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Bread On The Waters
by
“After that,” said Bruce Kuypers, modestly, if I did not see you so often, but I used to see you sometimes, and I did not think”–this with a roguish twinkling of the eye–“that you forgot your young friends so soon.”
“I remember you,” said Tom. “I used to think you were the grandest man in Washington. You gave me the first ride on a sled I ever had, when there was some exceptional fall of snow.”
“I think we all remember Mr. Kuypers now,” said Matty, and she laughed while she blushed; “he always bought things for our stockings. I have a Noah’s Ark upstairs now, that he gave me. In my youngest days I had a queer mixture of the name Bruce and the name Santa Claus. I believe I thought Santa Claus’ name was Nicholas Bruce. I am sure I did not know that Mr. Bruce had any other name.”
“If you had said you were Mr. Chappell,” said Mr. Molyneux, “I should have known you in a minute.”
“But I was not,” said the young man, laughing.
“Well, if you had said you were `Bruce,’ I should have known.”
“Dear me, yes; but I have been a man so long, and at Gem City nobody calls me Bruce, but my mother and Lizzy. So I said `Mr. Kuypers,’ forgetting that I had ever been a boy. But now I am in Washington again, I shall remember that things change here very fast in ten years. And yet not so fast as they change at the mines.”
And now everybody was at ease. How well Mrs. Molyneux recalled to herself what she would not speak of that Christmas Day of which Mr. Kuypers told his story! It was in their young married life. She had her father and mother to dine with her, and the event was really a trial in her young experience. And then, just as the old folks were expected, her husband came dashing in and had asked her to put dinner a little later because he had had this good news for the poor Widow Chappell, and she had to tell her father and mother, when they came, that they must all wait for his return.
The Widow Chappell was one of those waifs who seem attracted to Washington by some fatal law. It had been two or three months before that Mr. Molyneux had been asked to hunt her up and help her. A letter had come, asking him to do this, from Mrs. Fales, in Roxbury, and Mrs. Fales had sent money for the Chappells. But the money had gone in back rent, and shoes, and the rest, and the wolf was very near the Chappells’ door, when the telegraph announced the “Macedonian.” Mr. Molyneux had telegraphed instanter to this Dr. Wilder. Dr. Wilder had some sense of Christmas promptness. He remembered poor Chappell perfectly, and mailed that night a thorough certificate. This certificate it was which Mr. Molyneux had carried to the poor old tenement of Massachusetts Avenue, and this had made happy that Christmas Day–and this.
“Why,” said Mr. Bruce Kuypers, almost as if he were speaking aloud, “it seems so queer that Christmas comes and goes with you, and you have forgotten all about that stormy day, and your ride to Mrs. Chappell’s!
“Why, at our place, we drink Mr. Molyneux’s health every Christmas Day, and I am afraid the little ones used to think that you had a red nose, a gray beard, and came down the chimney!”
“As, at another place,” said Matty, “they thought of Mr. Bruce–of Noah’s Ark memory.”
“Anyway,” said Mr. Molyneux, “any crumbs of comfort we scattered that day were BREAD UPON THE WATERS.”
Of Mr. Kuypers’s quick journey the main points have been told. Six days before, by some good luck, which could hardly have been expected, the “Gem City Medium’s” despatch from Washington was full enough to be intelligible. It was headed, “ANOTHER SWINDLER NAILED.” It said that Mr. Molyneux, of the Internal Improvement office, had feathered his nest with $500,000 during the war, in a pretended expedition to the Rio Grande. It had now been discovered that there never was any such expedition, and the correspondent of the Associated Press hoped that justice would be done.