Friends I Have Made Part 5

RUTH'S STEPFATHER.

I feel a shrinking--a strange kind of hesitation in narrating some of these adventures lest the reader should think me full of egotism, and that I told of my little charities as if proud of what I had done. Pray chase any such idea from your minds, for I can honestly say that no feeling of vanity ever existed in mine. I am merely relating the pleasures of my life, my rambles amongst weeds and flowers--the weeds and sad lined blossoms of our town.

I was much troubled in my mind as to how I could most help the widow of Burt's Buildings, and I knew that I could best a.s.sist her by helping her to help herself. One of her great troubles was that she had to leave her little ones so long, and a strange sense of pain had shot through me as she spoke of finding them huddled together as they had cried themselves to sleep. What could I do then?

The thought came: A sewing machine! that which had been her enemy to be now her friend; and the next morning I was in one of our busiest streets in front of a large establishment within whose plate-gla.s.s doors I saw a pretty lady-like young woman, busy winding thread upon one of some dozen of the ingenious little pieces of mechanism, and upon stating my wants she led me up to a bluff, sharp-looking, grey man whose face seemed to soften as she spoke before returning to her task.

"Sewing machine ma'am, eh?" he said, eyeing me very sharply. "Own use?"

"No," I said, "I want it for a poor woman to enable her to earn her living."

"Instalments, ma'am," he said sharply.

"I beg your pardon."

"Want to pay for it by instalments?" he said.

"Oh! no, I will pay for it at once, and you can deliver it to her."

"Oh," he said smiling, "that's twenty per cent, discount."

I looked at him wonderingly, for I did not know what twenty per cent discount might be.

"I always take twenty per cent discount off these machines," he said, and I left pleasurably impressed by his ways and those of the young girl he introduced to me as his daughter, and that little new machine was the first of several in which I had Mr Smith's kind co-operation and advice in what were doubtful cases.

The result was a warm intimacy, in the course of which he told me his little history and that of his daughter--stepdaughter he called her-- Ruth.

"Mine's a curious trade to have taken to," he said, "and I had plenty of up-hill work, but it has grown to be profitable. Things were at a low ebb with me when I took it up, while now--"

There, I won't boast, only say that I'm thankful for it. Poverty comes in at the door, and love flies out of the window, so they say; but that's all nonsense, or else your poor people would be always miserable, while according to my experience your poor man is often more lighthearted than the man with thousands.

I was at my wits' end for something to do, and sat nibbling my nails one day, and grumbling horribly.

"Don't go on like that, Tom," says my wife; "things might be worse."

"How?" I said.

"Why, we might have Luke at home, and he is doing well."

Luke's our boy, you know, and we had got him into a merchant's office, where he seemed likely to stay; but I was in a grumbling fit then, and there was a clickety-click noise going on in the next room which fidgeted me terribly.

"Things can't be worse," I said angrily; and I was going to prove myself in the wrong by making my wife cry, when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in," I said, and a fellow-lodger put in his head.

"Are you good at works, Mr Smith?" he said.

"What works?" I said; "fireworks--gasworks?"

"No, no; I mean works of things as goes with wheels and springs."

"Middling," I said, for I was fond of pulling clocks to pieces, and trying to invent.

"I wish you'd come and look at this sewing machine of mine, for I can't get it to go."

Sewing machines were newish in those days, and I got up to have a look at it, and after about an hour's fiddling about, I began to see a bit the reason why--the purpose, you know, of all the screws and cranks and wheels; I found out too why our neighbour's wife--who was a dressmaker, and had just started one--could not get it to go; and before night, by thinking, and putting this and that together, had got her in the way of working it pretty steadily, though with my clumsy fingers I couldn't have done it myself.

I had my bit of dinner and tea with those people, and they forced half-a-crown upon me as well, and I went back feeling like a new man, so refres.h.i.+ng had been that bit of work.

"There," said my wife, "I told you something would come."

"Well, so you did," I said; "but the something is rather small."

But the very next day--as we were living in the midst of people who were fast taking to sewing machines--if the folks from the next house didn't want me to look at theirs; and then the news spreading, as news will spread, that there was somebody who could cobble and tinker machinery, without putting people to the expense that makers would, if the jobs didn't come in fast, so that I was obliged to get files and drills and a vice--regular set of tools by degrees; and at last I was as busy as a bee from morning to night, and whistling over my work as happy as a king.

Of course every now and then I got a breakage, but I could generally get over that by buying a new wheel, or spindle, or what not. Next we got to supplying shuttles, and needles, and machine cotton. Soon after I bought a machine of a man who was tired of it. Next week I sold it at a good profit; bought another, and another, and sold them; then got to taking them and money in exchange for new ones; and one way and the other became a regular big dealer, as you see.

Hundred? Why, new, second-hand, and with those being repaired upstairs by the men, I've got at least three hundred on the premises, while if anybody had told me fifteen years ago that I should be doing this, I should have laughed at him.

That pretty girl showing and explaining the machine to a customer?

That's Ruth, that is. No, not my daughter--yet, but she soon will be.

Poor girl, I always think of her and of bread thrown upon the waters at the same time.

Curious idea that, you will say, but I'll tell you why.

In our trade we have strange people to deal with. Most of 'em are poor, and can't buy a machine right off, but are ready and willing to pay so much a week. That suits them, and it suits me, if they'll only keep the payments up to the end.

You won't believe me, perhaps, but some of them don't do that. Some of them leave their lodgings, and I never see them again: and the most curious part is that the sewing machine disappears with them, and I never see that again. Many a one, too, that has disappeared like that, I do see again--perhaps have it brought here by some one to be repaired, or exchanged for a bigger, or for one of a different maker; for if you look round here, you'll see I've got all kinds--new and old, little domestics and big trades--there, you name any maker, and see if I don't bring you out one of his works.

Well, then I ask these people where they got the machine--for I always know them by the number--it turns out that they've bought it through an advertis.e.m.e.nt, or at a sale-room, or maybe out of a p.a.w.nbroker's shop.

But I've had plenty of honest people to deal with too--them as have come straightforward, and told me they couldn't keep up their payments, and asked me to take their machine back, when I'd allow them as much as I thought fair, and 'twould be an end of a pleasant transaction.

The way I've been bitten though, by some folks, has made me that case-hardened that sometimes I've wondered whether I'd got any heart left, and the wife's had to interfere, telling me I've been spoiled with prosperity, and grown unfeeling.

It was she made me give way about Ruth, for one day, after having had my bristles all set up by finding out that three good sound machines, by best makers, had gone n.o.body knew where, who should come into the shop but a lady-like woman in very shabby widow's weeds. She wanted a machine for herself and daughter to learn, and said she had heard that I would take the money by instalments. Now just half-an-hour before, by our shop clock, I had made a vow that I'd give up all that part of the trade, and I was very rough with her--just as I am when I'm cross--and said, "No."

"But you will if the lady gives security," says my wife hastily.

The poor woman gave such a woe-begone look at us that it made me more out of temper than ever, for I could feel that if I stopped I should have to let her have one at her own terms. And so it was; for, there, if I didn't let her have a first-cla.s.s machine, as good as new, she only paying seven and six down, and undertaking to pay half-a-crown a week, and no more security than nothing!

To make it worse, too, if I didn't send the thing home without charge!-- Luke going with it, for he was back at home now keeping my books, being grown into a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty; and I sat and growled the whole of the rest of the day, calling myself all the weak-minded idiots under the sun, and telling the wife that business was going to the dogs, and I should be ruined.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Tom," she said.

"So I am," says I. "I didn't think I could be such a fool."

"Such a fool as to do a good kind action to one who was evidently a lady born, and come down in the world!"