“Well,” said Chris, “it’s comforting that you didn’t think I was a snob. But I’m not so sure I wasn’t in a fair way to become one, come to think of it. You see, your instance of my courtesy wasn’t a fair one, for I recognized the lady in you. I’m not so sure I’d have picked up those two flappers, even if they had a whole truckload to carry. So, you think the raw deal that has been handed out to me is to teach me something, do you? You think I ought to be thankful for it? Losing my home and my college diploma and my car and everything that makes life worthwhile?”
“You haven’t lost your home,” said Natalie quickly, “nor your father and mother and sister. You still have a place to live, and I’m pretty sure it’s a real home, even if it isn’t as big and elegant as it used to be. And maybe there are bigger and better things than college diplomas in life.”
Chris stared. “Say, you talk like the fellow that preached in our church the last Sunday before the crash. He said we ought to be thankful for everything that’s handed out. But I didn’t know anybody ever really took it to heart.”
“Yes,” said Natalie simply, “he’s wonderful. He has charge of the mission in Water Street. Did you ever go down there? It’s very interesting.”
“No,” said Chris shortly, “but I guess if he had a little of the hardness he’s talking about handed out to him, he’d sing a different tune. I don’t see singing praise when the earth is reeling under you. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“Yes, he knows,” said Natalie sadly. “He lost his wife and two children of smallpox over in China. He was a missionary there. He’s only been back on a year’s furlough, on account of a very severe operation he had to have. He’s going back in a couple of months now, going to take charge of a leper hospital, and doesn’t expect ever to return to this country. But he’s a great man, and he knows what it is to praise God under heavy trial. He calls it ‘singing in the rain.’ ”
“Good night!” said Chris earnestly. “I guess I’d better shut up. I’m not even in the same class with a man like that. He must be some kind of superman.”
“No,” said Natalie quickly, “he’s only an ordinary man with a great God. God can do great things with people who are willing to let Him.”
They had reached Natalie’s door now, and Chris handed her the bundles.
“Well, you sure have given me something to think about,” he said gravely. “Good night, and thank you, more than I can tell, for what you have done for me.”
Chapter 8
Natalie’s mother looked at her anxiously as she came in, noticed the bright color in her cheeks, the light in her eyes, and sighed.
“Did someone come home with you, dear?” she asked guardedly.
Natalie turned a disarming smile on her mother and put down her armful of bundles.
“Why yes, Mother,” she said happily. “I don’t know how I should have managed all these bundles if he hadn’t. My arm has been aching like the dickens all day where I twisted it, wrestling with that window with the broken cord last night. Just look at what I’ve got, Mother, a whole lot of celery. Isn’t that great! It has just been frosted on the outside and turned brown and doesn’t sell very well in consequence, but the heart of it is as sweet as can be. I tasted some and it’s wonderful. We can make apple salad, and meat salad, and celery soup, and a lot of things besides eating the best of it just plain.”
“It wasn’t one of the store men, was it Natalie?” asked her mother as she wiped her hands on the roller towel and came over to look at the celery. “I wouldn’t encourage them to continue to get intimate, if I were you. It isn’t wise. If you let one of them come home with you, another might, and you don’t know what they are all like. Even if we have to go without some things, I wouldn’t bring so much you can’t carry it yourself. Or—of course, sometimes Janice might come up and meet you about closing time.”
“Oh, Mother dear!” laughed Natalie, stooping to kiss her little mother. “Don’t you worry. Every one of those boys in the store is nice and pleasant and courteous. They don’t hire any other kind there. And they all have their girls. You don’t need to worry about me. They don’t want to go with me. They tell me about their girls every chance they get, at noon time or in the morning. They say where they went the night before and ask my advice about what to get them for Christmas. I’m a regular old-maid auntie in the store, so I’m perfectly safe. Nobody thinks of me there as a girl, you know; I’m just the cashier. But this wasn’t one of them. At least he isn’t yet, though he’s going to be Monday morning. They’ve just hired him. Mother, it was Chris Walton!”
“Chris Walton! Again!” said the mother with a strange alarm in her voice. “Oh, Natalie, I’m just afraid you will get interested in him! Why does he keep coming around you?”
Janice appeared in the front room doorway then.
“What do you mean, Natty, Chris Walton working in the store? Your store? How did he come to do that? Goodness! You’d think his father could get him a different job, in some bank or lawyer’s office or something, wouldn’t you? Mother, did you hear what Natalie said? Chris Walton is going to work in the grocery store.”
“Oh,” said the mother in perplexity. “Not really? Is that what you said, Natalie? How strange!”
“Isn’t it?” said Natalie. “I couldn’t believe he would. He’s always seemed so exclusive and somehow remote. But he came into the store this afternoon to buy bread, and—”
“Natalie, has he been coming there to meet you?” asked her mother, quick to apprehend any possible danger to her offspring.
“Why no, of course not,” said Natalie shortly, her brow quite vexed looking. “How silly! Why, he didn’t even know I was there till he came to pay his check, and then he stopped a minute and said he was looking for a job. He hasn’t gone back to college, Mother, though it’s his senior year. He said he had walked all over the city and couldn’t find anything to do anywhere, and he laughingly asked me if I knew of a job. Of course, then I had to tell him we had an opening right there in the store, just came that day. It was Tom Bonar’s job. He’s the one with the red hair, you know. He got a telegram that his father died, and he had to go back to Wisconsin right away and stay with his mother. And our manager had been terribly upset about it all day because he didn’t know where to turn for the right man. I didn’t suppose Chris would look at it or think about it, but he seemed so terribly in earnest that I had to let him know about it. But Mother, he just jumped at the chance. He was real humble about it. Said he was right down at the foot of the ladder, ready to do anything. He had a good spirit, Mother. And so he came back at closing time, and they hired him.”
“Oh, dear Natalie, child, I’m afraid you are going to get interested in him. He’ll be right there in the store all day, and you’ll see him a lot.”
“Why shouldn’t she get interested in him, Mother?” broke in Janice. “He’s a prince. I should think you’d be glad she could have such a friend.”
“But he’ll not stay there,” said the anxious mother. “He’ll get something pretty soon and sail off into his own social standing again, and Natalie will be left lonely and heartbroken.”
“Oh, Mother dear!” said Natalie. “Please, please don’t think of me always in terms of matrimony. I have no desire to fall in love or get married or break my heart or any of those tempestuous things. Forget it, and trust God. Chris is just a nice boy I knew in school. And there’s nothing wrong about his carrying my bundles home once in a while, although I’ll manage it, of course, not to have it necessary. I guess you’ve brought me up decently, Mother, and I hope you can trust me. Besides, I don’t wear my heart on the outside where every passing thing can knock against it and break it. He was only grateful to me for telling him about the job tonight. He probably won’t have time to even look at me again. We’re busy in that store, Mother. We haven’t time for nonsense. But, here’s something, I had a chance to witness for Christ tonight.” And she told of her conversation with Chris.
&
nbsp; When she had finished, her mother came and kissed her gently on the forehead.
“Forgive me, dear, for being overanxious. You and Jan are all I have, and I keep fluttering about you like an old hen over her chickens, I suppose. I guess I can trust my girl to be careful and discreet, and I am glad you were brave enough to talk to him that way. I’ve always heard his mother and father were good Christians. His father is an elder in our church, you know. But, of course, I’ve never known them personally. And you can’t tell these days what a son is just by what his father was.”
“Well,” said Natalie, “I told him about our mission and the Bible study. Maybe he’ll go sometime. He seemed interested. Now I suppose you’ll go and worry about that. But if Jan fixes her lessons so she can go Monday nights with me, we’d be together, and it isn’t the least likely he’d walk home with us anymore. Mother, he’s just an old schoolmate being polite. For pity’s sake, don’t make me so self-conscious about him, or I’ll have to get another job.”
“No, no, I won’t dear,” said her mother quickly. “I shouldn’t have spoken at all, I suppose, only I’m so afraid for you and so sorry about you that you don’t have the right companionship.”
“I should worry about companions!” said Natalie cheerfully. “I’ve got Jan, haven’t I? What’s better than a perfectly good sister? Is that cocoa on the stove? Look, it’s boiling over! My, I’m hungry. These late Saturday hours and the rush at dinnertime make me like a little starved street child! Isn’t that great? Can’t you all sit down and eat something, too?”
“Yes,” said Janice. “We saved our oranges from this morning, and yours, too. You didn’t eat yours at breakfast, you know, so we are going to eat together.”
Then the three sat down to a simple little meal in the neat white kitchen and had as good a time as if they had been three girls, chatting and planning.
“Natalie, I’m sorry I said what I did. I don’t want you to think I don’t trust you, and I’m glad of the way you are using your influence with that young man. We’ll all pray for him, shall we, that he may find the Lord and get to know Him?”
“Oh yes, Mother, that will be wonderful. We’ll claim that promise ‘Where two of you shall agree,’ won’t we? Mother, he would be a power, if he were really saved. You know, of course, he’s a member of the church like most of the rest of the young folks that go to our church. But the way he talked, I don’t think he ever prays or reads his Bible, and it seemed as if he didn’t really believe anything much. He spoke as if it were just all a big lot of guesswork and it might as well be any other religion as Christianity. It isn’t likely I’ll have another chance to speak about it to him. He’ll probably go his own way after tonight. But we can pray, and that will reach him without his knowing we have anything to do with it.”
“Dear child!” said the mother, with a loving look at her eldest daughter.
Meantime, Chris had walked thoughtfully, briskly, down the street. As he neared his own door, he remembered that he had a job, and he began to whistle cheerfully. His mother heard him as she was hanging up the cleansed dishtowels on a little string above the range, and smiled. It was the first time she had heard her boy whistle since the crash came.
“Well,” announced Chris as he came in, “I guess I’ve landed a job at last. It isn’t manager of the Standard Oil Company, nor president of the Rockefeller Foundation, but I guess it’ll at least salt enough for our means.”
His father looked up from the evening paper, a light of pleasure in his eyes. His mother came in and beamed at him, and Elise appeared in the doorway behind her, eagerly.
“What is it?” asked his sister.
He took a deep breath as if he were about to plunge into a cold ocean and said, “Errand boy in the grocery store!” And then watched them keenly to get their first reaction.
“A grocery?” said his sister, aghast.
“Fine!” said his father quickly.
“That’s a clean business,” said his mother interestedly.
Then Elise, with bright, fond eyes, smiling at him—“I’m proud of you, Chrissy!”
Chris drew another deep breath, this time of relief, and grinned.
“Well, don’t get too set up,” he said sheepishly, “they’re only going to try me out Monday. They may not keep me. I may prove too good for ’em, see?”
They had family worship, Father giving thanks for them in the funny little crowded rooms, where even a bed and a small old-fashioned bureau made too many things in the room. Boy! But he had a game family! Look how they took his grocery job! Even Elise, who, being in school might get kidded about it! They amused themselves calling back and forth to one another through the thin partitions and trying to make a joke of the strangeness, but after all there was a hominess about it that had a pleasant side. Even Chris had a throb of thanksgiving as he realized how sane and well and altogether normal his father was. In fact, now that he thought about it, his father was more cheerful than he had been for the past year or so. Probably the bank’s affairs had been growing more and more complicated and worried him, and now it was good to be down to rock bottom and try to climb up bravely again.
On the whole Chris felt happier than he had since the trouble came. He got into bed with a pleasant thump of his pillow and a cheerful good-night to them all. But he did not sleep at once. He began to think of Natalie and what she had said. What an unusual girl she was. Not at all the shy mouse of a thing she had seemed in school. He wished he had known her before, when he was in a position to show her some nice times. It would have been fun to give her rides and take her to class entertainments and parties. Now that he thought of it, he couldn’t remember ever having seen her at one. Probably the girls had snubbed her, too. Well, she had a lot more to her than any of them. If he ever got the chance, he’d let them all know it, too.
Strange things she had said about God and being thankful for the hard things in her life. He didn’t know another girl who would talk like that. He wondered how she got that way and fell asleep thinking how well she had answered everything he had said. Well, perhaps there was something in it after all. Dad seemed to have something to lean upon. He couldn’t understand what it was. He vaguely wished he could.
Then he gave a bitter thought or two to his old high school friends off in college. Not a line to him about their frats or how the last football game had gone. Never a cheering word or regret that he was not with them. Oh, at first, of course, that time they came after him, but when they found they couldn’t carry him off in triumph to be their hero in college as he had been, that was the end.
True, he hadn’t written to them, but that was different. He hadn’t anything to write about.
Suddenly, he knew as plainly as if a voice had spoken it that their ways had parted definitely. Life had swept them into separate worlds. Would it ever bring them into touch again?
Chapter 9
When Natalie started for the store on Monday morning, she noticed a man standing at the corner of the street with his hat drawn over his eyes and a watch in his hand.
A look of annoyance passed over her face. The same man had been there three times before, watching her come out of the house, almost as if he were waiting for her, timing her. He always gave her an ugly, familiar look as she passed, though she never seemed to notice him. She shrank from encountering it again. He was a big, tough-looking man, and she felt almost afraid of him, although it seemed absurd in broad daylight on a street where many people passed.
Impulsively, she turned the other way and walked around the whole block to escape him. But when she reached the avenue, there he was again at the next corner, standing in just the same position, watching her, but this time with an ugly, amused leer on his face, as if he wanted to let her know that he knew she had gone out of her way to escape.
She turned her face the other way and tried to act as if she had not seen him. It was getting on her nerves to have him do this way. The expression on his face somehow made her shudder. Perhaps he ha
d no idea of watching her at all. Perhaps it was all her imagination.
And then, as if to answer her thought, the man spoke.
“Hello, girlie! Can’t get away from me, can ya?” he said, and her heart beat wildly. For an instant she wanted to run, but her feet felt like lead, and it occurred to her that she must control herself and walk steadily. She must not let him know she was frightened. She had made a mistake, of course, going out of her way. He must have seen her hesitate at her own door and then turn the other way to avoid him. She would not do that again. She would just hold her head and walk by him, as if he were not there. Perhaps she ought to warn Janice. It would be terrible if he got to bothering Jan on her way to school.
She forced herself to walk steadily down the avenue, but she was trembling so, she could scarcely stand up.
She made a distinct effort to put the man out of her thoughts. She would not look back to see if he were following her. He was probably just a common fellow without very high standards. There was nothing to be really afraid of and, of course, there were policemen whom she’d call upon if he attempted to follow her. She might report it to the one that often came into the store. It was just as well to have a man like that cleared of the neighborhood. It really wasn’t safe for a fifteen-year-old girl like Janice to have to pass such a man. Of course, Janice would have to learn to take care of herself, too. But somehow she felt ages older than her sister and as if she must protect her. Above all, she must not let her mother find out that that man had spoken to her. It would frighten her so that she would be anxious all the time either of them were away from the house.
She tried to concentrate her thoughts on the dress she was planning for Janice, on the other dress she meant to make possible for Janice’s commencement next spring. She wondered how much she dared put away each week from her meager salary to save for that time? She herself hadn’t minded so much staying out of the activities of her school at commencement time, but she hated to have Jan miss everything. Jan did love good times so much, and she had so few of them. Jan had been so sweet and good about staying out of school while Mother was sick, and now that Mother was well enough to be left alone all day, she did hope that Jan could have a little more freedom. Work would come soon enough. Also, now that Mother didn’t have to have extra food and medicine and a doctor all the time, there would be more chance of saving a little for a spring wardrobe for Janice. It was so hard for Janice to always wear makeovers because she was the smallest in the family. For once she should have a dress, perhaps two, which she might go to the store and pick out for herself and try on.