# The Poor Rich Man, and the Rich Poor Man/Chapter III

CHAPTER III.
A FRIEND IN NEED.
A winter had passed away, and one of our ungenial springs, always unkind to invalids, was wearing to the last days of May. Charlotte's disease was aggravated by long confinement, and as she sat tailing over an old coat of her father's, her eye turned sadly towards the cold sky and the thinly-clad boughs of the trees that were rustling against the window, and that, like her, seemed pining for warmth and sunshine. "Will summer ever come?" she thought; and then, suppressing a sigh of impatience, she added, "but I don't mean to murmur." At this moment Susan bounded into the room, her cheek flushed with pleasure.
"Good news, good news!" she cried, clapping her hands; "Harry has got home!"
"Has he?"
"Why, Lottie, you don't seem a bit joyful!"
The tears came to Charlotte's eyes. "I have got to be a poor creature indeed," she said, "when the news of Harry's getting home does not make me joyful."
"Oh, but Lottie, it's only because you did not sleep last night: take a little of your mixture and lie down, and by the time Harry gets up here—he told me he should come right up—you will look glad; I am sure you feel so now."
​"I do, Susy: Essex never seems Essex when Harry is out of it."
"No, I am sure it does not; but, then, if he did not go away, we should not have the joy of his coming home." Susan was the first to see the compensation.
"I hope," said Charlotte, after a short pause, "that Harry will not go away again on this business; he may be getting money, but then he should have been at school the past winter. You know what Doctor Allen used to say to mother—'Education is the best capital for a young man to begin with.' I am afraid Harry has caught some of Morris Finley's notions."
"Oh, no, no, Charlotte!—they are as different as day and night. I am sure, if Harry is eager to get money, it's because he has some good use for it, and not, like Morris, just for the money's sake."
"I hope it is so, but even then I do not like this travelling about; I am afraid he will get an unsettled disposition."
"Why, Charlotte, it is not so very pleasant travelling about in freezing winter weather, and deep muddy spring roads, peddling books."
The subject of their discussion broke it off by his entrance; and, after mutual kind greetings were over, he sat down by Charlotte with a face that plainly indicated he had something to say, and knew not how to begin.
"Have you had good luck, Harry?" asked Charlotte.
"Very!" The very was most emphatic.
"Well, I hope it won't turn your head."
​"I don't know," he replied, with a smile; "it feels very light just now, and my heart too."
Charlotte looked grave.
"No one would think," said Susan, "that Charlotte was glad to see you, Harry; but she is, for we both love you just as well as if you were a brother—having none that's natural, you know. But poor Lottie is worse than ever this springs and nothing seems to do her any good; and I have been trying to persuade her to send round a subscription-paper to get money to go to New-York; maybe she'll consent now you have come to ask her."
"That's the very thing," said Harry, "I want to speak to her about."
"Oh, don't, Harry; if our friends and neighbours were to think of it themselves, I would accept the money thankfully, but I cannot ask for it."
"You need not, Charlotte—you need not—but you will take it from a brother, as Susy almost calls me, won't you?"
He hastily took from his pocketbook five ten-dollar notes, and put them on Charlotte's lap.
"Harry!" Charlotte feebly articulated.
"Oh, Harry, Harry!" shouted Susan, throwing her arms round his neck in a transport of joy, and then starting back and slightly blushing; "did I not tell you so, Lottie?" she said.
Charlotte smiled through her tears. "Not precisely so, Susy, for who could have expected this? But I might have known it was not for the money, as you did say, but for what the money would bring, that Harry was working."
"And what could money bring so good as ​better health for you, Charlotte? Your suffering is the only thing that ever makes me unhappy; and so, after all, it is selfishness in me."
Happy would it be for our race if there were more such selfishness as Harry Aikin's. The benevolent principle is, after all, the true alchymy that converts the lead to gold.
The preceding fall, and shortly before the scene described at the bridge, an acquaintance and very good friend of Harry's, a bookseller in the shire town of their county, had applied to Harry to be his agent in peddling books, and had offered him a tempting per centage on his sales. Harry, then but fourteen, was rather young for such a business; but the good bookseller had good reason to rely on his fidelity and discretion, and hoped much from his modest and very pleasing address. Harry communicated the offer to his parents. They told him to decide for himself; that whatever money he earned should be his; but that, as he was to go to a trade the following spring, and the intervening winter being the only time he had for further school education, they advised him to forego the bookseller's offer. Harry could think of plenty of eligible appropriations for any sum he might earn; but, after a little reflection, nothing that even fifty dollars could buy weighed in the scales against six months' good instruction; and, thanking his parents for their liberality to him, he decided on the school. This decision occurred on the very day of poor Jock's untimely death, and was reversed by that event, and the consequent overthrow of Charlotte May's project. He immediately conceived the design of effecting her journey to ​New-York by the result of his labour; and, communicating his purpose to his two confidential friends, his parents (most happy are those children who make their parents the depositaries of their secrets); he received their consent and approbation. They were consistent Christians, and thought that active goodness enriched their child far more than money, or even than education, which they held to be next best to virtue. The contract was made with the bookseller, and the fifty dollars, an immense sum to him that earned it, and to her who received it, estimated by the painstaking of the one, and the relief and gratitude of the other, were appropriated to the expenses of the New-York journey.
Those who travel the world over seeking pleasures that have ceased to please; going, as some one has said, from places where no one regrets them, to places where no one expects them, can hardly conceive of the riches of a poor person, who, having fifty dollars to spend on the luxury of a journey, feels the worth of every sixpence expended in a return of either advantage or enjoyment.
If any of my readers have chanced to hear a gentleman curse his tailor, who has sent home, at the last moment, some new exquisite articles of apparel for a journey, when they were found to be a hair's breadth too tight or too loose; or if they have assisted at the perplexed deliberations of a fine lady as to the colour and material of her new dresses and new hat, and have witnessed her vexations with dressmakers and milliners, we invite them to peep into the dwelling of our young friends, and witness the actual happiness resulting ​from the success expedients and infinite ingenuity of the poor.
The practicability of the long-wished-for journey had been announced to Uncle Phil, and they were entering upon deliberations about the outfit, when their father, beginning, as need was, at the crown of his head, exclaimed, "I declare, gals, I never told you my bad luck about my tother hat. I laid it down by the door just for a minute last Sabbath, and our plaguy pup run off with it into a mud-puddle—it was the worse for wear before, and it looks like all natur now."
"Let us look at it, father," said Susan; "there are not many people that know you in New-York, and maybe we can smooth it up and make it do." The hat was brought, and examined, and heads mournfully shaken over it; no domestic smoothing-up process would make it decent, and decency was to be attained. Suddenly, Charlotte remembered that during her only well week that spring, she had bound some hats for Mr. Ellis, the hatter, and Susan was despatched to ascertain if her earnings amounted to enough to pay for the re-dressing of her father's hat. His could scarcely have returned quicker than did Susan; indeed, her little divinityship seldom went on such pleasant errands. "Everybody in the world is kind to us," said Susan, as she re-entered, breathless. "Mr. Ellis has sent full pay for your work, Lottie, and says he'll dress father's hat over for nothing. I'm so glad, for now you can get a new riband for your bonnet,"
"After all the necessaries are provided."
"Anybody but you, Lottie, would' call that a necessary. Do look at this old dud—all frayed ​out. It has been turned, and died, and sponged, and now it is not fit to wear in Essex—what will they say to it in New-York?"
"We'll see, Susy, how we come out. Father's Sunday coat must be turned." The coat was turned, and the girls ware delighted to see it look almost as well as new; and even Susan was satisfied to pay the hat-money to Sally Fen, the tailoress.
A long deliberation followed upon father's nether garments, and they came to the conclusion they were quite too bad to be worn where father was not known and respected. And, to get new ones, Charlotte must give up buying a new cloak, and make her old one do. There is a lively pleasure in this making do that the rich know not of; the cloak was turned, rebound, and new-collared, and Susan said, "Considering what a pretty colour it was, and how natural Charlotte looked in it, she did not know but what she liked it better than a new one." And now, after Charlotte had bleached and remodelled her five-year old Dunstable, her dress was in order for the expedition—all but the riband, on which Susan's mind was still intent. "Not but just ninepence left," said she to Charlotte, after the last little debt for the outfit was paid. "Ninepence won't buy the riband, that's certain, though Mr. Turner is selling off so cheap. Why can't you break into the fifty dollars; I do hate to have you seen in New- York with that old riband, Lottie."
"But I must, Susan—for I told Harry I would not touch the fifty dollars till we started."
"Well, give me the ninepence, then." Susan's ​face brightened. She had resolved, as a last resort, to invest in the riband a certain precious quarter of a dollar which Harry had given her ages and ages ago, and which she had ever since worn as a locket. She left her sister abruptly; and, as she slid the coin from the riband, "Dear little locket," said she, "I suppose you will seem to other folks just like any other quarter, and they will just pass you from hand to hand without thinking at all about you—how foolish I am!"—she dashed a tear from her eye—"Sha'n't I love Harry just as well, and won't he love me just as well, and sha'n't I think of him more than ever now he has been so kind to Lottie, without having this to put me in mind of him?" This point settled to her own satisfaction, she turned as usual to the bright side. "How lucky Mr. Turner is selling off—I wonder what colour I had best get—Charlotte would like brown, it's so durable—but she looks so pretty in pink. It takes off her pale look, and casts such a rosy shadow on her cheek. But I am afraid she will think pink too gay for her." Thus weighing utility and sobriety against taste and becomingness, Susan entered the shop, and walking up to the counter, espied in a glass case a pink and brown plaid riband. Her own taste was gratified, and Charlotte's economy and preference of modest colours would be satisfied—in short, it was (all women will understand me) just the thing. She was satisfied, delighted, and, had not the master of the shop kept her waiting five minutes, she would have forgotten the inestimable value of that "quarter," that in addition to the ninepence must be paid. But in five minutes ​the feelings go through many changes; and, when Mr. Fuller said, "Here is your riband, Susan May!" Susan was standing with her back to the counter, and looking at the "quarter" as if she were studying it. She had on a deep sun-bonnet; as she raised her head it fell back and disclosed a tear on her cheek, and disclosed it, too, to Harry Aikin, who had come in unobserved, and was standing before her. She hastily threw down the money—it rolled on to the floor—he picked it up—he recognised it, and at once understood the whole. Susan left the shop first, and we believe few ladies, though they may have spent hundreds in the splendid shops of Broadway, have had half the pleasure from their purchases that Susan May had from the acquisition of this two yards of plaid riband. We ask, which was richest (in the true sense of the word), the buyer of Cashmire shawls and blonde capes, or our little friend Susan? And when Harry, overtaking her before she reached her own doorstep, restored the precious "quarter," she was not conscious of an ungratified wish. Had they been a little older, there might have been some shyness, some blushes and stammerings; but now, Susan frankly told him her reluctance to part with it, her joy in getting it back again; and, suspending it by its accustomed riband, she wore it ever after—a little nearer the heart than before!
Charlotte's last obstacle to leaving home was relieved by an invitation from Harry's mother to Susan, to pass the time of her sister's absence with her. "How thoughtful of Mrs. Aikin!" said Charlotte, after she had gratefully accepted the invitation. If there were more of this thoughtfulness, if ​persons were more zealous to employ the means of little kindnesses to their fellow-creatures, if they considered them as members of their own family, really brothers and sisters, how many burdens would be lightened, what a harvest of smiles we should have on faces now sour and steril.