“It’s a good thing to be a good farmer,” she said. “I never thought before how much farmers had to know.” Her father looked pleased.
It was Jean’s work to wash the milk-pails and milk-pans. She did it that night with a sense of enjoyment which she had never had before, for she was simply “helping” of her own accord. She would be very helpful; she would try to make these strangers care very much for her. She would watch every day to see what she could do for them. Mrs. Lane last summer had taught the class in the Sunday-school to which Jean belonged, and had said that “all must try to be a blessing to every one whom their life touched.” It appeared to Jean that her life touched everybody’s in this house.
Sunday was a wonderful day. She listened to the new preacher, and the new Sunday-school was certainly very pleasant. She spoke to a little girl she had never noticed before, and gave a rose to Julia Weed, whom she had always disliked. She was trying to be like Mrs. Lane.
In the evening she stayed at home from church with her mother, because her mother’s head ached; and when, for the first time in her life, she proposed reading her Sunday-school book to her mother, she was both pleased and rebuked to hear her reply, “Oh yes, I should like it! I can’t read evenings, and I often think how interesting your books look.”
“And if I can’t finish it to-night, may I read tomorrow night?” Jean asked eagerly.
Something new for her to be thoughtful about her own hard-working mother! And she had to imagine herself in somebody else’s home to think of it.
What a day Monday was! She was busy all the morning, “helping,” and she found it good fun. In the afternoon she wrote a long letter to Sophie, and she had so much to tell that she filled three sheets. In the evening she read aloud to her mother, and her father listened, after he read his paper, and said it was a “jolly good book.”
When she left the room to go to bed, she said, “Good night!” Usually she forgot it. She was careful to remember “thank you,” and “please.”
It was not her turn to iron. To-morrow would be a long, hot ironing day, and there were so many starched things this week. Lottie was in a hurry to finish the pink muslin she was making for herself. If she should offer to iron two hours, and let Lottie sew—but how she hated to iron!