cheerfully through the closed door into the sitting-room.

"Is that Nan out in the shed with John?" asked Janetta.

Her mother smiled and nodded.

Janetta was almost grown up. She felt herself to be wise, and often liked to give her mother advice, as most of us have liked to do in our time. She gave her some now.

"I think, mother, that you ought not to let Nan help John so much. She will spoil him. It is no girl's work for her to be carrying wood for him down into the cellar. She never seems to mind what she does, if it will make things easier for John."

"He pays her for it pretty evenly, I think," said Mrs. Neville, quietly.

"Pays her!" repeated Janetta in surprise, looking doubtfully at her mother. "How?"

"Keep your eyes open, and see," said Mrs. Neville. She would give no hint of what she meant.

"John," said Nan, when they had come back into the house, and were warming themselves luxuriously, "Eva Hastings can't go to the singing class, because she hasn't anybody to take her home. We could walk just that little distance round the corner with her, couldn't we?"

"Where's her brother Jim? Why can't he go for her?"

"He'll not be bothered, he says. You always come after me, anyway. So I thought it wouldn't be so very much farther to take Eva on home."

"I suppose it wouldn't," said John. "All right."

Janetta looked across to her mother. But Mrs. Neville's head was bent over her work.

The next day at noon John was full of a plan which the boys were making at school.

"We are going to get up a sleigh-ride—just we ourselves. We are going to pay for the big sleigh amongst us boys. Then we will invite the young ladies to come with us."

Janetta condescended to show a little interest. She usually felt herself much above John and his friends, but if it was a question of having a sleigh-ride, when sleigh-rides were few, perhaps she might forget her dignity for once to advantage. John noticed this. He was divided as to whether to feel flattered or to grumble.

"Yes, of course, some of the fellows want you, Janetta," he said. "They know that generally you don't remember that they are alive; and it is just possible that now and then you slip out of their memory for a minute or two at a time. But on an occasion like this we can make believe all round. You see it adds something to the style to have girls on board with long skirts, and their hair put up."

Nan was listening wistfully. Her skirts were not long, and her hair was braided. Still she oughtn't to be selfish; it was nice for John and Janetta, and her turn would come, by and by.

"In my own case, tho," John continued, "I didn't choose my girl for style. I have more sense. She is young; she may fall asleep during the proceedings, but she is the nicest girl in town, for all that, of any size—except mother—Nan is."

"O, John, you didn't!" cried Nan, joyfully. "How perfectly lovely of you."

Janetta thought of several things, of which the

sleigh-ride was only one. Meantime Dr. Neville had come in for his dinner.

"John," he said, "I hope you have not been making friends with those two Barbour boys."

"I haven't," said John; "Nan wouldn't let me. I couldn't see anything bad in them; and they are very entertaining. But Nan made such a fuss that I had to give in."

"Well, you may be very thankful to Nan," said his father. "They have got themselves into a miserable scrape. They were picked up on a back street drunk last night, and put in a common jail!"

While the others exclaimed and questioned, John was uncommonly silent. Finally, before he started back to school, he said soberly:— "A fellow doesn't lose much by taking Nan's advice. Maybe if Harry and Phil Barbour had had a deacon for a sister, they never would have got into such bad ways."

In the course of the afternoon Janetta drew her chair close up to her mother's.

"Mother," she said, "I have watched, and I see. Nan gets high pay from John for hewing wood and drawing water—the highest."

"I knew that you would see it before long," said her mother. "A girl can not do better work than build little fences of kindness and love and goodness about her brother, that will help to keep him safe. Even if she roughens her hands a little at it, and works rather more than her share, it is well worth her while. Isn't it?"—Forward.