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412689               84 “It’s such a shame she can’t have it pri properly trained. She would certainly become a great singer – competent critics have told her so. But she is so poor she doesn’t think she can ever possibly manage it—unless she can get one of the Cameron scholarships, as they are called; and she has very little hope of that, although her the professor of music who taught her has sent her name in.” “What are the Cameron scholarships?” asked the Old Lady. “Well, I suppose you have heard of Andrew Cameron, the millionaire?” said the minister’s wife, serenely unconscious that she was causing the very bones of the Old Lady’s family skeleton to jangle in their

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Gray; and she doesn’t think there is herself.”

“Why not?” asked the Old Lady spiritedly. “I am sure that there can be few voices equal to Miss Gray’s.”

“Very true. But you see these so-called scholarships are private affairs, dependent solely on the whim and choice of Andrew Cameron himself. Of course, when a girl has friends who use their influence with him he will often send her on their recommendation. They say he sent a girl last year who hadn’t much of a voice at all just because her father had been an old business crony of his. Well, I must be going But Sylvia doesn’t know anyone at all who

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would, to use a slang term, have any ‘pull’ with Andrew Cameron, and she is not acquainted with him herself.  Well, I must be going; we’ll see you at the manse on Saturday, I hope, Miss Lloyd. The circle meets there, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said the Old Lady absently absently. When the minister’s wife had gone she dr dropped her sweet-grass basket and sat for a long, long time with her hands lying idly in her lap, and her big black eyes staring uns unseeingly at the wall before her.

Old Lady Loyd, so pitifully poor that she had to eat six crackers the less a week to pay her fee to the Sewing Circle, knew that it was

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in her power – hers – to send Leslie Gray’s daughter to Europe for her musical education! If she choose chose to use her “pull” with Andrew Cameron – if she went to him and asked him to send Sylvia Gray abroad the next year—she had no doubt whatever that it would be done. It all lay with her—if—if—if she could so far crush and conquer her pride as to stoop to ask a favor of the man who had wronged her and hers so bitterly.

Years ago, her father, acting under the advice and urgency of Andrew Cameron, had invested all his little fortune in fortune in an enterprise that had turned out a failure.

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Abraham Lloyd lost every dollar he possessed and his family were reduced to utter poverty. Andrew Cameron might have been forgiven for a mistake; but there was a strong suspicion, amounting to almost certainty, that he had been guilty of something far worse than a mistake in regard to his uncle’s investment. Nothing could be legally proved; but it was certain that Andrew Cameron, already noted for his “sharp practices” emerged with improved finances from an entanglement that had ruined many better men; and Old Doctor Lloyd had died broken-hearted, believing that his nephew had deliberately

 

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Margaret Lloyd flung his offer back in his face after a fashion that left nothing to be desired in the way of plain speaking.  She would die, she told him passionately, before she would accept a penny or a favor from him. He had preserved an unbroken show of good temper, expressed his heartfelt regret that she should cherish such an unjust opinion of him, and had left her with an oily assurance that he would always be her friend, and would always be delighted to render her any assistance in his power whenever she should choose to ask for it.

The Old Lady had lived for twenty years in the firm conviction that she would die in the poor-

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a treasure that is without money and without price. And oh, Sylvia, you’ve found out what I never meant you to know. But I don’t mind that now; either.”

Sylvia took the Old Lady’s thin white hand and kissed it.

“I can never thank you enough for what you have done for me, dearest Miss Lloyd,” she said earnestly. “And I am so glad that all mystery is done away with between us, and I can. [sic] love you as much and as openly as I have longed to do. I am so glad and so thankful that you love me, dear fairy godmother.”

“Do you know why I love you so?” said the Old Lady wistfully. “Did I let that out in my raving, too.”

“No. But I think I know. It is

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now. At last I can forgive him for the wrong he did me and mine. Sylvia, I find that I have been letting no ends of cats out of bags in my illness. Everybody knows now how poor I am – but I don’t seem to mind it a bit. I’m only sorry that I ever shut my neighbors out of my life because of my foolish pride. Everyone has been so kind to me, Sylvia. In the future, if my life is spared, it is going to be a very different sort of life. I’m going to open it to all the kindness and companionship I can find in young and old. I’m going to help them all I can and let them help me. I can help people – I’ve learned that money isn’t the only power for helping people. Anyone who has sympathy and understanding to give has

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But one day, when she was strong enough to talk a little, she said to Sylvia,

“I suppose Andrew Cameron sent Miss Hayes here, did he?”

“Yes,” said Sylvia rather timidly.

The Old Lady noticed the timidity and smiled, with something of her old humor and spirit spirit in her black eyes.

“Time has been when I’d have packed off unceremoniously any person Andrew Cameron sent here,” she said. “But, Sylvia, I have gone through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I have left pride and resentment behind me forever, I hope. I no longer feel as I felt towards Andrew. I can even accept a personal favor from him

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to save face. Though I suppose if we had known we couldn’t have done much for her, she’s so desperate proud. But if she lives, and will let us help her, things will be different after this. Crooked Jack says he’ll never forgive himself for taking pay for the few little jobs he did for her. He says, if she’ll only let him, he’ll do everything she wants done for her after this for nothing. Ain’t it strange what a fancy she’s took to Miss Gray? Think of her doing all those things for her all summer, and selling the grape jug and all. Well, the Old Lady certainly isn’t mean, but nobody made a mistake in caller her queer. It all does seem desperate pitiful. Miss Gray’s taking it awful hard. She seems to think about as much of

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and fever and delirium. She did not even know Sylvia Gray, who came and sat by her every minute she could spare. Sylvia Gray now knew all that she had suspected—the Old Lady was her fairy godmother. The Old Lady babbled of Sylvia incessantly, revealing all her love for her, betraying all the sacrifices she had made. Sylvia’s heart ached with love and tenderness, and she prayed earnestly that the Old Lady might recover.

“I want her to know that I give her love for love.” she murmured.

Everybody knew now how poor the Old Lady really was. She let slip all the jealously guarded secrets of her existence, except her old love for Leslie Gray. Even in delirium something sealed her lips to as to that.

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talking to herself and laughing like mad. I was so scared I just turned and run.”

Sylvia, without stopping for reflection, caught Teddy’s hand and ran up the slope. It did not occur to her to be frightened, although she thought, with Teddy, that the poor, lonely, eccentric Old Lady had really gone out of her mind at last.

The Old Lady was sitting on the kitchen sofa when Sylvia entered. Teddy, too frightened to go in, lurked on the step outside. The Old Lady still wore the damp black silk dress in which she had walked from the station. Her face was flushed, her eyes wild, her voice hoarse. But she knew Sylvia and cowered down.

“Don’t look at me,” she moaned. “Please go away—I can’t bear that

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She had nothing to eat, having expected to get home in time for tea; the waiting room was chilly and she shivered in her thin, old silk mantilla. Her head ached and her heart likewise. She had won Sylvia’s desire for her; but Sylvia would go out of her life, and the Old Lady did not see how she was to go on living after that. Yet she sat there unflinchingly for two hours, an upright, indomitable old figure, silently fighting her losing battle with the forces of physical and un mental pain, while happy people came and went, and laughed and talked before her.

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The Old Lady submitted to this, because she was secretly afraid her own legs would not suffice to carry her there; she even shook hands with him at parting, and thanked him a second time for granting her request.

“Not at all,” he said. “Please try to think a little more kindly of me, Cousin Margaret.”

When the Old Lady reached the station she found, to her dismay, that her train had just gone and that she would have to wait two hours for the evening one. She went into the waiting room and sat down. She was very tired. All the excitement that had sustained her was gone and she felt weak and old.