“Miss Rosie, dear, can I speak to you?” said Toby’s voice, the day before the funeral.
“Yes; come in, Toby,” said the child mournfully.
“I should like to see you, Miss Rosie,” said Toby, mysteriously. “You won’t be offended, will you? but I brought you this.”
Then followed a great fumbling in Toby’s pockets and from the depths of one of them was produced a large red pocket handkerchief, from which, when he had undone the various knots, he took out most carefully a little parcel, which he laid on Rosalie’s knee.
“It’s only a bit of black, Miss Rosie, dear,” he said. “I thought you could put it on tomorrow, and you mustn’t mind my seeing after it. There was no one to do it but me.”
And before Rosalie could thank him he was gone.
When she opened the parcel she found in it a piece of broad black ribbon, and a little black silk handkerchief, the best poor Toby could obtain. Rosalie’s tears fell afresh as she fastened the ribbon on her hat, to be ready for the sorrowful service on the morrow.
The fair was nearly over, yet some of the shows lingered on, and there were still crowds of children around the whirligigs and shooting galleries when the mournful procession went by. The children drew back in astonishment. It was an unexpected sight, a coffin on the fairground.
Augustus went through the service with an unmoved face. Conscience had been making its final appeal the last few days, and had made one last and mighty effort to arouse Augustus Joyce to repentance. But he had stifled conscience, suppressed it, trampled on it, extinguished it. God’s Holy Spirit had been resisted and quenched already, and the conscience of the impenitent sinner was “seared as with a hot iron!”
All the company of the theater followed Augustus Joyce’s wife to the grave, and more than one of them felt unusually moved as they looked at little sorrowful Rosalie walking by her father’s side. She was quite calm and quiet, and never shed a tear until the service was over, and she was walking through the quiet cemetery a little behind the rest of the party. Then her eyes fell upon Toby, who was walking near her with an air of real heartfelt sorrow on his honest face. He had tied a piece of crape round his hat, and a black handkerchief round his neck, out of respect for his late mistress and for his mistress’s little daughter.
Something in the curious way in which the crape was fastened on, something in the thought of the kindly heart which had planned this token of sympathy, touched Rosalie, and brought tears to her eyes for the first time on that sorrowful day. After that came a calm in her heart, for, somehow, she felt as if the angels’ song was not yet over, as if they were still singing for joy over her mother’s soul, and as if the Lord, the Good Shepherd, were still saying: “Rejoice with Me, for I have found My sheep which was lost.”
They left the seaport town, and set off for a distant fair. Little Rosalie was very solitary in her caravan. Everywhere and in everything she felt a sense of loss. Her father came occasionally to see her, but his visits were anything but agreeable, and she always felt relieved when he went away again to the other caravan.
They soon arrived at the fair for which they were bound, the acting went on as usual, and Rosalie had once more to take her place on the stage.
Very dreary and dismal and tawdry everything seemed to her. Her little white dress, the dress in which she had lain by her mother’s side, was soiled and tumbled, and the wreath of roses looked crushed and tumbled and faded, as Rosalie took it from the box. There was no mother to fasten it on her hair, no mother to cheer and comfort her as she went slowly up the theater steps. Her father was looking for her, and told her they were all waiting, and then the play commenced.
Rosalie’s eyes wandered up and down the theater, and she wondered how it was that when she was a very little girl she thought it so beautiful. It was just the same now as it had been then. The gilding was just as bright, the lamps were just as sparkling, the scenery had been repainted, and was even more showy and striking. Yet it all looked different to Rosalie. It seemed to her very poor and disappointing and paltry, as she looked at it from her place on the stage.
Then she thought of her mother, and of the different place in which she was spending that very evening. Rosalie had been reading about it that afternoon before she dressed herself for the play. She thought of the white robe, clean and fair, in which her mother was dressed, so unlike her little tumbled, soiled frock. She thought of the new song her mother was singing, so different from the coarse, low songs that were being sung in the theater. She thought of the music to which her mother was listening, the voice of harpers harping with their harps, and she thought how different it was from the noisy band close to her, and from the clanging music which her father’s company was making. She thought too of the words which her mother was saying to the Good Shepherd, perhaps even then “Thou art worthy; for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed me to God by Thy blood.”
How different were these words from the silly, foolish, profane words she herself was repeating!
Oh! did her mother think of her? How little Rosalie wondered if she did! And oh! how often she longed to be with her mother in the Golden City, instead of in the hot, wearying theater!
And so the weeks went on. Fair after fair was visited. Her father’s new play was repeated again and again, till it seemed very old to Rosalie. The theater was set up and taken down, and all went on much as usual.
There was no change in the child’s life, except that she had found a new occupation and pleasure. This was teaching Toby to read.
“Miss Rosie,” he had said one day, “I wish I could read the Testament!”
“Can’t you read, Toby?”
“Not a word, missie, I only wish I could. I’ve not been what I ought to be, Miss Rosie, and I do want to do different. Will you teach me?”
And so it came to pass that Rosalie began to teach poor Toby to read. After that she might often be seen perched on the seat beside Toby, with her Testament in her hand, pointing out one word after another to him as they drove slowly along. When Toby was tired of reading, Rosalie would read to him some story out of the Bible. The one they both loved best, and the one they read more often than any other, was the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Rosalie was never tired of reading that, nor Toby of hearing it.