Work: A Story of Experience | Page 5

and reward, and to this happy end she was slowly
yet surely brought by the long discipline of life and labor.
Sitting alone there in the night, she tried to strengthen herself with all
the good and helpful memories she could recall, before she went away

to find her place in the great unknown world. She thought of her
mother, so like herself, who had borne the commonplace life of home
till she could bear it no longer. Then had gone away to teach, as most
country girls are forced to do. Had met, loved, and married a poor
gentleman, and, after a few years of genuine happiness, untroubled
even by much care and poverty, had followed him out of the world,
leaving her little child to the protection of her brother.
Christie looked back over the long, lonely years she had spent in the
old farm-house, plodding to school and church, and doing her tasks
with kind Aunt Betsey while a child; and slowly growing into girlhood,
with a world of romance locked up in a heart hungry for love and a
larger, nobler life.
She had tried to appease this hunger in many ways, but found little help.
Her father's old books were all she could command, and these she wore
out with much reading. Inheriting his refined tastes, she found nothing
to attract her in the society of the commonplace and often coarse people
about her. She tried to like the buxom girls whose one ambition was to
"get married," and whose only subjects of conversation were "smart
bonnets" and "nice dresses." She tried to believe that the admiration
and regard of the bluff young farmers was worth striving for; but when
one well-to-do neighbor laid his acres at her feet, she found it
impossible to accept for her life's companion a man whose soul was
wrapped up in prize cattle and big turnips.
Uncle Enos never could forgive her for this piece of folly, and Christie
plainly saw that one of three things would surely happen, if she lived
on there with no vent for her full heart and busy mind. She would either
marry Joe Butterfield in sheer desperation, and become a farmer's
household drudge; settle down into a sour spinster, content to make
butter, gossip, and lay up money all her days; or do what poor Matty
Stone had done, try to crush and curb her needs and aspirations till the
struggle grew too hard, and then in a fit of despair end her life, and
leave a tragic story to haunt their quiet river.
To escape these fates but one way appeared; to break loose from this
narrow life, go out into the world and see what she could do for herself.
This idea was full of enchantment to the eager girl, and, after much
earnest thought, she had resolved to try it.
"If I fail, I can come back," she said to herself, even while she scorned

the thought of failure, for with all her shy pride she was both brave and
ardent, and her dreams were of the rosiest sort.
"I won't marry Joe; I won't wear myself out in a district-school for the
mean sum they give a woman; I won't delve away here where I'm not
wanted; and I won't end my life like a coward, because it is dull and
hard. I'll try my fate as mother did, and perhaps I may succeed as well."
And Christie's thoughts went wandering away into the dim, sweet past
when she, a happy child, lived with loving parents in a different world
from that.
Lost in these tender memories, she sat till the old moon-faced clock
behind the door struck twelve, then the visions vanished, leaving their
benison behind them.
As she glanced backward at the smouldering fire, a slender spire of
flame shot up from the log that had blazed so cheerily, and shone upon
her as she went. A good omen, gratefully accepted then, and
remembered often in the years to come.

CHAPTER II.
SERVANT.

A FORTNIGHT later, and Christie was off. Mrs. Flint had briefly
answered that she had a room, and that work was always to be found in
the city. So the girl packed her one trunk, folding away splendid hopes
among her plain gowns, and filling every corner with happy fancies,
utterly impossible plans, and tender little dreams, so lovely at the time,
so pathetic to remember, when contact with the hard realities of life has
collapsed our bright bubbles, and the frost of disappointment nipped all
our morning glories in their prime. The old red stage stopped at Enos
Devon's door, and his niece crossed the threshold after a cool
handshake with the master of the house, and a close embrace with the
mistress,