neither game nor story was needed for the children's amusement that afternoon. they sat side by side on the grass with their heads very close together discussing the exciting event of the morning, the strange man's visit and his puzzling profession; at least jack was extremely puzzled and not at all satisfied by eva's explanation.
"he's mummy's brother, don't you see? and my uncle. that's what he means when he says he's a bush brother."
jack shook his head incredulously. "mummy's brother and bush brother can't mean the same," he said.
"pr'aps he calls himself 'bush' 'cause he's got a beard," eva suggested.
"that's silly! a bush has got nothing to do with a beard."
"yes, it has," said eva nodding her head, "birds build in bushes and they build in beards."
jack fairly screamed with laughter. "who's stuffed you up with that nonsense?"
"it's not nonsense," said eva, almost in tears. "it's in a book mummy gave me, and there's a picture of the man and a verse about him too, so it must be true. mummy teached me the verse."
"say it, then," said jack, mockingly, and eva folded her arms behind her plump little person, knitting her brows in the effort to quicken memory.
"there was an old man with a beard,
who said 'it's just as i feared,
two owls and a wren, four larks and a hen
have all built their nests in my beard.'
"there!"
only capital letters could express the triumph of the final exclamation, but jack laughed louder and longer than ever.
"but it isn't true," he said.
"o' course it's true. it's in a book, and there's the picture. mummy shall show you," reiterated eva, stamping her foot.
the quarrel promised to be a pretty one, when, all unperceived, the man whose beard was under discussion had come into the garden and stood by them. eva ran towards him, putting her hand in his.
"uncle tom, tell him, please. he won't b'lieve me."
"it's all about beards," said jack. "eva says birds build in 'em same as they do in bushes, and o' course they don't. it's just nonsense."
"no bird has tried to build in mine at present," said uncle tom, stroking his thoughtfully. "what made you think of such a funny thing, eva?"
it took a minute or two to unravel the thread of the children's discussion, and uncle tom sat chuckling to himself as they talked.
"the simplest way of putting the matter straight will be to tell you what i mean by calling myself a bush brother, won't it?"
"yes," said the children in chorus.
"it's neither being mummy's brother nor the beard i grow that gives me the title——"
jack gave eva a nudge.
"but it's the calling that i've chosen for the present. there were a few parsons in england——"
"oh! it's parsons who are called bush brothers, is it?" asked jack, a little disappointed at so commonplace an explanation.
"no, not all parsons, but just a few of us who have undertaken a particular kind of work. we heard of englishmen who had emigrated to the colonies and settled in places very far away from their fellows, who year after year lived out their lonely lives never getting a chance to have their little children baptized, or their sick people visited, whose sundays were just spent like other days because they had no services to go to, so a few of us banded ourselves together in a sort of brotherhood——"
"what's that mean?" jack asked.
"a society or company that binds itself together to do the same work, and the work we brothers put before us was to come out to the colonies for a few years and make it our special business to find out all the lonely settlers in the bush and visit them, and try to gather them together for little services. now you see why we call ourselves bush brothers: because our work lies, not in townships and places such as this, although i am going to be here on sundays for a little while whilst your clergyman is away on sick leave, but we wander from place to place, to all the most distant homesteads, some of them buried miles and miles away in the bush."
"does you walk?" asked eva in her matter-of-fact fashion.
"sometimes i walk and sometimes, when i know the distance is too great, i hire a horse and ride, and sometimes the way is hard to find, and i get lost. i was lost for two whole days not long ago, and had to camp out at night without either food or shelter. i was glad, i can tell you, when i struck the track again and found myself not far from a farm where they showed me the greatest kindness. i spent a sunday there, and the farmer and his sons gathered together a few other people not far away, and we had service in a barn, and i baptized three little children that had been born since last a parson had visited them. i stayed there for a week, and gave the children lessons every day, and they were so pleased and eager to learn, poor mites. they did not even know the stories about jesus when he was a baby. it's not often i find children as ignorant as that, but many of them get very little teaching about the bible. very often there is not a bible in the house. i don't always have tiny congregations. last sunday i was miles away up there," pointing to the bush-clad hills which bounded the horizon, "where there are some large lumber works, and quite a lot of men are at work there. so i spent the few days before in making friends with them, and asking them to meet me at service on sunday, and we had quite a fine service in the open air, and you should have heard the singing. it was glorious."
"i'd like it ever so much better than going to the wooden church down here," said jack.
uncle tom laughed genially. "aren't you fond of going to church, then?"
"not very; you've got to sit so quiet. i like the singing though, and it's not so dull now eva comes too."
"well, well; we'll see if you can't learn to like it better. meanwhile, let's have a game before i pay my respects to your grandfather and grandmother."
"cricket?" cried jack joyfully.
"capital! it's ever so long since i played a game of cricket."
betty, as fresh as the morning in her trim white gown, came out to join the party in the garden, and jack hastened to introduce her to his new friend.
"here's aunt betty; she'll play too, if you ask her. she's a splendid field, and will catch you out first ball unless you're careful."
betty and uncle tom laughed as they shook hands.
"i've already made friends with your nephew, miss treherne, and was coming to call on the rest of you this afternoon, when the children beguiled me by the way. will you really honour us by joining in our game, though i ask it in fear and trembling after hearing of your prowess?"
"jack gives me the credit for doing everything better than anyone else, a reputation i find it impossible to sustain, but i love to play."
a very spirited game followed, which ended finally in betty's catching out the parson, to jack's unspeakable triumph.
"and after your warning, too," he said, throwing down the bat in comic despair. "and now i must pay my call, and then eva and i must trot home. my sister said she would be back at six o'clock, and we must be there to meet her."
"i'm so glad you've come; it will be so lovely for mrs. kenyon to have one of her own relations with her. i think she has been very lonely."
uncle tom turned to the kindling, sympathetic face.
"she would have been desolate indeed without the kindness she has received from you and yours. it was an unhappy chance that separated us, but such separation will be impossible again," said tom chance, and that was all the explanation that he felt it needful to offer or that betty wished to hear.
when tom and eva returned at last to the cottage, the sound that greeted them as they entered was vigorous scrubbing, interspersed with fitful singing, and tom pushed open the door of the inner room to see his sister on her knees scrubbing the floor with might and main, until the boards shone again with whiteness. he put his arms round her and swung her to her feet.
"how dare you do it, birdie? what shall i say to you for setting to work like that at the end of a long day's sewing?"
the joy of hearing her old pet name, and feeling the masterful touch of his strong hands, brought tears to clarissa's eyes, but a laugh to her lips.
"it's so good to hear you talk," she said, bending back her face to kiss him, "but i was bound to do it to get the room all fresh and clean for you to-night, for of course you'll come here to your prophet's chamber, just a bed and a chair and candlestick.
"betty looked in half-an-hour ago, and wanted to do the scrubbing, but i would not let her. that joy was mine, i told her."
"ah, i saw her slip away as i sat chatting with the old people, but i did not know she was off to lend you a hand."
"lend a hand! she seems blessed with a dozen pairs, and they are always busy in helping other people, notably me. had i a sister, she should be made on betty's model. you must not think that i live in a muddle like this, but a visitor—and such a visitor—has upset the equilibrium of my establishment. tea is laid out in the verandah. just give me a moment to tidy my hair and wash my hands, and you will see i've not been unmindful of your creature comforts."
and truly, the meal prepared looked dainty and appetizing.
"i should say the catering of this household runs to extravagance," said her brother, smiling at her.
"yes, for to-night, it's a case of fatted calf, and besides, i feel money at my back."
in clearing away afterwards, tom showed himself as handy as any woman. washing up plates and dishes he declared his speciality!
"but how did you learn it all?" asked clarissa, pausing in her task of drying the things tom handed her.
"in the same way you have done, by experience. in the course of my wanderings i have come across many a young fellow as gently nurtured as i am, batching in what i call squalor, so my task has been to put things straight, and keep them tidy and clean, as far as i knew how to do it. i think it lowers a man's self-respect to live in dirt and discomfort, so when any fellow has put me up for a day or two, i've tried to repay his hospitality by the labour of my hands, to make myself worth my keep as i hope to do here, if you will let me."
"but i won't! my augmented income will allow me to have a girl in now and again to do the hard work, and oh! if you knew the joy it is to me to have someone of my very own to look after again. come along, eva; it's time for bath and bed, and then, tom, you and i will sit out in the verandah and talk."
their conversation lasted far into the night, albeit desultory in character. they made no effort to pick up tangled threads, but clarissa, nestling against her brother's side, with his protecting arm thrown round her, with the star-spangled sky overhead, and the silence of the night about her, experienced a sense of peace and happiness that had not been hers for years. her mind went back to the early days at home, and many a childish reminiscence was recalled, over which the brother and sister joined in laughter that had something of pathos in it. and then she spoke of the first bitter trouble of her girlhood, the loss of the mother she adored when she was only twelve years old.
"i can't help feeling that if mother had lived, i never should have come to loggerheads with father. we both should have acted differently. he would have been less hard, and i less stubborn, but it's curious how the knowledge that he is dead has changed my own point of view. to-day i've felt myself more to blame than he. i wish i had taken dear george's advice, and offered to go back. even if he had refused to have me, i should feel now that i had made some effort towards reconciliation."
"he would not have refused," tom said. "i believe he was hungering after you in his inmost heart, but it's no use going back on the past. it only saps your energy for present action. if you made a mistake, dear, you've paid for it heavily, and god in his goodness can make even our mistakes stepping stones to lead us up to him."
"i don't feel as if i had even begun to climb," said clarissa, in a whisper.
"ah, yes," was the reassuring answer, "in your devotion to husband and child, in your self-sacrifice, absolute and complete, you must have drawn nearer to god, whether you knew it or not."
clarissa gave an indrawn sob. "you were always such a dear boy, tom. you used to pick me up and console me when i fell, and the falls were so numerous—i was such a tom-boy—and now you are picking me up after a more serious stumble, and making me feel as if i shall walk again."
"i will run in the way of thy commandments," said tom, more to himself than to his sister. "i always think the man who wrote that led a very joyous sort of existence, a cheerful sort of fellow who had given up his whole life to god."
"you make religion seem so real, tom. you always did."
there was a long pause, and the answer when it came was spoken from the depth of the man's heart.
"surely—it's the one great reality; nothing else matters much."
the next day was saturday, and directly breakfast was over tom went down the township to find the little wooden fabric which represented the english church. he got the key from a house near by and let himself in by a door which had sunk on its hinges, and opened unwillingly. there was no sign of beauty in the barn-like building, and except that the altar was nicely cared for and had flowers upon it the whole place filled tom with a sense of desolation. truly church life in many of these places needed reformation. small wonder that it took the heart out of many a man who began life filled with zeal and hopefulness to find himself with three or four scattered country parishes on his hands, with people kindly inclined and ever hospitable, but with narrow means, and whose church-life from want of fostering had become almost dead. to tom chance, fresh from the stirring life of a town parish at home, it seemed as if it needed a special outpouring of the holy ghost to set the thing in motion, and it was for that he prayed as he knelt for a few minutes on the altar-step. and then a step roused him, a child's step coming in at the door, and turning he saw his friend of yesterday, jack stephens, with his hands full of flowers, and a letter carried between his teeth. he laid down the flowers with due care, took the letter and turned it over lovingly in his hands.
"it's my very own," he said, smiling up at tom, "i fetched it from the post office just now. i get one every week from father, and i have to answer it, but my letters are very short and his are very long."
"and the flowers," asked tom.
"oh, they are aunt betty's; i bring them down every saturday, and she comes presently and puts them up there," pointing to the altar.
"i s'pose i'll have to wait until she comes to hear my letter."
"you can't read it for yourself, then."
"not just all," breaking open the envelope and unfolding the letter. "i know the beginning: 'my dearest jack,' and the end"—swiftly turning over the sheet he held and tracing the words with his finger—"'loving father, jack,' but i can't read the middles yet. i s'pose you can read letters as easily as aunt betty."
"i expect i can."
"then you could read this to me, and i needn't wait."
"will aunt betty mind, do you think?"
"why should she? there's no secrets in it."
so tom sat down on one of the wooden benches, and jack sat beside him, and the letter was read aloud.
"once more, please," said jack, when it came to the finish, "and then i shall know all it says." so once again tom read the letter very distinctly.
"i don't think it's wrong to read father's letter in church. he seems such a very good kind of man," said tom, as he handed the letter back to jack's keeping.
"why should it be wrong?" jack answered in great astonishment.
"because this little house is god's special house, not to be used for just everyday things; but there are some letters one likes to read aloud here—st. paul's for example."
"i did not know he wrote any," jack said.
tom took up a bible and showed jack some of the epistles, explaining to him that the word meant the same as letter, and jack grew quite excited and interested.
"and did they come by post same as mine," he said.
"no, there were no posts then; they were all carried by hand, and we can think of some room like this quite full of people listening to what the apostle had written to them. such long letters they were; ever so much longer than father's, with a number of messages to different people at the end. as you grow older, you'll be able to read them for yourself."
it all sounded so real and interesting that jack did not in the least realise that he was having a bible lesson, and when betty came in, he ran to tell her all about it.
"so you do the flowers. i thought them the prettiest thing in the church."
"it's not pretty, and there is no money to make it pretty," said betty regretfully. "we are none of us well-to-do, and there are not many who seem to think it matters. the bell came down a little while ago, and no one has made any effort to rehang it."
yes, there it lay in the corner of the porch; such a small bell, and yet it had served to show the church was alive and at work.
"but that seems such a small matter. surely that could be readjusted."
"well, father thought it really did not matter, for any boy who happens to be here rings it and pulls it too roughly, and it gets out of order."
"but here you have a ready-made bellringer," said tom, looking at jack. "standing upon a hassock, jack could quite well ring that little bell, and he would do it gently and carefully. i think jack must be the bellringer, and i will see about the bell being put in order to-day. i think a bell is a good thing. it lets people know we are at work."
jack grew crimson with delight. it made him feel quite a man that he should be singled out to ring the bell.
"may i, aunt betty: may i ring the bell?"
"surely, jack, if you're man enough."
so that afternoon saw tom at work with a carpenter he had got hold of in the township, climbing up to the tiny bell-turret, and getting the bell once again into position with a brand new rope hanging inside wherewith to pull it, and on sunday jack awoke with the dawn and talked of nothing but the honour which was to be his that day, the office of bell-ringer. he was to call for tom chance on his way down to the church and to have his first lesson.
eva was left to follow later with her mother, and never was boy prouder than jack when he marched off, hand-in-hand, with the parson.
"s'pose i can't do it," he said with a little gasp as he entered, pulling off his straw hat.
"but you're sure to do it; it's a small bell and handled gently will be quite easy to ring. you may have to stand upon a chair."
that sunday as the congregation dribbled into church much amusement and some pleasure was felt at the sight of the grave-faced little boy in a spotless sailor suit who stood upright as a dart upon a chair ringing the bell with care and precision, pink with the importance of his mission.
a nod from tom as he came out of the tiny vestry in his robes told him when to stop, and he climbed down to the floor, tied up the rope so that no one should play with it, and crept to his place by aunt betty's side.
"he won't find it dull any more now he has his own work to do," thought tom at the end of service, and tom was right.
there was no keener churchman in the township than little jack.
