Susan Warner - The Letter of Credit

Mrs. Carpenter's patient face, as she sat by the window from morning till night, and her restless busy hands, by degrees became a burden to Rotha.

"Mother," she said one day, when her own work for the time was done up and she had leisure to make trouble, – "I do not like to see you doing other people's sewing."

"It is my sewing," Mrs. Carpenter said.

"It oughtn't to be."

"I am very thankful to have it."

"It takes very little to make you thankful, seems to me. It makes me feel angry."

"I am sorry for that."

"Well, if you would be angry, I wouldn't be; but you take it so quietly.

Mother, it's wrong!"

"What?"

"For you to be doing that work, which somebody else ought to do."

"If somebody else did it, somebody else would get the pay; and what would become of us then?"

"I don't see what's to become of us now. Mother, you said I was to go to school."

"Yes," – and Mrs. Carpenter sighed here. "I have not had time yet to find the right school for you."

"When will you find time? Mother, I think it was a great deal better at Medwayville."

Mrs. Carpenter sighed again, her patient sigh, which aggravated Rotha.

"I don't like New York!" the latter went on, emphasizing every word.

"There is not one single thing here I do like."

"I am sorry, my child. It is not our choice that has brought us here."

"Couldn't our choice take us away again, mother?"

"I am afraid not."

Rotha looked on at the busy needle for a few minutes, and then burst out again.

"I think things are queer! That you should be working so, and other people have nothing to do."

"Hush, Rotha. Nobody in this world has nothing to do."

"Nothing they need do, then. You are better than they are."

"You speak foolishly. God gives everybody something to do, and his hands full; and the work that God gives we need to do, Rotha. He has given me this; and as long as he gives me his love with it, I think it is good. He has given you your work too; and complaining is not a part of it. I hope to send you to school, as soon as ever I can."

Before Rotha had got up her ammunition for another attack, there was a tap at the door, and Mrs. Marble came in. She always seemed to bring life with her.

"What do you get for that?" she asked, after she had chatted awhile, watching her lodger. Mrs. Carpenter was making buttonholes.

"A shilling a dozen."

Mrs. Marble inspected the work.

"And how many can you make in that style in a day? I should like to know."

"I cannot do this all day," said Mrs. Carpenter. "I get blind, and I get nervous. I can make about two dozen and a half in five hours."

"Twenty five cents' worth: I declare!" said the little woman. "I wonder if such folks will get to heaven?"

"What folks, Mrs. Marble?" enquired Rotha, to whom this saying sounded doubtful.

"The folks that want to get so much for so little. They wouldn't be satisfied with any heaven where they couldn't get a hundred per cent."

"The Lord gives more than that," said Mrs. Carpenter quietly. "A hundredfold in this present world; and in the world to come, eternal life."

"I never could get right hold of that doctrine," said Mrs. Marble. "Folks talk about it, – but I never could find out it was much more than talk."

"Try it," said Mrs. Carpenter. "Then you'll know."

"Maybe I shall, if you stay with me long enough. I wisht I was rich, and I'd do better for you than those buttonholes. I think I can do better anyhow," said the little woman, brimming over with good will. "Ha' you got no friends at all here?"

Mrs. Carpenter hesitated; and then said "no." "What schools are there in this neighbourhood?" she asked then immediately.

"Schools? There's the public school, not far off."

"The public school? That is where everybody goes?"

"Everybody that aint rich, and some that be. I don't think they had ought to. There's enough without 'em. Twelve hundred and fifty in this school."

"Twelve hundred and fifty children!"

"All that. Enough, aint it? But they say the teaching's first rate. You want to send Rotha? You can't get along without her at home, can you? Not unless you can get somethin' better than them buttonholes."

"Mother," said Rotha when Mrs. Marble had gone, "you wouldn't send me to that school, would you? That's where all the poor children go. I don't think anybody but poor people live all about here."

"Then it is a proper place for us. What are we but poor people, Rotha?"

"But mother, we were not poor people at Medwayville? And losing our farm and our home and all, don't make any difference."

"Don't it?"

"No, mother, not in us. We are not that sort of people. You wouldn't send me to such a school?"

"Take care, my child. 'The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich;' and one is not better than the other."

"One is better off than the other," said Rotha. "Mother, how comes aunt Serena to be rich and you to be poor?"

Mrs. Carpenter hesitated and seemed to choose her words.

"It was because of the way she married," she answered at last. "I married a poor man, and her marriage brought her into riches. I would not exchange with her for all the world, Rotha. I have had much the best of it. You see your judgment is not worth much."

Rotha was not satisfied by this statement, and as time wore on she thought she had less and less reason. Mrs. Marble did succeed in finding some different work with better pay for her lodger; that is, she got her the private sewing of a family that paid her at the rate of seventy five cents for a gentleman's shirt, with stitched linen bosom and cuffs. It was better than the buttonhole making; yet even so, Mrs. Carpenter found that very close and diligent application was necessary, if she would pay her rent and pay her way. She could hardly do without Rotha's assistance. If she tried, with natural motherly feeling, to spare her child, she made her fingers rough and unfit for delicate work. It would not do. Rotha's hands must go into the hot water, and handle the saucepan, and the broom, and the box-iron. Ironing made Mrs. Carpenter's hands tremble; and she must not be hindered in her work or made to do it slowly, if she and her child were to live. And by degrees Rotha came thus to be very busy and her days well filled up. All errands were done by her; purchases at the market and the grocery shop and the thread and needle store. The care of the two little rooms was hers; the preparation of meals, the clearing of tables. It was better than to be idle, but Rotha sighed over it and Mrs. Carpenter sometimes did the same. If she had known just what a public school is, at all hazards she would not have kept her child at home; Rotha should have had so much education as she could get there. But Mrs. Carpenter had a vague horror of evil contact for her daughter, who had lived until now in so pure an atmosphere bodily and mentally. Better anything than such contact, she thought; and she had no time to examine or make inquiries.

So days slipped by, as days do where people are overwhelmingly busy; the hope and intention of making a change kept in the background and virtually nullified by the daily and instant pressure. Rotha became accustomed to the new part she was playing in life; and to her turn of mind, there was a certain satisfaction in the activity of it. Mrs. Carpenter sat by the window and sewed, from morning to night. Both of them began to grow pale over their confined life; but they were caught in the machinery of this great, restless, evil world, and must needs go on with it; no extrication was possible. One needleful of thread after another, one seam after another, one garment finished and another begun; that was the routine of Mrs. Carpenter's life, as of so many others; and Rotha found an incessant recurrence of meal-times, and of the necessary arrangements before and after. The only break and change was on Sunday.