What Two Children Did | Page 8

Aunty
Stevens--"
"O, mother," they cried, turning around to hug her.
"Then there is a doll in town that can walk and talk. Beth, deary, you
choke me so I can't talk;--and a camera for sister. Would you mind
giving up these things to help pay the hospital expenses, or to buy a
wheel chair or some comfort for Dick?"
Down went the heads again, and dead silence reigned except for the
crackling of the fire and the clicking of Aunty Stevens' needles.

"May we go away and think it over?" said Ethelwyn soberly.
"Yes."
So they slid down and disappeared to think it out alone, as they always
did when obliged to settle questions for themselves. Ethelwyn went
outdoors, and crawled into the hammock on the porch. The wind blew
mistily from the sea and was heavy with dampness and cold, but the
child paid no attention to that; she was so busy thinking. Surely, she
thought, there was money enough for Dick and the others without
giving up her camera and the sea trip. She had longed for a camera all
summer. Nan had the use of her mother's and had taken their pictures in
all places and positions, and she did so wish for one. But then, there
was poor Dick, how uncomfortable he had looked.
Elizabeth, meantime, went to the bedside of her beloved doll family.
They were lying serene and placid, exactly as she had placed and
tucked them in at bedtime, with her own motherly hand, and the
memory of Dick lying racked with pain on the comfortless bed where
she had first seen him, almost decided her at once. But a doll that could
walk and talk, though, would be lovely.
"But then, darlings," she said, after a little, "you might think I would
love her better than you, and you are such dears, you don't deserve
that."
So Beth kissed them all with fervor, her mind quite made up.
While they were away, Aunty Stevens said, "Isn't that a pretty hard
test?"
The children's mother shook her head thoughtfully at the dancing fire.
"I hope not," she said. "I don't wish them to do things now that they
will repent of afterwards. But it seems to me that if they are trained
now to be unselfish, they will always be so. Don't you think, dear Mrs.
Stevens, that the whole trouble with the world is its selfishness?"

"No doubt at all about it," said the older woman, nodding emphatically
over her flying needles.
"Then if the world is to be made better, and rid of this, which lies at the
bottom of all the crime, sin and unhappiness, the younger ones of us
will have to be taught to sacrifice, at least some luxuries, to help give
less fortunate ones the necessities of life," said Mrs. Rayburn, getting
interested, and talking fast and earnestly.
"How I hate the expression 'Look out for number one,' It's such
teaching as this, that makes human beings so forgetful of others," she
went on after a little pause, "and the modern socialist only seems to be
trying to exchange one set of selfish, grasping rules for another of the
same sort. So the world will go on, until the laws are again based on the
teaching of our Lord, and Christian socialism will prevail."
"Yes, you are quite right, but what are you among so many?" asked
Aunty Stevens, smiling across at her friend.
Mrs. Rayburn's cheeks flushed. "Yes, I know," she said. "I suppose it
looks as though I alone were trying to reform the world; but I am not. I
am only one little atom trying to teach still smaller atoms that they
must do their share."
"Was it not in 'Bleak House' that that exceedingly unpleasant personage
used to give away her children's pocket money? And the black looks
she received from them when she was not looking, were something
dreadful."
"Well," said Mrs. Rayburn, laughing, "I hope you don't think the cases
are parallel."
"No indeed, I don't. I was trying to say, I think you are right because
you go at it in the right way, and let them choose. Then, because they
love and have perfect confidence in you, they will be pretty likely to
choose the right way."
"People so often say, 'Let children have a good time,' but interpreted,

from their point of view, a good time, means a selfish time. That is
selfish enjoyment, but it might be good occasionally to put to the test
the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive."
Elizabeth now came in with her baby doll in her arms. She soberly
climbed up again into the blessed fold of her mother's arms.
"I'd just as lief Dick would have it as