A Daily Rate by Grace Livingston Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

haven’t got the face to, having asked her once before. Besides, she’s not one to give out and out that way, even if she could afford to, which I guess she can’t, though she’d be willing and glad to give me a home with her. I’m too proud to borrow what I know I never could pay, and I won’t skip out here as some would and leave me debts behind me. I’m honest, whatever else I ain’t. Now what would you do? No, I don’t own this house; if I did I’d been bankrupt long ago with the repairs it needs, that I couldn’t get out of the landlord. But I took it for the rest of the year, and the lease doesn’t run out till April, so you see I’m in for that. It’s just the same old story. ‘A little more money to buy more land, to plant more corn, to feed more hogs, to get more money, to buy more land, to feed more hogs.’ Only, I always had a little less of everything each time. Now Miss Murray, what would you do if it was you?”
    “Haven’t you anything at all to pay with? No,”—she hesitated for a word and the one she had heard that day came to her—”Haven’t you any property of any sort? Nothing you could sell?”
    Celia was always practical. She wanted to know where she stood before she gave any advice. Mrs. Morris looked at her a moment in a dazed way, trying to think if there was anything at all.
    “No, not a thing except my husband’s watch and this old furniture. I suppose I might sell out me business, but nobody would buy it and I’d pity ’em, poor things, if they did.”
    She talked a long time with the woman, trying to find out about boarding-houses and how they were run. Before she was through she began to have some inkling of the reason why Mrs. Morris had failed in business and was so deeply in debt. She was only a girl, young and without experience, but she felt sure she could have avoided some of the mistakes which had been the cause of Mrs. Morris’ trouble. Finally, she said in answer to the twentieth “What would you do if you were me?”
    “Mrs. Morris, I don’t quite know till I have thought about it. I will think and tell you to-morrow, perhaps, or the next day. It seems to me though, that I would stop right now and not run on and get more deeply in debt. That cannot better matters. I think somebody might buy your things, and—some way might be found for you to pay your debts,—but in the first place, you must get well, and we’ll do the very best we can to get on here till you are well enough to know what you will do. Now may I read to you just a few words? And then you ought to go to sleep. Just you rest your mind about all those things, and I promise you I will try to think of something that will help you.”
    She turned to the little Bible she had brought in with her and read a few verses in the fourteenth chapter of John “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.”
    She was very tired when she reached her room that night. The letter she intended to write to aunt Hannah was still unwritten. The book she had taken from the public library to read was lying on her bureau untouched. She had been bearing the burdens of other people, and the day had been full of excitement and hard work. She threw herself on her bed, so nervously tired that she felt convulsive sobs rising in her throat. What had she done? She had promised to think up some way to help Mrs. Morris. Mrs. Morris was nothing to her, why should she take this upon herself? And yet she knew, as she asked herself these questions, that she had felt all along that God had as truly called her to help that poor woman as ever he had called her to sell ribbons for Dobson and Co., or to help aunt Hannah with the mending. She had not wanted to do it, either. It was very unpleasant work, indeed, in many ways, and had required sacrifices of which she had not dreamed when she began. There was the pretty lampshade she was planning to have. She had given that up for the general good of the house.