FullReads

“Where are you going?” I asked with much curiosity.

She gently opened a side door, and hesitated a moment on the threshold.

“Caroline, come in,” said a voice from within. “I am very happy to see you.”

“Pray, don’t rise, dear,” said my mother, going forward and affectionately kissing a sick lady who sat in a rocking chair. “You look better than when I saw you before. Do not exert yourself.”

I was introduced, and I fancied the invalid looked at me with a sort of admiring surprise as she took my hand and hoped I should prove worthy of such a mother. Then, while my mother and she were talking, I sat down and took notes with my eyes of everything in the room. It looked beautifully neat, and the furniture evidently had seen better days. By-and-by mother asked for her daughter.

“Gone out on some errands,” said the sick lady. “The dear child is an inexpressible blessing to me,” and tears filled her eyes.

“A mother might well be thankful for such a daughter. She is a pattern my child might safely imitate.”

I thought I should be exceedingly glad to see the person my mother was so willing I should copy.

“She will return soon,” said the invalid. “She has gone to carry some work which she has contrived to do in her leisure moments. The self-sacrifice of the child is wonderful. She seems to desire nothing that other girls of her age generally want. A little while ago, an early friend who had found me out and befriended me as you have done”–tears came into the speaker’s eyes–“sent her a handsome winter dress. ‘O mother,’ she said, ‘this is too expensive for me, when you want some warm flannel so.’ I told her it was just what she needed. A few days afterwards she went out and came home with a roll of flannel and a calico dress. ‘See, mother,’ she said, ‘I shall enjoy this calico a hundred times more than the finest dress in the world, when you can have your flannel.’ Excuse me for telling it, but you know a mother’s heart. There is her step; she is coming.”

The outer door opened. How I longed to see the comer! “A perfect angel,” I thought, “so generous, so disinterested, so good; I should love her.” The latch was lifted. A young girl entered, and my school-fellow Abby stood before me! I could have sunk into the earth for very shame. How wicked my pride! how false and foolish my judgments! Oh, how mean did my fine winter dress appear before the plain sixpenny calico!

I was almost sure my mother had managed all this, for she had a way of making me see my faults, and making me desire to cure them, without ever saying much directly herself. This, however, had not come about by her intervention; God taught me by his providence.

As we walked home, my mother gave me an account of Mrs. G—-, an early friend who made an imprudent marriage. But that story is no matter here. I will only add, my judgment of people was formed ever after according to a better standard than the dress they wore, and that Abby and I became intimate friends.