“Well, if we could manage to pay the rent of a type-writing machine, I could probably get you copying from the firm as well as from some of the other lawyers in the building.  I was wondering the other day if I could do anything at it myself, and thus pick up an additional dollar or two in the week.  Of course, you would accomplish more than I could, and it would be a hundred times better than stitch! stitch!  How I hate the whir of the thing!” And Bernard, with his juggler gift of mimicry, proceeded forthwith to turn himself into a sewing-machine, jerking his feet up and down in imitation of the motion of the treadle, and making an odd noise in his throat.

Mrs. Farrell laughed, as she replied:  “I do not know that there is much choice between this and the click of the type-writer.  But, anyhow, your plan, though it sounds plausible, would not do, because I should not be able to work the type-writer.”

“There would be no difficulty about that,” argued Bernard.  “You know how to play the piano, and the fingering is very much easier.  It will come naturally.”

His mother laughed again, yet she sighed as well.  Her father had given her a piano as a wedding present, but this had been the first article of value to be dispensed with when the hard times came.  Bernard was so sanguine, however, that she consented to his project.  He spoke to Mr. Crosswell on the subject; that gentleman became interested, succeeded in obtaining a type-writer for Mrs. Farrell on easy terms, and promised to send her any extra copying he might have.  The manipulation of the machine did not, indeed, come quite as naturally as Bernard predicted, but after a few weeks of patient practice she mastered it sufficiently to produce a neat-looking page.  Bernard brought her all the work she could do; it was well paid for, and a more prosperous season seemed to have dawned upon the little home.

Just at this time the children took scarlet fever at school.  They had the disease lightly, but what anxiety the mother endured!  Thank God, they got through it safely; but there was the doctor’s bill to be settled, and funds were at a low ebb once more.  To cap the climax, when the house had been thoroughly fumigated by the board of health, and Mrs. Farrell was prepared to take up her occupation again, an attack of rheumatism crippled her fingers and rendered them almost powerless.  Then it was that, worn out and disheartened, she broke down and cried: 

“Oh! why does not God help us?”

Her son’s usually happy face wore an expression of discouragement also as she turned to him with the appeal.  His lips twitched nervously; but in a moment the trustfulness which she had taught him was at hand to comfort her.