“Instead of scolding your husbands for going out and perhaps taking a glass too much, try and keep them home by making the living-room homelike,” she had said on several occasions to complaining wives who had paved the way by their confidential murmurings.  “Have some extra dish that they like for supper—­they will spend more if they go out—­then be a little smiling and chatty, and tell them to light their pipes and stay with you, for you are a bit lonesome.  If they will have their mug of beer, coax them to take it here at home.  Try to put a few shillings in the savings bank every week, and talk over little plans of saving more.  If you can only make your husbands feel that they are getting ahead a little, it will have a great influence in steadying them and keeping them out of bad company.”

Mildred had a genius for everything relating to domestic life, and an almost unbounded belief in good home influences.  Although she rarely talked religion directly to the people whom she was trying to benefit—­she was much too diffident and self-depreciative for this—­her regular attendance at some place of worship on the Sabbath and her course toward poor Mrs. Bute and her daughter had given the impression that she was a very religious girl, and that her motives were Christian in character.  People’s instincts are quick in discerning the hidden springs of action; and her influence was all the more effective because she gave them the fruits of faith rather than stems of exhortation or which they were required to develop fruit of their own.  Much good fruit was eventually produced, but more through her example, her spring-like influence, than from any formal instruction.

CHAPTER XXI

“He’s A man”

Mrs. Wheaton, although she had the good taste to ask few questions, was much puzzled over the Jocelyns.  Mr. Jocelyn’s state of health seemed to her very peculiar, and her shrewd, unprejudiced mind was approaching Roger’s conclusion, that he was a little “off.”  With an insight common to sound, thrifty people, she saw that the outlook for this family was dubious.  She believed that the father would become less and less of a reliance, that Mrs. Jocelyn was too delicate to cope with a lower and grimmer phase of poverty, which she feared they could not escape.  When alone she often shook her head in foreboding over Belle’s brilliant black eyes, being aware from long experience among the poor how dangerous are such attractions, especially when possessed by an impulsive and unbalanced child.  She even sighed more deeply and often over Mildred, for she knew well that more truly than any of the house-plants in the window the young girl who cared for them was an exotic that might fade and die in the changed and unfavorable conditions of her present and prospective life.  The little children, too, were losing the brown and ruddy hues they had acquired on the Atwood farm, and very naturally chafed over their many and unwonted restrictions.