Family Pride; Or, Purified by SufferingHolmes, Mary Jane
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Family Pride; Or, Purified by Suffering
Holmes, Mary Jane
American fiction; Dime novels
There were tears in Helen's soft brown eyes, and they glittered like
diamonds as she looked even more than spoke her thanks to the young man,
who, for another look like that, would have driven Aunt Betsy amid the
gayest crowd that ever frequented the Park, and sworn she was his blood
relation! A few words from Mrs. Banker confirmed what Mark had said, and
it was not strange if that night Miss Lennox, usually so entertaining,
was a little absent, for her thoughts were up in that chamber on
Twenty-third Street, where Aunt Betsy sat alone, but not lonely, for
her mind was very busy with all she had been through since leaving
Silverton, while something kept suggesting to her that it would have
been wiser and better to have stayed at home than to have ventured where
she was so sadly out of place. This last came gradually to Aunt Betsy
as she thought the matter over, and remembered Wilford as he had
appeared each time he came to Silverton.
"I ain't like him; I ain't like this Miss Banker; I ain't like anybody,"
she whispered. "I'm nothin' but a homely, old-fashioned woman, without
larnin', without nothin'. I might know I wasn't wanted," and a rain of
tears fell over the wrinkled face as she uttered this tirade against
herself, standing before the long mirror and inspecting the image it
gave back of a plain, unpolished countrywoman, not much resembling Mrs.
Banker, it must be confessed, nor much resembling the gay young ladies
she had seen at the opera the previous night. "I won't go near Katy,"
she continued; "it will only mortify her, and I don't want to make her
trouble. The poor thing's face looked as if she had it now, and I won't
add to it. I'll start for home to-morrow. There's Miss Smith, in
Springfield, will keep me overnight, and Katy shan't be bothered."
When this decision was reached Aunt Betsy felt a great deal better, and
taking the Bible from the table, she sat down again before the fire,
opening, as by a special Providence, to the chapter where hewers of wood
and drawers of water are mentioned as being necessary to mankind, each
filling his appointed place.
"That's me--that's Betsy Barlow," she whispered, taking off her glasses
to wipe away the moisture gathering so fast upon them. Then resuming
them, she continued: "I'm a hewer of wood--a drawer of water. God made
me so, and shall the clay find fault with the potter for making it into
a homely jug? No, indeed; and I was a very foolish old jug to think of
sticking myself in with the chinaware. But I've larnt a lesson," and the
philosophic woman read on, feeling comforted to know that though a
vessel of the rudest make, a paltry jug, as she called herself, the
promises were still for her as much as for the finer wares--ay, that
there was more hope of her entering at last where "the walls are all of
precious stones and the streets are paved with gold," than of those
whose good things are given so abundantly during their lifetime.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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