CHAPTER XII

SUCCESS

Two years have passed away since William Hender drove in to see his children open their first stall in Norton Market, and now, to-day, he is waiting for them once more by the old milestone.

Many a weary mile of life has he trodden painfully since last he stood there, a strong, hale man. Many a Hill of Despair has he faced, and Valley of Despondency; many a time has he wondered if he could ever reach the top of the hill which rose before him, the hill of disappointed hopes. It had seemed to him at times that as soon as he reached the top of one another had sprung up beyond, sometimes whole ranges of hills of pain, helplessness, weakness.

There had been many pleasant miles too, when he had paused by the sunny wayside 'To hear the angels sing,' and had gone on his way again refreshed and thankful for all God's goodness to him. And now he had, for the first time, walked to the old milestone again, to await his children's return— walked it without help or pain; and as he stood there waiting his heart was very full of gratitude to his Father above, who had cared for him so tenderly, and led him back to health again, and had given him such good children and friends.

He had brought a little camp-stool with him to rest on till they came, for he still had to save his strength and walk through life carefully. A flush of excitement was on his thin cheeks, and his eyes were bright and eager as they looked along the road; for this was a surprise he had planned for them.

"I always looked for you as we came round the last bend of the road," Bella had told him, "and I always shall, I think. I never seem able to give up expecting you."

And to-day her expectation was not to be in vain, and the father knew something of what their delight and excitement would be.

At last, round the bend of the road came the cart, drawn by a sturdy horse now—their own—and as he caught sight of them William Hender rose to his feet, for he wanted them to see him, and to see him standing upright and strong as of old. He had to rest his hand on the old granite stone, for the excitement of the moment had left him trembling a little, and though stronger than any one had ever thought possible, he would never again be the strong man he used to be.

On they came, jogging along comfortably enough. He could see their two heads together, evidently discussing something very earnestly; he saw Bella raise hers suddenly—he could almost hear her exclamation of incredulity, of surprise; he saw her spring to her feet and throw out her arms in delight. Then the horse's pace was quickened, and they were beside him—and "Oh, father!" was all they could say, but Bella's eyes were full of tears, and both their faces were radiant.

"And I ain't tired," he said proudly, "though I think I will ask for a lift home," he added, with a happy laugh.

Scarcely knowing what they were doing from excitement, they helped him up into the cart, and on they jogged again, with Tom on one side of him and Bella on the other, but Bella turned more than once and glanced back affectionately at the old milestone, for to her now it seemed an old friend, so connected was it with the joys and sorrows, the struggles and successes of their lives.

"I am sure it understands," she was thinking to herself; "it really looks as though it does," when her father's voice brought her thoughts back to him.

"Well, what about the shop?" he asked anxiously.

"Oh, father! we've taken it!" and Bella gasped, as though alarmed at the desperateness of the plunge they had taken. "I forgot everything else when I saw you, but oh, there's such a lot to tell. Tom, where shall we begin? You tell it all, will you?"

"I—I seem to have so much in my head I can't get anything out," laughed Tom.

"We'll wait till we get home, then, p'raps it wouldn't be fair to hear it all before Aunt Emma can. Charlie will be home, too, by the time we are. He's been with the donkey-cart to take one of his pigs to Mr. Davis, and he has taken a message about renting the little field. The rent is low, and we could keep the horse there, and the pigs, too, sometimes. It would be fine!"

Bella laughed. "If we've got a field we shan't rest till one of us has a cow to put in it, that's certain!"

"Well, I don't know but what 'twould be a good investment," her father answered, thoughtfully; "there's no getting milk enough anywhere hereabouts."

Bella laughed again. "I can see that cow already," she cried, "a nice little Guernsey, and Aunt Emma milking it. Why, there is Aunt Emma herself! Whatever is she doing? Nursing a chick?"

They had reached their own gate by that time. "I wonder what she'll say when she sees me?" chuckled their father.

"Doesn't she know?" cried Bella. "Oh, Aunt Emma, Aunt Emma!" she called.

"Aunt Emma!" shouted Tom, at the top of his voice. "Quick, come here!"

Miss Hender hurried to the gate with the chicken in her arms still. "He's hurt his foot——" she began, but the rest of her remark was lost in her astonishment. "Why, William!" she cried, "where have you been? I thought you were in the orchard!" and she stared at him as though she did not trust her own eyes.

"Orchard?" laughed Bella; "why, we picked him up by the first milestone, and if we hadn't stopped him there's no knowing where he'd have been by now. I believe he was so anxious to see his new shop he couldn't wait!"

She was standing with her arm round her father's shoulder, looking from one to the other with eyes full of love and gladness. They were all of them, indeed, so excited and pleased they scarcely knew what they were doing.

"Oh yes, the shop!" cried Aunt Emma. "I'd forgotten that for the minute. There are more surprises nowadays than I seem able to take in. Well, what about it?"

"We've taken it!" cried Tom and Bella in one breath; "we've actually taken it. What do you think of that? Isn't it enough to frighten one to think of? We are actually full-blown tradesmen, Aunt Emma. 'Hender and Co., Florists and Market-Gardeners. Fresh eggs and poultry daily. Moderate prices.' That is what is to be painted over the shop window. Oh, Aunt Emma, can you believe it? I can't. It doesn't seem real a bit," and she threw her arms round Aunt Emma too, and hugged her in her excitement.

"Well!" gasped Miss Hender, really overcome. "Well!" and for a time she could not find another word to say.

"I can't believe it," she said later, as they sat around the tea-table. "P'raps when I've seen the place and the name painted up I shall be able to."

"And when you see the brass scales——"

"And have the cleaning of them," put in Aunt Emma, with a knowing nod. "If you are all given up to growing things and selling them, somebody must do the housework and the cleaning, and that'll be my part, I reckon."

"Mine too, Aunt Emma; I'll keep the shop tidy."

"You can help at any rate," said Aunt Emma, for Margery, strangely enough, had, as she grew, shown a greater liking for housework than for gardening.

"I would clean the shop, and polish the scales and things," said Bella meekly.

"Oh no, you couldn't," interrupted Aunt Emma, feeling that she had perhaps been a little severe. "You can't do everything. If you help earn our living for us all, it is our work to look after the house. You haven't got time and strength for both. Don't you be trying to do too much, Bella. You're barely seventeen yet, you know." Aunt Emma's voice trembled a little, for she still found it hard to let any one see the kindly feeling that was in her heart.

"Will you have to live in Norton altogether?" asked Margery dolefully, for she did not like the thought of losing Tom and Bella.

Bella, who read her feelings, hastened to comfort her. "Oh no," she cried; "we've only taken the shop and a room behind it. Such a nice little room, Aunt Emma. You will have to come in and have tea there sometimes. The top part of the house is let to some one else. We shall drive in every day with the fresh things to sell, and come home at night. I think florists and greengrocers—doesn't it sound grand, daddy?—don't do much after the morning, and I should think we could shut the shop at four or five in the afternoon every day but Saturdays. Don't you, father?"

"May I come in sometimes and serve the customers?" asked Maggie eagerly.

"Of course you shall."

"When I've got a pig to sell will you carry it in too and sell it for me?" asked Charlie quite gravely. "You would put it in the window for me, wouldn't you, so that people could see it?"

"Of course," answered Tom, with equal gravity, "if you would sit there and make it behave. We don't want the window broken, for we haven't insured it yet, and we don't want all our things spoilt."

"It would be a wonderful attraction," went on Charlie thoughtfully, as though he had not heard his brother; "it would draw crowds, and give you such a start-off. I think you'd have to pay me so much an hour, it would be such a fine advertisement."

"It would draw people to the window, but I don't know that it would bring them inside," laughed Bella.

"Of course people would think you were for sale too," said Margery; "it would be awkward if they wouldn't buy the pig unless you went with it——" But her sentence was never finished, for Charlie chased her out of the kitchen, and they finished their dispute in the garden.

"We'll begin tea; we won't wait for those harum-scarums," said Aunt Emma, lifting a tart out of the oven; and the four drew cosily round the table.

Bella always loved those evening meals at the end of the long day in market, when they sat and enjoyed at their leisure the good things Aunt Emma provided, while they talked over all that had happened at home and abroad.

To-day seemed a day set apart, a special day, for had not their father walked to the milestone to meet them? This, in Bella's eyes, was a more important event than the taking of the shop. From the garden came sounds of laughter and screaming, the sober clucking of the hens, and the louder calling of Margery's ducks.

"We shall be very lonely, Emma, when these two are away all day, shan't we? I don't know what we shall do, do you?"

Their father spoke half-jestingly, yet there was something in his tone which was far removed from jesting. Tom looked from Bella to his father and back again. With his eyebrows he seemed to be asking her a question, and evidently she understood and signalled her answer.

"Father," said Tom nervously, for he was always rather shy of speaking before others, "we've thought out a plan, and we wondered if you'd fall in with it, or—be able to, or——"

"Well, my boy, I will if I can, if—well, if it isn't one to benefit me only. It seems to me you're all thinking always what'll be best and pleasantest for me, and I ain't going to have it; I ain't a poor invalid any longer."

"Well, it isn't to benefit you only, father," chimed in Bella eagerly; "we think it will be best for all of us, and I think you'll think so too. Go on, Tom."

"Well," said Tom, "it's this,—that you go in to the shop every day with Bella; you can keep accounts and do that sort of thing better than I can, and——" he broke off suddenly, almost startled by the look of pleasure which broke over his father's face, the sudden lightening of the sadness which, unconsciously, always showed now in his eyes. To be at work again! to be able to give real help, to be a working partner! To the man who had for so long borne an enforced idleness, who had had to sit by and see others work beyond their strength because he could do nothing to help—it seemed too good to be true, a happiness almost too great. "Do the work?" Of course he could do it. It would put new life into him to be a man again and worker.

"But what about you, Tom? It would be a bitter disappointment to give it up, wouldn't it?"

"Disappointment?" cried Tom; "why, there's nothing I'd like better. You see, if you can be in the shop, I can stay at home and give all my time to the garden, instead of having only the evenings after I get back. Then Aunt Emma and Charlie and I can look after things here; and, if we run this place, and you and Bella run the other, we ought to get on A1. Don't you agree, everybody?"

Tom gained courage as he went on, and, indeed, his father's undisguised pleasure in the plan was enough to encourage any one. But Tom was cautious too. He put all the arguments before his father, as though he had shown reluctance, and had to be won over; for what they wanted, above all things, was to make him feel that his help was really needed. He succeeded in his aim, too, and without any help from Bella, for the pathos of her father's joy brought a lump into her throat and a mist before her eyes that prevented her speaking a word.

"I think I'll go for a little stroll," she said quietly, when she rose from the table, and something in her voice and face prevented any one from hindering her. Out through the garden she went, and along the quiet road, where the soft mist of evening was creeping up and the birds were calling their last good-nights. On she went, and on, until she reached the old grey church, standing so protectingly in the midst of the green graves, which seemed to nestle about its sides as about a mother.

Bella opened the churchyard gate and walked along the path to a far corner, where a white headstone gleamed out distinctly from the dark holly hedge behind it.

"In loving memory of Isabella, wife of William Hender. Aged 29," ran the inscription.

Bella sat down on the curb which outlined the long, narrow grave, and leaned her head against the stone. "Oh, mother, mother, if only you had been here too, everything would have been just right!" She put her arm around the little cross caressingly, and leaned her cheek against it, but the coldness of it brought back to her memory the coldness of her mother's brow when last she had kissed it, and she drew back quickly again. It seemed so hard and unresponsive. "She knows, though she isn't here. I am sure she knows," and she turned her face up to the darkening sky, where already the stars were beginning to shine.

"Like silver lamps in a distant shrine,
The stars are all shining bright,
The bells of the City of God ring out,
For the son of Mary is born to-night,
The gloom is past, and the morn at last
Is coming with Orient Light."

The lines and the haunting air of the old carol came pouring into Bella's mind. "It isn't Christmas, but all the rest fits to-night and—and every time," and there in the gathering darkness she sang softly to herself—

"Faith sees no longer the stable floor,
The pavement of sapphire is there,
The clear light of heaven streams out to the world,
And the angels of God are crowding the air,
And heaven and earth, through the Spotless Birth,
Are at peace on this night so fair."

All the way home along the quiet road the lines still haunted her—

"And heaven and earth, through the Spotless Birth,
Are at peace on this night so fair."

She was singing softly as she reached her own gate. She did not see her father standing inside and looking over it.

"Lassie, that's what I was feeling, but didn't know how to put it into words," he said, with an unusual gentleness in his tone.

"Oh, father, are you here? Isn't it damp for you to be out?" she asked anxiously, for Bella was always nervous for him.

"I couldn't go in, child, till you were home. It seemed to me you weren't happy about something."

Bella, as she tucked her hand through his arm, reassured him. "Why, father, I was too happy, that was all! I was so happy I had to go away by myself for a bit, so that I—shouldn't make myself silly, and I've come back happier than ever. There's Aunt Emma at the door calling to us. There's such a lot to talk about, that if we don't go in and begin we shan't have finished till morning;" and she led him back between the neat flower-beds to the open door, where, in a glow of warm light from within, Aunt Emma stood awaiting them.

THE END.

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