The Other GirlsWhitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
General
The Other Girls
Whitney, A. D. T. (Adeline Dutton Train)
Family life -- Fiction; Women -- Fiction
"You can. You can pray, 'Lord give them some beautiful heavenly joy
this day that thou knowest of, for my asking; because I cannot any
more do for them on the earth.' And then you can turn round to their
errands again."
Marion stood up on her feet.
"I will say that prayer for them every day! I shall believe in it,
because you told me. If I had thought of it myself, I should not
have dared. But He wouldn't send such a message by you if He didn't
mean it; would He?"
She believed in the God of Luclarion Grapp, as the children of
Israel believed in the God of Abraham.
"He never sends any message that He doesn't mean. He means the
comfort, just as much as He does the blaming."
Another day, a while after, Marion came down to Neighbor Street with
something very much on her mind to say, and to ask about. They had
all waited for her own plans to suggest themselves, or rather for
her work to be given her to do. No one had mentioned, or urged, or
even asked anything as to what she should do next.
But now it came of itself.
"Couldn't I get a place in some asylum, or hospital, do you think,
Miss Grapp? To be anything--an under nurse, or housemaid, or a cook
to make gruels? So that I could do for poor women and little
children? That would seem to come the very nearest. I'd come here,
if you wanted me; but I think I should like best to take care of
poor, good women, whose children had died, or gone away; who haven't
any one to look after them except asylum people. I like to treat
them as if they were all my mothers; and especially to wait on any
little girls that might be sick."
Was this the same Marion Kent who had given her whole soul, a
little while ago, to fine dressing and public appearing, and having
her name on placards? Had all that life dropped off from her so
easily?
Ah, you call it easily! _She_ knew, how, passing through the
furnace, it had been burned away; shriveled and annihilated with the
fierce, hot sweep of a spiritual flame before which all old,
unworthy desire vanishes:--the living, awful breath of remorse.
"I've no doubt you can," said Luclarion. "I'll make inquiries. Mrs.
Sheldon comes here pretty often; and she is one of the managers of
the Women and Children's Hospital. They've just got into a great,
new building, and there'll be people wanted."
"I'll begin with anything, remember; only to get in, and learn how.
I'll do so they'll want to keep me, and give me more; more work, I
mean. If I could come to nursing, and being depended on!"
"They train nurses, regular, there. Learn them, so that they can go
anywhere. Then you might some time have a chance to go to somebody
that needed great care; some sick woman or child, or a sick mother,
with little children round her"--
"And every day send up some good turn by them to mother and little
Sue!"
So they bound up her wounds for her, and poured in the oil and wine;
so they put her on their own beast of service, and set her in their
own way, and brought her to a place of abiding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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