FRIEND AND FOE;

OR,

The Breastplate of Righteousness.

BY

A. L. O. E.

AUTHORESS OF "THE CLAREMONT TALES," "THE SILVER KEYS," "THE WHITE BEAR'S DEN," ETC.

LONDON:

GALL & INGLIS, 25 PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

AND EDINBURGH.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. SMALL LEAKS

II. THE LITTLE MAID

III. PROFESSION AND PRACTICE

IV. PUTTING ON ARMOUR

V. PROVING THE ARMOUR

VI. HELP IN NEED

VII. ANOTHER TRIUMPH

VIII. THE CANVAS BAG

Friend and Foe;

OR, THE

BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

CHAPTER I.

SMALL LEAKS.

"You'll never succeed, Ned!" cried Bessy Peele, with a little laugh, as she stood watching her maimed brother's attempts to write a letter.

Twice, the wind coming through the cottage door had sent his paper fluttering to the ground. Ned had raised it, and then tried to fix it by placing a pebble upon it, but the paper had slipped from under the pebble as soon as the sailor had begun to write.

"It's not much," continued Bessy, "that a one-armed man can do."

"He can polish up your window, Bessy, and carry your basket, and get your garden into trim order," answered the sailor with cheerful good humour.

And leaving the cottage for a few moments, Ned soon returned with a brick, the weight of which as effectually fastened down the sheet as if he had had a left hand to rest upon it.

"Safe at anchor at last!" cried Ned. "But this is a clumsy way of getting over the difficulty. Necessity, folk say, is the mother of invention. I'll get the carpenter, as soon as I have the ready rhino to pay for it, to screw on some bit of timber to this maimed stump of mine, with something like a hook at the end; 'twill serve almost as well as a hand, and save me and my friends no end of trouble."

"Not a bad thought!" cried Bessy, who was apt to grumble at having to give the little assistance which the one-armed sailor required. "You needn't wait, Ned, till you've the money. Bill Jones, who works at the carpenter's, is a handy lad, and owes me a deal of kindness for nursing his mother in sickness. He'll manage to look out a good bit of hard wood and a hook, will make what you want cleverly, and never say a word about payment."

"I'd rather wait till I've shot in my locker," said Ned. "The poor lad's time is his money."

"His master's rather," observed Bessy. "But old Stone is an easy-going man, and does not keep a very sharp look out. Why Bill Jones—a good fellow is he—made a little chest of drawers for his mother, all of mahogany wood, and I don't believe that his master so much as guessed that he had not been working from morning till night every day in the week at the fittings in Sir Lacy Barton's study."

Ned had begun his letter, but he raised his head, and the ink dried on his pen as he inquired, "Do you mean that he helped himself to his master's wood, and used up the time which belonged to his master, to make a chest for his mother? And do you call him 'good' for this?"

"I do call him good, and clever too!" answered Bessy, sharply. "Isn't it right for a lad to care for his mother? And wouldn't it be right for him to do a good turn for a poor maimed sailor, who has lost his arm serving the Queen?"

"Would it be right in Bill Jones to carry off Sir Lacy's purse to give to his mother; or, if I chanced to be in want, to help a poor maimed Jack-tar like me?"

"How can you ask such idle questions?" cried Bessy Peele, in a tone of contempt. "Why, if Bill Jones did a thing like that, he'd be clapped into jail directly."

"Keep to the question, mistress!" said Ned, with a playful twinkle in his bright blue eye. "I didn't ask whether it would be safe for Bill to take Sir Lacy's purse, out of love for his mother, or kindness for me, but whether it would be right for him to be generous at the expense of another man."

"Taking a purse! That would be downright stealing!" cried Bessy.

"And are not the wood and the labour he pays for, as much the carpenter's property, as the purse is Sir Lacy Barton's? Is it not just as wrong to rob the one as the other?"

"I never knew a man with such particular notions as you have!" cried Bessy, tossing her head. "You're always pulling one up sharp with the question whether a thing is right!"

"Because," said Ned Franks, gravely, "we have to do with a righteous God. Mind you, Bessy, the Bible is the only chart as is given us to steer by, and when one sees in that chart, 'provide things honest in the sight of all men,' *—'He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much, and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much,' † one learns that the safe channel is a very narrow channel indeed, and that if we don't carefully keep the right course, we shall run the vessel aground."

* Rom. xii. 17. † Luke xvi. 10

"Well," said Bessy, as she laid out some linen to iron, "I for one will never believe that the great God above ever notices such little matters as these you speak of."

"Maybe you'd have thought it a little matter for Eve to pluck a fruit, but 'twas a matter that let in death and misery into a world," said Ned. "The skipper of the first craft as ever I sailed in, thought it a little matter when, one evening, our vessel just touched on a rock, as he fancied; he smoked his pipe, drank his grog, and turned into his cabin, and never dreamed of the small leak down below, till he was wakened in the morning with the cry of 'Three feet water in the hold!' The vessel was as nigh lost as could be, with all the hands on board. And 'tis so with our souls, Bessy Peele. The little sins, as we call them, are the little leaks in the timber, and if one goes to the bottom, 'tis all the same, whether the water came in by a big hole or a small one."

Bessy banged down her hot iron on the shirt before her with a noise and bustle which seemed to say, "I want no more of this preaching."

Ned Franks quietly dipped his pen again and went on with his letter.

Presently Bessy looked towards the door of her cottage.

"I thought Norah would have been here afore this," she observed; "she generally manages to walk over early from the town."

"You said, if I remember right, that her mistress kindly allows her to visit home the first Monday in every month."

"Yes," replied Bessy Peele, "and it's a great pleasure it is for Norah and me to meet. She's a good girl, if ever there was one. I've had a deal more comfort in her than in Dan. She has been in her place now for more than a year, and I don't believe that Mrs. Martin has had ever a fault to find with my girl."

"What sort of a lady is Mrs. Martin?" asked Ned.

"Oh! One of your saintly ones," cried Bessy. "Always has my girl up to read the Bible to her of an evening, and sees that she goes to church once or twice every Sunday. The lady's getting a little old, and a little blind, Norah says, and can't afford to give good wages, but a respectable place like that is a stepping-stone to a better."

"Bessy," cried the sailor, "if your girl is moored in a safe good harbour, don't you be in haste to have her heave anchor and hoist sail; there's more to be thought of in a place than the mere matter of wages."

"Ah! But—" began Mrs. Peele, but she interrupted herself with an exclamation of pleasure—"Here she is!"—as a bright, pretty-looking girl of fourteen ran eagerly into the cottage.

Norah, for it was she, was warmly welcomed by her mother, and then presented to the one-armed sailor.

"Here's your uncle, my dear, whom you never have seen afore, who's been in the storms and the wars."

"And who is heartily glad to see you," cried Ned.

CHAPTER II.

THE LITTLE MAID.

NED and Norah very soon made friends with one another. There was a cheerful kindliness about the maimed sailor, that set the young girl at her ease.

"He seems so frank and pleasant," thought Norah, "and there's such a bright honest look in his eyes, that I'm sure I shall like him extremely."

"She's a trim little vessel," thought the sailor, "with a pretty figure-head of her own; but I wish that she carried a little less bunting, she'd look better without all those flowers."

Norah had indeed a sweet innocent face, but her dress was not such as beseemed her station in life—it showed an effort to look fine, which did not prevent it from looking shabby. The gay-coloured dress was stuck out by a hoop; the bonnet, which was rather an old one, was trimmed with some large half-faded pink flowers. To the simple-minded sailor it became the young maiden so ill that he was glad when it was taken off, and Norah's neatly braided hair appeared the sole ornament of her head.

But Mrs. Peele was not of the sailor's opinion. "My dear, what pretty flowers!" she exclaimed, taking up the bonnet in her hand, and turning it round to admire the trimming.

"Sophy Puller gave the flowers to me: was it not kind?" said Norah. "And she gave me this too," she added, pulling out of her dress a gaudy glass brooch, made to imitate diamonds and rubies.

Mrs. Peele was charmed with the brooch, and handed it over to Ned, who held it between his finger and thumb, looked at it for a moment, and then returned it in silence to its owner.

"Who is Sophy Puller?" asked he, thinking to himself, "I hope that the giver of that trumpery is not of a piece with her gift."

"She's a milliner's apprentice, and such a dear girl!" cried the artless Norah. "She often drops in to tea, and we have such famous gossips together over our bread and butter! It is so friendly and pleasant!"

"And do you get your mistress's leave to entertain this messmate?" inquired the sailor.

Nosh's smooth cheek flushed, and she looked a little embarrassed, as, without answering her uncle's question directly, she said, "I don't think there can be any harm."

"Harm indeed!" exclaimed Bessy Peele, warmly. "It would be hard indeed if a poor girl could not give a slice of bread and butter to a friend."

"At her mistress's expense," added Ned.

Norah appeared uneasy and confused, and turned her inquiring eyes on her uncle, as if he had suggested some painful doubt which had never before entered into her mind.

Mrs. Peele called away her attention.

"Let's see what you've brought in that parcel, my darling; it's never empty-handed as Norah comes to her mother!"

The parcel was carried to the window, and Ned Franks, who had no curiosity to know its contents, sat down again to his writing.

His ear was, however, soon caught by his sister's scornful exclamation, "Tea indeed! You don't mean to say that Mrs. Martin gives four shillings a pound for this powdery trash!"

"Bessy," said the sailor, looking up with a smile, "if the lady kindly sends you a present, don't you take it for better or worse?"

Again Norah looked at her uncle with that perplexed inquiring gaze, and seemed about to speak.

But her mother gave her a nudge, with a whisper, "Say nothing, he takes things so oddly."

Neither the nudge nor the words escaped the quick perception of Ned.

"Sunken rocks!" thought he. "I must sound that poor simple child as to how she came by that tea, if I chance to catch her alone."

Dan Peele soon came home from the fields, and his sharp cunning features were lighted up with such honest joy at sight of his sister, that Ned Franks said to himself, "There's a warm corner in the heart of that boy, I've judged the poor fellow hardly."

"I'm always so glad when you come home, Norah," cried Dan, almost dancing with glee, making the party laugh by adding, "then mother gives us such a thundering big pudding, and puts on the jam so thick."

Norah's presence indeed added not a little to the cheerfulness of the little circle at the family meal. She laughed and chatted gaily, and told many a little incident of her life with Mrs. Martin.

"Did I ever tell you, mother, of my first trying to read aloud to my mistress? The dear teacher at our school used to say that I read well—but wasn't I a bit frightened at the notion of having to read aloud in a drawing-room! I could hardly get up my courage when the bell rang, and I had to go up on purpose to read. There was the old lady in her big arm-chair, and the lamp with its shade on the table."

"'Take a seat, Norah,' said my mistress kindly, 'and go on with the work where I left off.'"

"'I'm glad it's to be sewing, not reading,' thought I. But wasn't I puzzled when not a bit of work could I see, nothing on the table but one old-looking book! I peeped about here and there, without daring to get up from my chair, wondering where the work could be hidden, while my mistress was wondering all the while why I did not begin."

"'What are you waiting for, Norah?' said she."

"'Please, ma'am, I can't find no work, I think it must have dropped under the table?'"

Norah's little story was duly laughed at, especially by Dan, who did not understand the joke, as he knew as little as his sister had done, that a book can be spoken of as "a work."

"Oh and another time I was so stupid!" Norah went on, laughing at the recollection. "I was reading to mistress a large new book, that had a good many pictures in it, when she dropped asleep as she sometimes does."

"When, just waking from her nap, 'Norah,' says she, 'I'd like to look at the plates.'"

"Up jumped I with a 'Yes, ma'am, directly; shall I bring the kitchen plates or the china?'"

Again there was a burst of merriment at the blunder of the little maiden.

"Do you like the reading, Norah?" asked Ned.

"Why, yes, sometimes," answered the lively young girl, "only the sermons are rather too long."

"Sermons!" exclaimed Dan and his mother in a breath; and the latter added, "I hope you get some other reading besides that."

"Oh, yes, history and travels; and then, you know, Sophy Puller lends me books to read by myself."

"What sort of books?" asked the sailor.

"Oh, delightful books!" exclaimed Norah. "I'm in the middle of one now, all about a dreadfully wicked woman who killed her husband, and I think she'll be hanged at the end—but she had great excuses you know."

"That must be jolly reading," cried Dan; but Ned Franks shook his curly head.

"I very much doubt that such reading is good for our little lass," observed he.

"Well, I own, it's very tiresome to have to leave off in the middle to sweep a room or cook a dinner," cried the girl, "but I sit up late at night to make up."

"I don't look on that Sophy Puller as your true friend," observed Ned Franks.

"Oh, don't say that—she is so kind: she wanted me to come out and spend the evening with her sometimes, when she has each fun, and dancing, and larking with her companions. I should have liked of all things to go; but when I asked mistress, she shook her head and said that she did not approve of young girls being out late at night."

"I say, wasn't that a shame?" exclaimed Dan.

"It's a hard thing that she should keep you so tight, and not let you have a bit of fun, when you're slaving all day," cried Bessy.

"A hard thing is it," said Ned Franks, "that the lady won't let your child go swimming amongst the sharks?"

"If I was you, Norah," cried Dan, "I'd slip off without leave after the old dame was abed; you said she shut up soon after eight."

"That's just what Sophy told me," said Norah.

"But you was afraid, I s'pose, of being caught," observed Dan.

"I was more afraid," replied Norah, simply, "that mistress might be taken ill in the night, and you know she depends upon me."

"God help that poor child, she's beset with snares," thought the one-armed sailor. "When she comes home she learns nothing but dishonesty, covetousness, and untruth; at her place there's an evil influence drawing her in like a whirlpool to folly, and may be to worse. And she so simple and artless. Simple and artless now, but if she have much to do with that Sophy Puller, it is not long that she'll keep so. I should like to drop in a word of warning, but I can't do it here, as Bessy is always driving on the opposite tack."

"Norah," he said aloud, "will you let me walk back with you in the evening?"

"I should be so glad to have you," cried the girl, "and then I need not hurry back so early. Mistress told me unless my brother or some one would see me home, I was not to stay out after sunset."

"A careful mistress," observed Ned.

"The cross old crab!" exclaimed his nephew, both speaking at the same moment.

"Oh, no, she's not cross," cried Norah. "My mistress is good, very good; I never knew any one like her but Mr. Curtis, our vicar, and my dear kind teacher at school."

"You'd like her a deal better, I guess, if she wasn't so strict," said Mrs. Peele.

"I don't know, I'm not quite sure of that," replied Norah, in a hesitating tone. "I should like Mrs. Martin to see more company, and to let me have a little more freedom, but she does not keep me in out of crossness. If you only knew how good she is to the poor, and how dearly she loves her Bible, and how patient she is when in pain, and she suffers a great, great deal, 'specially from her poor eyes, but she never murmurs at all!" The girl's face kindled with emotion as she spoke of her kind old mistress, and Ned watched it with a feeling of pleasure, while his heart warmed towards his young niece.

"Blessings on the child, they've not spoilt her yet," thought he. "She sees the light, and she's bearing towards it; shame is it that those nearest to her should try to turn her out of her course."

CHAPTER III.

PROFESSION AND PRACTICE.

"MIND now that you manage to give the old woman the slip, and have a jolly night of it with your friend Sophy Puller—" such were the words with which Dan Peele parted from his sister, as she set out with the sailor on her long walk back to the county town in which her mistress resided.

It was a glorious evening. The sun had just stink below the horizon, but lines of glowing fire showed where his orb had dipped below the blue hills, and his beams had left a rich rosy flush on the clouds that floated above.

Ned Franks, as he gazed on that beautiful sky, felt that the young girl who tripped on by his side shared his sense of peaceful enjoyment.

Norah was the first to break silence. "I do like to look on such a sunset," she said, adding softly, "it makes one think of heaven."

"The home we're bound for," said Ned.

"I hope so," murmured Norah, in a tone that was scarcely above a whisper.

"And how do you think we are ever to get to heaven?" asked the sailor.

"Oh, surely you know!" answered Norah, with some surprise at the question, since, from several words dropped by himself in the course of the day, and from what she had heard of him from her mother, Norah had judged her uncle to be a very religious man. "My mistress has often told me that all believers go to heaven, because the Lord Jesus died for them, and has washed away all their sins."

"Right, quite right," said the sailor fervently; "that's the pole—star Faith always points to, that's what we must always keep in view. But who are believers, Norah? Though heaven lie straight afore us all, I take it that few will be so bold as to say that all who are called Christians will get to heaven."

Norah did not answer for two or three minutes, and then said, "Are not believers those who love the Lord Jesus Christ?"

"Right again!" cried Ned Franks. "And now tell me, Norah, is it not true that when we love any one much, we are ready and glad to do something for his sake?"

"Oh! Yes, indeed!" exclaimed Norah. "I've often thought that. I should like to do something for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. I was lately reading to my mistress of the early martyrs, and then it seemed to be such a great and noble thing to die for religion."

"It is just as great and noble a thing, Norah, my girl, to live for religion, and that is what all believers must do; for we only deceive ourselves when we think that without obedience to God we have either true faith or love."

"I don't quite know what you mean," said Norah.

"Do you remember the words of Christ? 'He that taketh not his cross and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me.'" *

* Matthew x. 38

"I can't tell what my cross is," said Norah, "nor how I can take it up."