A Daily Rate. Grace Livingston Hill

was sick, that it was hardly possible to eat at all. It seemed that Mrs. Morris had made some difference in things, though Celia had thought the night before that they could not very well be much worse. She had yet to find that there were many grades below even this in hoarding-houses.

      The Sabbath was not spent in studying Jehoiachin. It was full, but not with attending church services. She did not stay in her cold little room. She would have been glad to have been allowed to flee to that refuge. Instead, she made her headquarters in Mrs. Morris’ room and from there she began by degrees to order things about her, for Mrs. Morris seemed to have placed all her dependence upon her. It was she who answered the questions of Maggie about this thing and that, and who kept the entire list of boarders from coming in to talk to Mrs. Morris and commiserate with her. She also cleared up the room and gave a touch of something like decent care to the sick woman and her surroundings. Once or twice the patient opened her eyes, looked around, seemed to see the subtle difference, and then closed them again. Celia could not tell whether it pleased her or whether she was indifferent. But it was not in Celia’s nature to stay in a room and not make those little changes of picking up a shoe and straightening a quilt and hanging clothing out of sight. She did it as a matter of course.

      Occasionally, when she had time to do so, she wondered what aunt Hannah would think if she could see her now, and she smiled to think that this was just what she seemed to have had to do all her life,—give up to help other people. Then she thought perhaps it was the most blessed thing that could happen to her.

      Occasionally there would come to her a remembrance of that letter from the lawyers, and she would wonder what it meant, and how she could possibly go to work to find out.

      Sunday evening she sat with her landlady for a couple of hours. The pain seemed to be a little easier, though she had spent an intensely trying day. She seemed worried and inclined to talk. Celia tried to soothe her and persuade her to get calm for sleeping, but it was of no use.

      “How can I sleep,” answered the woman impatiently, “with so many things to fret about? Here am I on me back for the land knows how long, and the doctor wanting me to go to the hospital. How can I go to the hospital? What will become of me house, and me business if I up and off that way? And then when I get well, if I ever do, what’s to become of me? Me house would be empty, and me goods sold for grocery debts and other things, and I should starve. I might as well take the chances of dying outright now as that. I know I’d die in the hospital anyway, fretting about things. That Maggie never could carry on things, even if I was only to be gone two days. She never remembers to salt anything. Those two girls from that three-cent store have been complaining about the soup today already. They say it was just like dish water. And that German fellow came and told me tonight, with me lying sick here, that he’d have to leave if things didn’t improve. He said I ought to get better help! Think of it! How am I going about to get help and me on me back not able to stir? I don’t much care if he does leave, he always ate more than all the rest of them put together. But land, if I should get well right away and keep on, I don’t see where I’m coming to. There’s bills everywhere, milk and meat and groceries and dry goods. I don’t know how I’m ever to pay ’em. It’ll be just go on and pay a little, and get deeper in debt, and pay a little of that and make more debt, till I come to the end sometime, and I s’pose it might as well be now as any time.”

      Poor Celia! She had no words ready for such trouble as this. Debt had always been to her an awful thing, a great sin, never to be committed. She never realized that there were people to whom to be in debt seemed the normal way of living from day to day. She tried to think of something comforting to say, for how could a woman get well with such a weight as this on her mind? It would do no good to quote verses of Scripture about taking no thought for the morrow, nor to quote that sweet poem of hers about not bearing next week’s crosses. The poor woman would not understand. She had not so lived in the past as to know how to claim the promise of being cared for. She would scarcely understand if Celia tried to tell her that if she would but cast her care now on Jesus he would help her in some way at once. This was what she longed to say, but her experience of the night before led her to fear saying anything which might excite the poor nervous woman.

      “How much money do you need to pay all your debts and set you straight again?” she asked, thinking a little opportunity to go over her troubles might quiet her.

      “Oh, I don’t know,” wailed the poor woman. “If I just had a thousand dollars, I’d sell out me business and go somewhere and get out of it. Things seem to be getting worse and worse.” She began to cry feebly, and Celia was at her wits’ end. Everything she said seemed to make matters worse. Suddenly she began to sing in a low soft voice,

      “Jesus, Saviour, pilot me,

      Over life’s tempestuous sea.”

      Her voice was sweet and pure, and the woman paused to listen while Celia sang on until she fell asleep.

      Chapter 4

       Table of Contents

      Celia discovered that the firm of lawyers who had written her, had their office in a building not many blocks from Dobson and Co.’s store. She felt anxious to find out what they wanted of her, and so the next morning she obtained permission for a few minutes’ extra time at the lunch hour and hastened there.

      She reached the number at last, and searched the dirty sign board for the names “Rawley and Brown.” There it was almost the last one on the list, “Fourth floor, back.” She climbed up the four flights of stairs, for the elevator was out of order and arrived panting before the dingy office. When she entered the room, two elderly men sat at desks on which were piled many papers, and each was talking with a client who sat near his desk. They did not cease their talking with these men until Celia had stood for some moments by the door. Then the elder of the two looked over his glasses at her, and she ventured to say she was Miss Murray come in response to their letter. She was given a chair and asked to wait until Mr. Rawley was at leisure, and in the course of a few minutes both the clients had withdrawn, and she was left alone with the two lawyers. Over in the corner behind a screen, she could hear the click of a typewriter and see the top of a frizzy head which she knew must belong to the operator, probably the one who had written the letter to her.

      Mr. Rawley at last turned to her and began a list of questions. Celia answered everything she could, wondering when this mystery would be explained. As soon as she had finished telling Mr. Rawley the names of her different living relatives, he cleared his throat and looked at her sharply and yet thoughtfully:

      “Miss Murray,” said he, as if about to ask something very important, “did you ever hear your father speak of having a great uncle?”

      Celia paused to think a moment. She had been but ten years old when her father died. She could remember some conversations between her father and mother about relatives whom she had never seen. She searched her mind.

      “I’m not sure about the ‘great’ part of it. He might have been a great uncle, but I know there was one father called uncle Abner. He must have died long ago. He was a very old man then. I can remember father saying laughingly to mother one day that he would never see anybody prettier than she was, not if he lived to be as old as uncle Abner.”

      “A-ahem!” said Mr. Rawley, uncrossing his feet and recrossing them again and putting his two thumbs together as he looked at them seriously under his bushy eyebrows. “Yes. Ah! Well, and did that uncle have any—ah—heirs?”

      Celia wanted to laugh. She had already begun to plan how she would make aunt Hannah laugh by a letter she would write describing this interview with the lawyers, but she kept her face straight and answered steadily.

      “I do not know.”

      “Well, I must say, my dear young lady,” remarked Mr. Rawley, after a somewhat prolonged pause, “that your evidence is somewhat—that is to say,—inadequate. You could hardly expect us, with so little to go upon—that is to say, without more investigation, you could hardly expect us——”