"For never anything can be amiss    When simpleness and duty tender it."
As You Like It.
 
The lot of the philanthropist is not an easy one. The kind but unthinking rich can their benefits about, careless of their effect on the , but the path of the earnest lover of his fellows is and difficult, and dark with disappointment.
 
To Jean in her it had seemed that money was the one thing necessary to make bright the lives of her poorer neighbours. She pictured herself as a sort of fairy godmother going from house to house carrying sunshine and leaving smiles and happiness in her wake. She soon found that her dreams had been . Far otherwise was the result of her efforts.
 
"It's like something in a fairy-tale," she complained to Pamela. "You are given a fairy palace, but when you try to go to it mountains of glass are set before you and you can't reach it. You can't think how different the people are to me now. The very poor whom I thought I could help don't treat me any longer like a friend to whom they can tell their troubles in a friendly way. The poor-spirited ones , with an eye on my pocket, and where I used to get welcoming smiles I now only get expectant grins. And the high-spirited ones are so afraid that I'll offer them help that their time is spent in snubbing me and keeping me in my place."
 
"It's no use getting down about it," Pamela told her. "You are only finding what thousands have found before you, that's it the most difficult thing in the world to be wisely charitable. You will never remove mountains. If you can smooth a step here and there for people and make your small corner of the world as pleasant as possible you do very well."
 
Jean agreed with a sigh. "If I don't finish by doing harm. I have awful thoughts sometimes about the effects money may have on the boys—on Mhor especially. In any case it will change their lives . It's a solemnising thought," and she laughed ruefully.
 
Jean on her well-doing way, and knocked her head against many posts, and blundered into , and perhaps did more good and earned more real than she had any idea of.
 
"It doesn't matter if I'm cheated ninety-nine times if I'm some real help the hundredth time," she told herself. "Puir thing," said the recipients of her , in , "she means weel, and it's a kindness to help her awa' wi' some o' her siller. A' she gies us is juist like tippence frae you or me."
 
One woman, at any rate, blessed Jean in her heart, though her stiff, ungracious lips could not utter a word of thanks. Mary Abbot lived in a neat cottage surrounded by a neat garden. She was a dressmaker in a small way, and had supported her mother till her death. She had been very happy with her work and her bright, tidy house and her garden and her friends, but for more than a year a black fear had brooded over her. Her sight, which was her living, was going. She saw nothing before her but the workhouse. Death she would have welcomed, but this was shame. For months she had fought it out, as her eyes grew dimmer, letting no one know of the anxiety that at her heart. No one suspected anything wrong. She was always dressed at church, she always had her small contribution ready for collectors, her house shone with rubbing, and as she did not seem to want to take in sewing now, people thought that she must have made a competency and did not need to work so hard.
 
Jean knew Miss Abbot well by sight. She had sat behind her in church all the Sundays of her life, and had often admired the tidy appearance of the dressmaker, and thought that she was an excellent advertisement of her own . Lately she had noticed her thin and ill-coloured, and Mrs. Macdonald had said one day, "I wonder if Miss Abbot is all right. She used to be such a help at the sewing meeting, and now she doesn't come at all, and her excuses are . When I go to see her she always says she is well, but I am not at ease about her. She's the sort of woman who would drop before she made a word of complaint…."
 
One morning when passing the door Jean saw Miss Abbot polishing her knocker. She stopped to say good morning.
 
"Are you keeping well, Miss Abbot? There is so much illness about."
 
"I'm in my usual, thank you," said Miss Abbot stiffly.
 
"I always admire the flowers in your window," said Jean. "How do you manage to keep them so fresh looking? Ours get so mangy. May I come in for a second and look at them?"
 
Miss Abbot stood aside and said coldly that Jean might come in if she liked, but her flowers were nothing extra.
 
It was the tidiest of kitchens she entered. Everything shone that could be made to shine. A hearthrug made by Miss Abbot's mother lay before the fireplace, in which a handful of fire was burning. An arm-chair with cheerful red cushions stood beside the fire. It was quite comfortable, but Jean felt a bareness. There were no pots on the fire—nothing seemed to be cooking for dinner.
 
She admired the flowers and got instructions from their owner when to water and when to refrain from watering, and then, seating herself in a chair with an assurance she was far from feeling, she proceeded to try to make Miss Abbot talk. That lady stood bolt upright waiting for her visitor to go, but Jean, having got a footing, was to remain.
 
"Are you very busy just now?" she asked. "I was wondering if you could do some sewing for me? I don't know whether you ever go out by the day?"
 
"No," said Miss Abbot.
 
"We could bring it you here if you would do it at your leisure."
 
"I can't take in any more work just now. I'm sorry."
 
"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Perhaps later on…. I'm keeping you. It's
Saturday morning, and you'll want to get on with your work."
"Yes."
 
There was a silence, and Jean reluctantly rose to go. Miss Abbot had turned her back and was looking into the fire.
 
"Good morning, Miss Abbot. Thank you so much for letting me know about the flowers." Then she saw that Miss Abbot was crying—crying in a hopeless, helpless way that made Jean's heart ache. She went to her and put her hand on her arm. "Won't you tell me what's wrong? Do sit down here in the arm-chair. I'm sure you're not well."
 
Miss Abbot allowed herself to be led to the arm-chair Having once given way she was finding it no easy matter to control of herself.
 
"Is it that you aren't well?" Jean asked. "I know it's a wretched business trying to go on working when one is seedy."
 
Miss Abbot shook her head. "It's far worse than that. I have to refuse work for I can't see to do it. I'm losing my sight and …and there is nothing before me but the workhouse."
 
Over and over again in the silence of the night she had said those words to herself: she had seen them written in letters of fire on the walls of her little room: they had seemed seared into her brain, but she had never meant to tell a soul, not even the minister, and here she was telling this slip of a girl.
 
Jean gave a cry and caught her hands. "Oh no, no! Never that!"
 
"I've no relations," said Miss Abbot. She was quiet now and calm, and hopeless. "And if I had I couldn't be a burden on them. Nobody wants a penniless, half-blind woman. I've had to use up all my this winter …it will just have to be the workhouse."
 
"But it shan't be," said Jean. "What's the use of me if I'm not to help? No. Don't and look at me like that. I'm not offering you charity. Perhaps you may have heard that I've been left a lot of money—in trust. It's your money as much as mine; if it's anybody's it's God's money. I felt I just couldn't pass your door this morning, and I to you, though I was frightfully scared—you looked so stand-offish…. Now listen. All I've got to do is to send your name to my lawyer—he's in London, and he knows nothing about anybody in Priorsford, so you needn't worry about him—and he will arrange that you get a sufficient income all your life. No, it isn't charity. You've fought hard all your life for others, and it's high time you got a rest. Everyone should get a rest and a competency when they are sixty. (Not that you are nearly that, of course.) Some day that happy state of affairs will be. Now the kettle's almost boiling, and I'm going to make you a cup of tea. Where's the caddy?"
 
There was a spoonful of tea in the caddy, but in the cupboard there was only the heel of a loaf—no butter, no cheese, no jam.
 
"I'm at the end of my tether," Miss Abbot admitted. "And unless I touch the money laid away for my rent, I haven't a penny in the house."
 
"Then," said Jean, "it was high time I turned up." She heated the teapot and the bit of coal into a blaze. "Now here's your tea"—she reached for her bag that lay on the table—"and here's some money to go on with. Oh, please don't let's go over it all again. Do, my dear, be reasonable."
 
"I doubt it's charity," said poor Miss Abbot, "but I cannot refuse. Indeed, I don't seem to take it in…. I've whiles dreamed something like this, and cried when I wakened. This last year has been something awful—trying to hide my failing eye-sight and pretending I didn't need sewing when I was near starving, and always seeing the workhouse before me. When I got up this morning there seemed to be a high wall in front of me, and I knew I had come to the end. I thought God had forgotten me."
 
"Not a bit of it," said Jean. "Put away that money like a sensible body, and I'll write to my lawyer to-day. And the next thing to do is to go with me to an , for your eyes may not be as bad as you think. You know, Miss Abbot, you haven't treated your friends well, keeping them all at arm's length because you were in trouble. Friends do like to be given the chance of being useful…. Now I'll tell you what to do. This is a nice fresh day. You go and do some shopping, and be sure and get something nice for your supper, and fresh butter and marmalade and things, and then go for a walk along Tweedside and let the wind blow on you, and then drop in and have a cup of tea and a gossip with one of the friends you've been neglecting lately, and you see if you don't feel heaps better…. Remember nobody knows anything about this but you and me. I shan't even tell Mr. Macdonald…. You will get papers and things to sign, I expect, from the lawyer, and if you want anything explained you will come to The Rigs, won't you? Perhaps you would rather I didn't come here much. Good morning, Miss Abbot," and Jean went away. "For all the world," as Miss Abbot said to herself, "as if lifting folk from the miry clay and setting their feet on a rock was all in the day's work."
 
* * * * *
 
The days slipped away and March came and David was home again; such a smart David in new clothes and (like Shakespeare's Town Clerk) "everything handsome about him."
 
He immediately began to Jean into spending money. It was absurd, he said, to have no one but Mrs. M'Cosh: a smart housemaid must be got.
 
"She would only worry Mrs. M'Cosh," Jean protested "and there isn't room for another maid, and I hate smart maids anyway. I like to help in the house myself."
 
"But that's so absurd," said David, "with all your money. You should enjoy life now."
 
"Yes," said Jean , "but smart maids wouldn't help me to—quite the opposite…. And don't you get ideas into your head about smartness, Davie. The Rigs could never be smart: you must go to The Towers for that. So long as we live at The Rigs we must be small plain people. And I hope I shall live here all my life—and so that's that!"
 
David, greatly , bounded from his chair the better to his sister.
 
"Jean, anybody would think you were a hundred to hear you talk! You'll get nothing out of life except perhaps a text on your tombstone, 'She hath done what she could,' and that's a dull prospect…. Why aren't you more like other girls? Why don't you do your hair the new way, all sort of—oh, I don't know, and wear … you know you don't dress smartly."
 
"No," said Jean.
 
"And you haven't any tricks. I mean you don't try and attract attention to yourself."
 
"No," said Jean.
 
"You don't talk like other girls, and you're not keen on the new dances.
I think you like being old-fashioned."
"I'm afraid I'm a failure as a girl," Jean confessed, "but perhaps I'll get more charming as I get older. Look at Pamela!"
 
"Oh, Miss Reston," said David, in the tone that he might have said "Helen of Troy." … "But seriously, Jean, I think you are using your money in a very dull way. You see, you're so dashed helpful. What makes you want to think all the time about slum children?… I think you'd better present your money all in a lump to the Government as a drop in the ocean of the National Debt."
 
"I'll not give it to the Government," said Jean, "but we may count
ourselves lucky if they don't thieve it from us. I'm at one with Bella
Bathgate when she says, 'I'm no verra sure aboot thae politicians
Liberal or Tory.' I think she fears that any day they may grab
Hillview from her."
"Anyway," David persisted, "we might have a car. I learned to drive at
. It would be frightfully useful, you know, a little car."
"Useful!" laughed Jean. "Have you written any more, Davie?"
 
David explained that the term had been a very busy one, and that his time had been too much occupied for any outside work, and Jean understood............