"say yes, and you'll be such a dear papa."
papa bent down and kissed his girl, before he asked, half reproachfully,—
"and how if i say 'no'? shan't i be dear, then?"
kathie blushed, and then laughed.
"why, of course you'll be dear, any way; but may be it's partly because you are so good, and hate so to say no to your own little daughter, that i love you so much."
"to my little daughter as tall as her mother? do you know, small person, that i've often thought it might be better for that same little daughter if i said no to her oftener? i couldn't love you more, but i'm afraid i might love you more wisely. a hundred and twenty-five dollars for a new party dress! bring your own mature[pg 21] judgment to bear on it, and tell me if it appears quite sage, even to you."
kathie thought so hard for a moment that she fairly scowled with earnestness; then she answered,—
"yes, on the whole, i think it will be eminently judicious. you see, i shall be going out a good deal now, and i can do so many different things with a handsome silk, and if i got a tarleton, or any of those cheap, thin goods, it would be used up at once."
papa smiled.
"well, if you are quite sure you're right, i'll bring the check home this noon, and you and mamma can begin your search for this wonderful yellow gown."
"yellow!" kathie clapped her hands to her ears. "what did i ever do to make you think i would wear a horrid yellow gown?"
"oh, was it red you said you wanted?"
"worse and worse. you talk like a hottentot. my gown is to be blue, soft, and lustrous, like a summer sky, and i am to look in it,—well, you shall see on christmas eve."
[pg 22]
then, with half a dozen good-by kisses, the father of this only child—happy, easy-going, and too indulgent—took himself off down town, and kathie danced away to the sewing-room to find her mother and inform her of her success.
kathie mason, at sixteen, was a girl bright, and sweet, and bonny enough to tempt any parent to a little over-indulgence. she had soft, sunny, yellow hair; and lovely, dark brown eyes; with a look in them that kept saying, "oh, be good to me!"; a delicate, flower-like face; and a mouth red as fair rosamond's, which has long been dust now, but which poets and painters raved about centuries ago. she had a graceful little figure, and a clear, fresh young voice; and she had a heart, too, which was in the right place, though she herself was almost a stranger to it. she loved beauty dearly, whether in books, or nature, or human faces, or blue silk gowns, and it was just as natural to her to be a picture, whatever way she looked or moved, as it was to be kathie.
as she danced along she was humming a verse of a gay little french chanson, where some lover[pg 23] said his love was like a rose; and you thought it might have been written about herself, only kathie had no thorns. as she drew near the sewing-room she stopped, for her mother and the dress-maker were talking busily. miss atkinson was a pathetic little woman, with eyes which looked as if the color had been washed out of them by many tears, a thin, frail body, and a voice not complaining, but simply plaintive. somehow kathie hated to break in upon the slow pathos of those tones with her blue silk ecstasy, so she stood leaning against the door for a few moments and waited.
"you see," the little woman was saying, "it was a great pull-back, my being sick two months in the summer, and then my brother being so much worse. but it will all come right, somehow. if i can manage to get alice clothed up so she can go to school, i shall be thankful; for she's a bright child, and it's too bad to have her wasting her time. but then, food and fire must come first, and if people are sick they are sick, and two hands can't do any more than they can."
[pg 24]
there was nothing to oppose to this mild fatalism; so kathie's mother only said, very sympathizingly, that it was hard, and that it seemed as if, with her sister and her sister's child to support, miss atkinson had all she could do before, without undertaking any new responsibilities for the ailing brother and his family.
"oh! but there's no one else to do it if i don't, you see," quoth the little dress-maker, almost cheerfully—as cheerfully, that is, as her voice could be made to speak; but kathie noticed that a moment after she pressed her hand on her side and drew a sharp, hard breath.
"does your side pain you, miss atkinson?" she asked, kindly.
"not much more than usual. it's rather bad, most days. i went to work too soon after i was sick, the doctor said. but he didn't tell me how the rest were going to live if i laid by any longer; and, dear me, i'm thankful enough to be able to work at all."
kathie thought she should be ashamed to have this poor little woman, who had two people [pg 25]besides herself to provide for, entirely, and no knowing how many more, in part, work on her blue silk superfluity. clearly that must be made by some other dress-maker; and she could not even speak to her mother about it now; so she just asked for some work, and sat down with it, thinking more seriously than, perhaps, she had ever thought in her gay, butterfly life before.
"how old is your little niece, alice?" she asked, after a while.
"ten, and she is as far along in her studies now as a good many girls of twelve. i did mean to have sent her straight through, normal school and all, and let her prepare to be a teacher; but it doesn't look much like it, now william's taken so poorly. i expect i shall have to pretty much clothe his three children besides alice."
"can't your sister, little alice's mother, help you at all?"
"well, yes, she does help. she does all she's able to, and more; for, you see, she's feeble, too. she keeps house for us, and cooks, and washes and makes our things after i fit them, and keeps[pg 26] us mended; but there's nothing she can do to bring in any thing. but there, i beg your pardon ten times over, apiece. it's against my principles to go out sewing, and harrow up folks' minds with my troubles; only, you see, i'm a little nervous and unsettled to-day on account of alice's crying pretty hard this morning because she hadn't any thing to wear to school."
papa mason took kathie aside when he came home to dinner, and with a little fun, and teasing, and pretence of mystery, produced the check. there it was, one hundred and twenty-five dollars, all right, and three weeks between now and christmas eve to get her blue silk gown made.
while she ate her roast beef she began to think again. one question kept asking itself over in her mind,—why should some people have blue silk gowns, and others have no gowns at all? i rather think we have all asked ourselves this same thing, in one form of words or another. since the great father made and loves us all, why should one be queen victoria and another little alice staying at home from school for want of a few[pg 27] yards of woollen and a pair of boots? political economists have ciphered it all out, beautifully; but kathie did not know that, and so the vexing question puzzled her. what if it was done just to give us a chance to help each other? she asked herself, at last, and the text of a sermon she heard once came into her mind,—"bear ye one another's burdens." if all fared just alike there would be no chance for helpfulness, or charity, or self-denial; so may be clothes would be put on people's backs at the expense of better things in their hearts. it must be that god knew best. oh! if one couldn't think that, the world might as well fall to pieces at once.
"will you have pudding, dear? i have asked you three times," said mrs. mason's voice, with a little extra energy in it; and kathie looked up out of her dream with a certain vagueness in her eyes, and answered,—
"a hundred and twenty-five," whereat they all laughed.
"i can't give you a hundred and twenty-five puddings; but, if you'll please make a beginning[pg 28] with this one, no doubt the rest will come before the year is over."
whereupon kathie roused herself from her speculations, ate her pudding, and sent her plate for more, with a good, healthy, girlish appetite.
that afternoon she sewed quite diligently, and talked little; but her eyes were bright, and her face all the time eager with some thought.
after tea was over, and miss atkinson had gone, and papa had stepped out to see a business friend, kathie sat down, as was one of her habits, on a low stool beside her mother, and laid her head in her lap. mrs. mason knew that all the afternoon's thinking would come out before the child got up again; so she just smoothed the fluffy, yellow hair with her hand and waited.
"don't you think, mamma, that miss atkinson must be a good deal better christian than the rest of us, she's such a patient burden-bearer? she never seemed to think for one moment that it was hard she should have to work so, or that she couldn't have what she wanted herself. all that troubled her was because she couldn't do what she had planned for alice."
[pg 29]
then, when mrs. mason had made some slight answer, there was silence again for a time; and then kathie cried impulsively,—
"mamma, what a perfect good-for-nothing i am. i never carried a burden for any one in my life. i have just been a dead weight on some one else's hands."
"not a dead weight, by any means," and mrs. mason laughed, "and really, papa and i have found it rather a pleasure than otherwise to carry you."
the loving girl kissed the hand that had been stroking her hair, but she was quite too much in earnest to laugh.
"well, mamma, you know it doesn't say,—'bear ye one another's burdens, all of you but kathie, and she needn't.' i think this rule without any exceptions means me, just as much as it does any one; and i shan't feel quite right in my own mind till i begin to follow it. i want to bear part of alice."
kathie was talking very fast by this time, and her cheeks were very pink, and her brown eyes very bright.
[pg 30]
"you see i've thought it all out, this afternoon. if miss atkinson will feed her and house her, i do think i might undertake to clothe her until she is through school and ready to teach; and don't you think i'd feel better when i came to die to have done some little thing for somebody? you see it would come very easy. my dresses, and cloaks, and hats would all make over for her. there wouldn't be much to buy outright, except boots, and stockings, and under clothes, generally."
"and wouldn't you find all that rather a heavy drain on your pocket-money? i don't ask to discourage you, childie; only i want you to consider it all thoroughly, for if you should once undertake this thing and lead miss atkinson and alice to depend on it, there could be no drawing back then."
"yes, i have thought about it all. didn't you see me working it out in my head this afternoon, like a sum in arithmetic? i think half the money papa gives me for lunches, and presents, and the other things pocket-money goes for, would be just as good for me as the whole; and i am sure with[pg 31] half of it i could keep alice along nicely after i once got her started; and its just about this start i want to speak to you now. papa gave me a hundred and twenty-five dollars to-day to buy me a blue silk gown for aunt jane's christmas-eve party. now fifty dollars will get me a lovely white muslin, and a blue sash, and all the fresh little fixings i should need; and that would leave seventy-five dollars, with which i could buy flannels, and boots, and water-proof, and a good, warm, strong outfit altogether, for alice to commence with. now do you think papa would be willing? i don't want to ask him, for he doesn't understand silks and muslins, or what alice needs; but would you answer for him? just think, mamma, what burdens poor miss atkinson has to bear."
mrs. mason started to say,—"it is all for her own relations,"—but stopped, for the command didn't read, "relations, bear ye one another's burdens." had she any right to interfere between kathie and this first work of charity the child had ever been inspired to undertake? would not this object[pg 32] of interest outside herself, apart from blue silk gowns, and flounces, and furbelows, do something for her girl that was likely to be left undone otherwise? what a very cold loving-one-another we were most of us doing in this world, after all? so she bent over and kissed the eager, lovely, upturned face that waited for her words, and said fondly,—
"yes, i will answer for papa, my darling. i approve your plan heartily, but i will not offer help. this shall be all your own good work."
the next morning miss atkinson was told of the new plan. her faded eyes opened twice as widely as usual. she was not sure she heard aright.
"do you mean to say miss kathie, that you undertake, with your mamma's full consent, to clothe alice until she is through school?"
"that is precisely what i bind myself to do," kathie answered, gravely copying the solemnity of the little dress-maker.
"then all i have to say is, bless you, and bless the lord. you never can tell what good you're doing."
[pg 33]
and then the poor little woman began to cry, just for pure joy; and she sobbed till mamma mason felt her eyes growing misty, and kathie ran away out of the room.
be sure that miss atkinson made up kathie's muslin lovingly. it would not be her fault if it were not prettier than any silk. and truly, when christmas eve came and kathie was dressed for aunt jane's party, there could hardly have been a more radiant vision than this white-robed shape with the sunny, soft hair, the gleaming brown eyes, and the wild-rose cheeks, where the color came and went. her father looked her over with all his heart in his eyes, and a tenderness which quivered in his voice, though he tried to speak jestingly.
"so there wasn't blue sky enough for any thing but your sash, and you had to take white clouds for the rest."
"just that. don't you like the clouds?"
he bent and kissed her.
"yes, i like the clouds; and i think the sunshine struck through them for somebody."
