Read Ebook: Jane Lends A Hand by Watkins Shirley

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Ebook has 1499 lines and 70135 words, and 30 pages

"Yes, Papa. But--"

"Silence, ma'am! Your brother was quite right. He is older than you, and he had good reason to reprimand you."

Jane meekly subsided; but when her father had withdrawn his gaze, she refreshed herself by making a most hideous grimace at her brother, who, more complacent than ever, retaliated with a look of icy and withering scorn.

"You've never seen a sailor," said Carl also in a low tone, "so you don't know what you're talking about."

"Well, wife, after all there is no choice left us," said Mr. Lambert laying down the letter. "Without a doubt, this will be a burden, a heavy responsibility; but I hope I am not deficient in generosity. I think no one can accuse me of that. I am prepared to do my duty in this matter as in all others."

"But--but what does the letter say, Peter?" asked Mrs. Lambert timidly. "I haven't seen it."

"This letter is from your brother--"

"Yes. From Franz. I recognized his hand after all these years--"

"Peter! My poor brother--my poor Franz!" cried Mrs. Lambert, greatly agitated, "what are you saying?" She stretched out her hand to take the letter, and, in her concern, half-rose from her chair.

"I will read you his letter, my dear," said Mr. Lambert. "Try to control yourself." He looked at her calmly and firmly, and she sat down again, with tears welling up in her soft, beautiful eyes.

Mr. Lambert cleared his throat, and read:

"Dear brother and Honored Sir; I hope this finds you and my good, dear mother, and my dear sister, Gertrude, and all your dear little ones in good health. I am not in good health. I am thinking that my time is about up although not an old man, just forty-two which is the Prime of life. The doctor, who is a good fellow, thinks it is about up with me but I have got a lot out of life and have no complaints to make. But I would ask you a favor, and hope that you will see your way to granting me this, seeing that I am a dying man and have no one to turn to and being in a forran country. My son, Paul, will soon be left alone, I fear, which is a bad thing for a young lad and I am hoping that perhaps being kinsfolk and he being a likely young fellow, good hearted though a bit unlicked, you may find your way to giving him a home until he can shift for himself. I haven't done all I should have done by the lad, perhaps, living a kind of touch and go life, and I am hoping that you may find your way to letting him get some education which I think a valuable thing for a man, though having no great love of letters myself. This is a great favor I am asking I know but I trust you may find it in your heart to do me this favor and the boy will not forget it. The boy will work for you also and do as you say. He is sixteen years old now, and an orphan my wife being dead these ten years or so.

"My dear brother, I beg you to forget me and my failings, which have been many and show your kindness to my poor boy. And now I will close with respectful regards to yourself and give my love to my dear old mother and to my dear sister and all her sweet children who must be big youngsters now.

"Respectfully your brother, "Franz Winkler.

"P. S. Am not letting on to the boy what the doctor says as he will take it hard and I can't bear that. Have just told him that I am sending him back to America with a friend, Mr. Morse, and that I will join him as soon as I am in better shape, and have told him how to find you."

A silence followed the reading of this letter, and the emotions that it had roused among the members of the little family, were plainly to be seen in their faces. The twins who had not been able to understand it but who felt that it had brought some grave news, looked first at their father and then at their mother. Carl watched Mr. Lambert, and Elise's plump, rosy face was solemn; but Jane, as if she were pierced by an understanding of the pathos that was magnified by the very clumsy illiterateness of the letter, sat perfectly still; her vivid face contracted with a look of genuine pain.

Mrs. Lambert was weeping. Then, suddenly, old Grandmother Winkler, who had not said a word, got up, took her son's letter out of Mr. Lambert's hand, and leaning on her cane, went out of the room.

The astonishment and awkwardness depicted in Mr. Lambert's face showed that he had not guessed that the letter would produce such an effect.

After a moment or two, he cleared his throat, and said in a gentle but somewhat unctuous tone to his wife:

"My dear, we must not be impatient under our afflictions. This is very sad; but it is the will of heaven, and we should learn to endure our sorrows--er--uncomplainingly. Furthermore, Providence has seen fit to soften this blow by--er--that is after all, you have not seen Franz in ten years or more."

"Yes, Peter. Of course," answered Mrs. Lambert, meekly wiping her eyes on her napkin. "But when I think of poor Franz--all alone--and the boy--that poor child--"

"Of course my dear, your brother may have deceived himself. Come, he may be on the road to health at this moment. Let us hope for the best. Let us prepare to welcome our nephew, and perhaps,--who knows, Franz himself may be spared to us."

Mrs. Lambert's face brightened. She was naturally optimistic, and eagerly grasped this ray of hope. Moreover, while she had been very fond of her brother, in years of absence his features had somewhat faded from her memory. She was not fond of sorrow or melancholy, and was ready to exchange grief for hope, and tears for sanguine smiles the moment she saw a possibility of the future setting her fears at nothing.

"Yes, yes. What you say is quite true, Peter. After all Franz may recover completely."

"Certainly," said Mr. Lambert, briskly. "And now my dear, let us consider."

"Is Paul our cousin, Papa?" asked Jane.

Mr. Lambert ignored her question.

"Then," continued Jane, who had been following up her own train of thought, "then Paul is a Winkler. And so he can go into the business when he is a man."

This simple observation, which had not yet occurred to anyone, called forth looks of surprise.

"That is quite true!" exclaimed Mr. Lambert.

"But of course!" cried his wife.

"I see the beneficent hand of Providence in this," said Mr. Lambert, who was fond of thinking that Heaven had his domestic affairs very much in mind. "Yes, we must prepare to welcome our nephew. I hope, my dear, that he will not prove difficult to manage. I hope that he is not lacking in a grateful heart."

"Poor child. No father or mother, and so young," murmured Mrs. Lambert, her eyes again filling with tears. "And I never even knew that Franz had a child. I had forgotten even that he had married."

"Yon can put a cot in Carl's room," suggested Mr. Lambert; "I presume that the boy will arrive in a day or two. And now, children, it is a quarter past seven."

Everyone rose from the table, and the day's routine began again in its accustomed groove. Mr. Lambert departed for the warehouse. Elise helped the fat young servant girl to clear away the dishes; Carl went out to bring in wood for the stove; even the twins had their household tasks which had to be finished before they started to school at eight o'clock.

But Jane went off to find her Grandmother. Behind the counter, in the bakeshop, the old woman was sitting, weeping quietly; and the slow tears of age were trickling down her wrinkled, brown face, while she strained her eyes to read the crooked awkward lines of her son's letter.

"He was a good boy," she said, taking Jane's little hand in her gnarled old one. "I understood him, never fear. He was a brave, fine boy--and he always loved his old mother. I know that. Didn't he send me this pretty shawl--"

"But Granny, darling, he may get well. Don't cry, Granny. Don't you cry." She kissed the old woman, and patted her, feeling awed and oppressed by this aged sorrow that she could not share.

After a minute, she quietly left Grandmother Winkler, and in an unusually silent, and subdued mood, went away to help the twins.

At half past eight, Elise had seen that the two little girls had their books and their packages of sandwiches, and started them off to school, Carl and Jane marching behind.

"All right," said Jane, and Elise, always busy, always placid and gentle, went back to her work.

"Think about what?" said Carl, gruffly.

Carl was never very enthusiastic about sharing anything with anyone and his fussy love of neatness reached a degree that one would far sooner expect to find in a crabbed old maid than in a boy of sixteen years.

Jane did not reply to this indignant objection.

"What do you think he'll be like?" she asked next, scuffling through the piles of ruddy brown leaves that lay thick on the uneven brick walk.

"I think he'll be a big, roistering bully. That's what I think," answered Carl savagely; his lips set in a stubborn line, and the lenses of his spectacles glinted so angrily, that Jane decided to drop the subject.

For several minutes they walked along in silence: the twins marching ahead, chattering like little magpies, their yellow pigtails bobbing under their round brown felt hats. Each clutched her spelling book and reader, and her package of sandwiches and cookies; each wore a bright blue dress, a bright red sweater, and a snow white pinafore.

It was fully a mile to the school, but as a rule the brisk young Lamberts walked it in twenty minutes. This morning, however, Jane dawdled shamelessly.

"I don't feel like school to-day a bit," she remarked, looking up through the trees.

"You never do," returned Carl, dryly, "but you've got to go all the same. I bet you don't play hookey again in a hurry."

"H'm?" said Jane, "why not?"

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