Some Little People Part 9

But the mother did come and stand before her, and 'Lisbeth put her two hands in her mother's two hands, and looked up in her mother's face, into her mother's troubled eyes, and her mother knew that whatever else she might do, in days to come, she would never again try to move her before the time. The mother knew this as well as I do, but I know this and more beside.

As I said before, I do not know exactly all that was done that afternoon, before the rooms and the mother and 'Lisbeth all grew quiet, and in place and comfortable, but I know something more important than this; I know that 'Lisbeth, after she had settled other matters began to settle her own mind as to the true meaning of her mother's words about her making use of the wrong head.

She was obliged to think a great deal about it before she was able to settle it in her mind. It took a very great deal of thinking. How could she use her mother's head? How can you and I use our mothers' heads? Of course you know we could do it, how 'Lisbeth could have done it, but Lisbeth had to think hard about it before she knew. When she had made it quite sure in her own mind how it was to be done, she came to another trouble, she was not quite sure that she would like to do it.

She thought a great while as to what she was to do about it; she thought a great while about it while seated on the three-legged stool with her face to the wall, and when she had finished thinking about it she got down from the stool and went and stood before her mother, and her mother looked up to see what she was standing there for, and then 'Lisbeth said:

"I'm going to try most dreadful hard to use your head; I've made up my mind to it."

When 'Lisbeth made up her mind to a thing it was made up.

'Lisbeth tried very hard from this time to use the mother's head; and though the mother used it too it did not get worn out half as fast as it had done before; it began to look newer--I mean younger--and to look as though use did it a great deal of good; and 'Lisbeth's head looked the better for it too--I mean her face looked the better for it--it looked rested; perhaps I should say it looked better contented than it did before, it looked more comfortable. In fact, by using the mother's head very frequently instead of her own, 'Lisbeth improved inside of a week, and in the two months while they yet remained in London she began to look like a helping child instead of a hindering one.

When the time came for the packing up to be done 'Lisbeth really helped.

She did; n.o.body need be astonished. She helped a great deal, and everybody seemed so happy that the mother laughed a dozen times just in packing up. This was such a remarkable thing to happen that every one was astonished; they could not help being astonished.

Mother had not laughed for a great while. It seemed a very strange thing for her to do. n.o.body could quite tell what she was laughing at either by thinking over it or by inquiring. d.i.c.kon inquired, but d.i.c.kon could not understand it any better after he had inquired.

Gorham thought over it. He was older than d.i.c.kon, and perhaps should have been able to understand by thinking over it, but he did not. Gorham had been in London for some time, and had become accustomed to the two little rooms at the top of the house, where the walls were so black, and to the hubbub of voices above and below, and to the tatters on the little children, and to the dirt and tatters on the grown people; and had become accustomed to the little boys who were not very nice, or very comfortable to play with; Gorham had become accustomed to all this and did not dislike it all as much as he did when he first came to London.

Indeed Gorham was growing a little bit like these little boys; just a little like them, not very much; I am glad to be able to say that it was not very much. But at any rate, Gorham could not see why his mother was laughing when she had not laughed for such a long time; laughing over her cracked crockery, broken-nosed teapots, and black old crocks. It never entered his mind that she was laughing because, though she seemed to be looking at the old crockery, she was looking over and past them with her mind's eye, to the clover tufts on the dear old fields, and to the paths winding about the mill, to the spire of the white wooden church; to the market-place where the mill-hands used to gather together and chat and talk. Yet she was looking at these and at many things beside, and not at all at the broken-nosed pots.

'Lisbeth knew better than Gorham or d.i.c.kon why it was the mother laughed. I think she knew a great deal better. I think when she would put her face down close beside her mother's, and they would both smile so pleasantly, glancing toward each other and looking away, I think they were then seeing the same things, the very same things, though they were both a hundred miles away from the things themselves.

This was very comfortable; so comfortable that d.i.c.kon and Gorham smiled too, though only looking at their two faces and at the iron pots, and broken noses, and the rubbish which the mother had gathered up. And indeed, though they could not tell why, they laughed themselves when the mother laughed, and who knows but perhaps after all they did, without knowing it, catch glimpses of the far-away things which 'Lisbeth and her mother were seeing.

Everything was very comfortable all this packing-up time, in fact much of the two months before it.

Now I do not intend you to suppose, when I say that everything was very comfortable, that everything was in order in those two rooms, that everything was fixed up; that the iron pots were full of cookies or of all kinds of cookeries; that the crockery was full of good things; that the black walls had been whitened; not a bit of it. Things had changed; things had changed very much. The faces had changed.

The mother's face and 'Lisbeth's had altered more than d.i.c.kon's and Gorham's, but their being altered I think had changed d.i.c.kon's and Gorham's too. Do you know what had changed them? Why, 'Lisbeth had made up her mind to try to be contented and to use her mother's head. She was so much more pleasant looking that you would have been surprised at the change.

You have seen her before this, with your mind's eye, I know; that is, you have imagined how she might have looked, and you have always seen her looking as though she was dissatisfied; as though she was wis.h.i.+ng for something she had not; as though she was trying to think of something to do, or somewhere to go, as though she was about to make use of her own head contrary to that of her mother. But now she looked more cheerful and comfortable; indeed like a different girl entirely. You see she made up her mind to be a different girl entirely, and to try to work by her mother's head, and when 'Lisbeth made up her mind about anything we know that it was made up.

'Lisbeth had improved very much. Yet she was 'Lisbeth; 'Lisbeth working a great deal by her mother's head instead of by her own.

Beside this 'Lisbeth had a pleasant prospect before her; a very pleasant prospect indeed. She did not very often lose sight of this prospect; I mean the prospect of going a hundred miles from London. She looked so much more pleasant than formerly that you would not think, at sight of her, "there is a girl who is not satisfied in the place where she is growing, or with the things she finds around her; she looks uncomfortable."

I think that 'Lisbeth was better contented the last weeks she lived in London than during any week of her life, except the week before she came to London. Her contentment had changed everything very much; as I said, it had changed the faces; the faces were changed because everybody felt happier. Things were very different in those two rooms because 'Lisbeth was different.

For two whole months they were getting ready to go away; they were working and saving and wondering and smiling and laughing and hoping before they left the dreadful old rooms, but then they were such different months from all the others spent there that they were short months; that is, they seemed short.

The boys were happier when their mother and 'Lisbeth were bright and happy; their mother was happy when her children were good and wore bright faces. 'Lisbeth wore a bright face when she tried to be content with things as she found them, and did not run about the streets of London trying to sell gingerbread cats and dogs and doll-babies, trying to earn pence with sweeping streets or pulling wires, or making wigs. So as everybody was happier than they had been the months seemed short.

Who cared that the walls were black and the rooms little and the street too little to be called a street? n.o.body.

All the difference came by 'Lisbeth's having made up her mind to be contented to help mother in mother's way instead of her own way; by 'Lisbeth's having made up her mind to mix her earnestness with her mother's judgment.

They left the little dark rooms, in the dirty old house, and all the shows, and people, and carriages and houses of London, and went back where they first grew, back to the very house under the walnut tree where the bits of the hogshead still blew about--the hogshead which had once opened its mouth.

The mother went again to work at the mill, and the children all went to Miss Pritchet's school, and 'Lisbeth picked beans, and helped take care of Trotty, and of the house, and helped mother so much, that mother began to look bright and happy and smiling like somebody else. In fact, 'Lisbeth looked bright and happy, and smiling, herself, like somebody else, and when she would sit on the mile-stone she would smile more than ever in thinking what a little goose she had been ever to want to go so many miles away; and, indeed, so happy and contented did she become with the work she found to do in the place in which she grew, that you would never have known her to be 'Lisbeth.