“Take your places, my dear friends all,” cried she; “seat yourselves without ceremony, and you shall be made happy with such tea as not many of the world’s working-people, except yourselves, will find in their cups tonight. After this one supper, you may drink buttermilk, if you please. Tonight we will quaff this nectar, which, I assure you, could not be bought with gold.”
We all sat down—grizzly Silas Foster, his rotund helpmate, and the two bouncing handmaidens, included—and looked at one another in a friendly but rather awkward way. It was the first practical trial of our theories of equal brotherhood and sisterhood; and we people of superior cultivation and refinement (for as such, I presume, we unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves) felt as if something were already accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth is, however, that the laboring oar was with our unpolished companions; it being far easier to condescend than to accept of condescension. Neither did I refrain from questioning, in secret, whether some of us—and Zenobia among the rest—would so quietly have taken our places among these good people, save for the cherished consciousness that it was not by necessity but choice. Though we saw fit to drink our tea out of earthen cups tonight, and in earthen company, it was at our own option to use pictured porcelain and handle silver forks again tomorrow. This same salvo, as to the power of regaining our former position, contributed much, I fear, to the equanimity with which we subsequently bore many of the hardships and humiliations of a life of toil. If ever I have deserved (which has not often been the case, and, I think, never), but if ever I did deserve to be soundly cuffed by a fellow mortal, for secretly putting weight upon some imaginary social advantage, it must have been while I was striving to prove myself ostentatiously his equal and no more. It was while I sat beside him on his cobbler’s bench, or clinked my hoe against his own in the cornfield, or broke the same crust of bread, my earth-grimed hand to his, at our noontide lunch. The poor, proud man should look at both sides of sympathy like this.
The silence which followed upon our sitting down to table grew rather oppressive; indeed, it was hardly broken by a word, during the first round of Zenobia’s fragrant tea.
“I hope,” said I, at last, “that our blazing windows will be visible a great way off. There is nothing so pleasant and encouraging to a solitary traveller, on a stormy night, as a flood of firelight seen amid the gloom. These ruddy window panes cannot fail to cheer the hearts of all that look at them. Are they not warm with the beacon-fire which we have kindled for humanity?”
“The blaze of that brushwood will only last a minute or two longer,” observed Silas Foster; but whether he meant to insinuate that our moral illumination would have as brief a term, I cannot say.
“Meantime,” said Zenobia, “it may serve to guide some wayfarer to a shelter.”
And, just as she said this, there came a knock at the house door.
“There is one of the world’s wayfarers,” said I.
“Ay, ay, just so!” quoth Silas Foster. “Our firelight will draw stragglers, just as a candle draws dorbugs on a summer night.”
Whether to enjoy a dramatic suspense, or that we were selfishly contrasting our own comfort with the chill and dreary situation of the unknown person at the threshold, or that some of us city folk felt a little startled at the knock which came so unseasonably, through night and storm, to the door of the lonely farmhouse—so it happened that nobody, for an instant or two, arose to answer the summons. Pretty soon there came another knock. The first had been moderately loud; the second was smitten so forcibly that the knuckles of the applicant must have left their mark in the door panel.
“He knocks as if he had a right to come in,” said Zenobia, laughing. “And what are we thinking of?—It must be Mr. Hollingsworth!”
Hereupon I went to the door, unbolted, and flung it wide open. There, sure enough, stood Hollingsworth, his shaggy greatcoat all covered with snow, so that he looked quite as much like a polar bear as a modern philanthropist.
“Sluggish hospitality this!” said he, in those deep tones of his, which seemed to come out of a chest as capacious as a barrel. “It would have served you right if I had lain down and spent the night on the doorstep, just for the sake of putting you to shame. But here is a guest who will need a warmer and softer bed.”
And, stepping back to the wagon in which he had journeyed hither, Hollingsworth received into his arms and deposited on the doorstep a figure enveloped in a cloak. It was evidently a woman; or, rather—judging from the ease with which he lifted her, and the little space which she seemed to fill in his arms—a slim and unsubstantial girl. As she showed some hesitation about entering the door, Hollingsworth, with his usual directness and lack of ceremony, urged her forward not merely within the entry, but into the warm and strongly lighted kitchen.
“Who is this?” whispered I, remaining behind with him, while he was taking off his greatcoat.
“Who? Really, I don’t know,” answered Hollingsworth, looking at me with some surprise. “It is a young person who belongs here, however; and no doubt she had been expected. Zenobia, or some of the women folks, can tell you all about it.”
“I think not,” said I, glancing towards the newcomer and the other occupants of the kitchen. “Nobody seems to welcome her. I should hardly judge that she was an expected guest.”
“Well, well,” said Hollingsworth quietly, “We’ll make it right.”
The stranger, or whatever she were, remained standing precisely on that spot of the kitchen floor
