HIS STORY TOLD

 THE following day was Saturday, when as a rule Rufus went off in the afternoon for a long tramp with one of his fellow-clerks. But he declined all such proposals made to him before he left the bank, and after an early dinner at his lodgings, he arrayed himself in his best suit of clothes, and marched boldly across to call on his opposite neighbors.

A sharp knock at the door brought a slatternly maidservant.

"Is Mrs. Clay at home? I should like to see her. Will you take in my card?"

The girl looked bewildered, and then showed him into the front sitting-room, where Greta was seated by her mother's couch reading aloud.

Her little face at once brightened with smiles.

"Mother, here is the gentleman who was so good to me and held the umbrella."

Mrs. Clay looked up and gave the young man a gentle welcome. Before long he was quite at home, carrying on an animated conversation with mother and daughter. He was making Greta laugh with a reminiscence of his boyish days, when the door opened suddenly and the redoubtable "Becca" appeared.

She was a tall plain-featured woman, with a not unkindly face; but her manner was severity itself, when she saw the intruder, and timid Mrs. Clay looked perturbed and frightened at once.

"It is Mr. Tracy who lives opposite, Rebecca. He has taken such a kindly interest in Greta that I have told him we shall be glad to see him at any time."

Rebecca folded her arms and looked defiantly at the audacious young man.

"My mistress is not well enough to receive visitors. I fear this interview will be too exciting for her."

Rufus rose at once.

"I am very sorry if I have fatigued you, Mrs. Clay. I trust your nurse will forgive me. But now you know me and my antecedents, you will not prohibit your little girl from speaking to me when we pass each other on the road?"

"Certainly not," murmured Mrs. Clay, looking appealingly at her maid.

Greta sprang up from her seat, and putting her hand coaxingly upon Rebecca's arm said softly:

"Now, Becca, don't be cross. Mother and I are friends with Mr. Tracy, will you be friends too?"

"I assure you I am respectable," said Rufus, the humor of the situation bringing a mischievous sparkle to his eyes. "I am not a housebreaker in disguise, nor have I any sinister designs on your mistress or her daughter. Will it ease your mind if I tell you I am the son of a clergyman, and that it is only lately I have come to this neighborhood; I am a lonely young man in want of friends. Shall I promise never to enter this house again unless I am invited to do so? I only wish to continue an acquaintance with my little friend here!"

"Miss Greta is in no want of such unequal friendship," said Rebecca sternly.

"May I style myself her protector then, from all the perils of that solitary walk?"

"Perils! Fiddlesticks! Miss Greta must learn to take care of herself."

Rufus thought discretion was the better part of valor, so he bowed himself out, quietly resolving not to be worsted by a woman.

And Monday morning found the little maiden and young man walking cheerfully and contentedly into town together.

"Becca is very kind, but she doesn't think like mother," said the child, shrewdly, "and as she manages us, mother tries to think like her. Becca says there are only two sorts of people in the world. Those born to be helped, and those born to help them. And Becca says I am born to help people."

"I wonder which sort I am?" laughed Rufus. "You are a walking dictionary of Rebecca's wisdom. How do you remember all her sage remarks? She is bringing you up a veritable little Spartan."

"What is a Spartan?"

"A very unpleasantly proper child who never lets her feelings get the better of her. Do you think your mother would let you come to tea with me to-morrow night?"

Greta's eyes sparkled at the thought, then fell at the remembrance of "Becca."

"I'll try to let Becca make me come, but she—she doesn't like you—she says young men think they are the lords of creation, but they are slaves of self-will. I'll tell you what she says to-morrow morning."

Rebecca was won over, and punctually at five o'clock the next evening, the little maiden stood on the doorstep opposite her own, and enquired in a trembling voice for Mr. Rufus Tracy.

She was shown up to his room, and came into it with a radiant face. It was not a luxuriously furnished apartment, nor yet a very tidy one, but Greta was charmed with the novelty of a bachelor's den. The smell of tobacco and the row of pipes on the mantelpiece puzzled her sorely.

"Why do you smoke?" she asked, presently, as perched on a horse-hair sofa, she watched the stout landlady bring in the tea-tray. "Does it warm your mouth? My mouth never feels cold."

"It keeps me in a good temper," was the laughing reply.

"Would it keep me from feeling cross when the girls tease me at school?"

Her questions ceased when she came to the tea-table. She thought she had never seen such a grand tea. Hot steak and fried potatoes, shrimps and watercress, sardines and cheese, and a currant cake. Was there ever such plentiful fare for two people only?

And Rufus watching the little thin white face flush pink with excitement, wondered if Rebecca was as chary with her food as with her smiles.

"This is my dinner," he said, "and I have a hearty appetite, so you must follow my example."

"But I have had my dinner," said the child, "I always have it at school, and I never have anything but bread and butter and milk and water for tea. Sometimes Becca lets me make toast, but she says it takes too much butter for me to have often."

Tea passed off delightfully; afterward Greta was shown photographs and pictures, and then the two drifted off into talk, until under the spell of the child's sympathetic eyes, Rufus found himself telling her his history.

"Once there were two boys who lost their father when quite young; and their mother brought them up with the longing desire in her heart, that they might prove great men, and bring honor and glory to their name."

"What does that mean?" asked Greta, with interest.

"Do something grand or noble to make their mother proud of them, and win themselves fame in the world. The eldest one she meant to be a clergyman, so she sent him to Oxford, and thought of the time when she might see him made a bishop. The younger one went into the army, and he got on very fairly well, for he was sent out to India and distinguished himself when only a corporal. But the eldest son, alas! turned out a failure. He wasn't cut out for a clergyman: he hated the idea of it, and at last left college and told his mother it was waste of money to keep him there. She was bitterly disappointed and very angry—justly or unjustly we will not say. She told him that if he would not take up the profession which was open to him, he must not expect her to keep him at home in idleness, and she said she would have nothing more to do with him if he refused to carry out her wishes. So one day when they were talking about it, he told her he would go away. And he packed up his portmanteau, and left his home, and after a great struggle to keep himself alive on what used barely to clothe him, he found an opening in a little country bank, and when he got work he began to get happy again. It was only in the evenings he sometimes had sad thoughts about his mother; and so he was glad when one day fortune threw across his path a little white-faced sprite. He thought he would ask her to tea sometimes to cheer him up, and one night she came."

"What was she like?" asked Greta, eagerly. "How was she dressed?"

"She had a little tiny face with two big eyes, which always seemed looking away into the future with big thoughts behind them. I think she was dressed in a white pinafore, and a blue sash, and she had a blue bow amongst her curls. She looked sometimes as wise as Solomon, and sometimes like a doll or baby. She had a trick of nursing her chin in her hands, and of giving an important little shake to her head as she spoke."

"She was dressed just like me," observed Greta, thoughtfully; then she added:

"Do finish the story. Did the mother come one day and take her son home again? And did they live happily ever after?"

"Ah, that I don't know. The story is not finished."

"Who made it up? Is it a true story?"

"Yes, it is a true one."

"Oh, do let me make an end to it, may I? I do tell stories to mother when Becca is out."

"Go ahead, then."

And lounging back in his easy chair with his pipe in his mouth, Rufus watched the expressive little face in the firelight.

"This poor son got sadder and sadder without his mother, and the little spirit—was it? No—sprite—she used to wipe his tears away and try to comfort him, but she couldn't, and so one day she flew away to his mother and whispered in her ear all about her poor, sad son. And the mother—she sat up straight in her chair, and she said, 'Tell him I'll come to him when he is ill,' so the sprite flew back, but she couldn't make the son ill though she tried hard. She put pins and stones in his coffee and tea; she pushed him downstairs to break his leg; she poured a can of cold water over him when he wasn't looking, but it was no good. And then she remembered it was God who made people ill, so she prayed to Him, and God sent the son some scarlet fever. Then he was very ill, and the doctor said he must die, so the sprite flew to his mother, and she came, and the son put his arms round her neck, and said, 'Mother, I'll be a clergyman now,' and then God made him better, and he went home and lived happily ever after."

"And what about the sprite?"

"Oh, she went back to the buttercups—she lived in one. A sprite is a fairy, isn't it?"

"This one was not. I will finish the story. She grew up to be a beautiful lady, and the son married her. Isn't that a proper ending? He took her to a beautiful home, and they lived happily ever after."

Greta shook her head.

"Becca says married people are the worst off people in all the world. She says everybody's troubles begin when they marry."

Rufus laughed scoffingly.

"Becca is an old maid. They all talk like that. Ask her one day if anybody has asked her to marry them, and see what she says."

"Becca says life is an effort when you aren't married, but when you are, it's a battle!"

The child delivered Rebecca's sentiments with such emphasis and gravity that Rufus laughed again.

"We'll leave Rebecca, I don't find her interesting. Talk of something else."

Greta looked up at him thoughtfully.

"Are you earning your living?" she asked.

"Yes; I am managing it first-rate, and saving a little as I go along. You don't know what a screw I have become."

"Who are you saving it for? Your mother?"

Rufus smiled a little bitterly.

"My mother is very comfortable. She wants nothing that I can give her."

"Are you saving it for God?"

Rufus looked startled; then he laughed.

"You're the funniest little mortal I have ever come across! For whom should I save money if not for myself? Haven't I the best right to it? Isn't it mine for good and all? I am my own master, and I intend to be. My life is what I shall choose to make it. I am not going to rust in this country town for long; it is only the first step in the ladder. You wait till I am a rich man, Greta, and then you will know the worth of my savings!"

"I thought people who saved money for themselves were called misers," said Greta, with a puzzled look; "and Becca says we live for other people, not ourselves!"

"Hang Rebecca!"

Rufus's tone was irritable; then seeing he had frightened the child, he went on—

"I am saving my money for my future wife, Greta. I shall spend it on a nice house for her, and make her happy and comfortable for the rest of her life."

"Where is she?"

"I don't quite know. Somewhere in the world, I suppose; but I haven't met her yet."

They chatted on, and Greta went home that night with fresh thoughts and ideas circulating through her busy brain.

"That dragon is training her to be a cold-blooded prig!" was Rufus's mental ejaculation. "And yet how pretty the little mite looks as she repeats her nurse's denunciations!"

As spring came, and following it the summer, many were the expeditions that Rufus made with his little friend; and his happy, light-hearted buoyancy infected the old-fashioned little maiden to such a degree that her mother hardly knew her sometimes when her merry laugh rang through the house.

"I think," Rufus said to Greta one Saturday afternoon as he lay in the depths of a bluebell wood and watched her careering round the bushes after a butterfly, "that we have mutually benefited and improved each other by our 'unequal friendship,' as Becca terms it. I have made you younger, and you have made me older. There was room for improvement in both of us!"

Greta stopped her play and regarded him seriously.

"I don't quite understand you; but Becca says I'm getting a romp."

"And I am becoming a prig," responded Rufus, a laughing light in his dark eyes as he spoke; "but your wise speeches are making me think. Imagine my musings in such a heavenly scene as this, to be upon life, and how to use it without wasting it! Come along, we will have a game of hide-and-seek!"

There were times when, as he said, the little, old-fashioned maiden startled him by her earnest views of life; and though her remarks were often only repetitions of Becca's theories, they were none the less sapient and convincing.