The Barn that Blossomed – Children’s Corner

“Mother, it was dreadful!” exclaimed Jenny. “I almost wish I hadn’t seen it. The house is run-down; I’m sure they were not warm even once last winter. And there were five children. The youngest being a baby and the oldest just 12 years old. And their clothes, it is as if somebody’s rag bag had fallen apart and begun to walk around. No wonder poor little Mrs. Johnson is extremely discouraged. Her husband, Jim, was not much of a man; but I suppose he did give her a few coins now and then although she had no idea where he obtained it. But now he is gone. At least so they have no coins coming in at all. They have nothing to satisfy five ragged appetites.

Mother Brace’s hands fell upon the potato-pan, knife and all. “Why, Jenny, child, what can we do? Our own coins are not very many, since your father is gone also, however we do have a little more than they do and we can spare a few vegetables now and again, if any grow now without old Jim to work the garden. But we certainly do not have any houses or extra clothes, unless – maybe we could spare – ”

“You can’t spare a single piece of clothing, you blessed mother!” interrupted Jenny. “You do not need to worry at all, but I am going to think and pray. I’m sure I would not feel this badly if there was not something I could do to help.”

With such cheerful logic she sprang up and set about finishing her morning’s work, interrupted to attend the short and simple funeral service said over the body of “old Jim Johnson,” who had given them such help as they could not dispense with in their square bit of garden, and squandered the money that should have provided for the wife and five children whose wretchedness has torn Jenny’s tender heart.

All day she thought and thought; and, as she washed the supper dishes, she was still thinking: –

“Now, Jenny Brace, what are your worldly possessions anyway? Clothes enough to be a wee bit more than respectable, a house plenty for two, but certainly not stretchable to take in six more, a little piece of garden, and a nice big piece of grass and trees, and a barn. A barn!” she repeated, clasping her hands in the dish-water with a splash.

“Mother,” she said ten minutes later, when she sat on the top step of the front porch with her arms across her mother’s knee. “I believe I’ve hit on the very thing to do. There are the Johnsons in their tumble-down house, and here are we with a perfectly whole, clean barn without even a cat in it. Don’t you see the possibilities? Presto! Change! There is the tumble-down house, empty and here are the Johnsons living in the perfectly whole barn.”

Mother gasped.

“But Jenny – ”

“Oh, mother dear, please don’t “but.’ You know there are two parts to the barn down stairs, and upstairs there are three. They could have a living room, kitchen and three bedrooms.”

“Yes’m,” said Mother meekly, “but where would they get the three beds?”

“Why, I suppose they sleep on something now, though probably it wouldn’t fit our clean barn; that’s a fact.”

For a moment Jenny looked crestfallen. Then she brightened again.

“Well, I can think and pray about that too, seeing that the Lord gave me the idea of the barn. The question is, mother, would you be willing to have them come?”

There was silence on the porch for a few minutes while Mother watched the sunset over beyond the hills.

“It looks like the gates of the heavenly city,” she said at last, “where there are homes for everyone. Yes, Jenny, dear, I’d be willing to have them come, if there’s anyway of fixing it.”

Jenny squeezed the work-roughened hand that had slipped into hers.

“You blessed! Of course, I knew you would. Mother, I’m going to Aunt Serinda about the beds.”

“Your Aunt Serinda?” Mother gasped again. “Why Jenny!”

“Yes mother,” repeated Jenny. “I’m going to Aunt Serinda. There is no sense in having an attic full of old furniture when there’s an empty barn just hungry for it. If she hasn’t enough, I’ll go to Mrs. Squires. I’ll take up a collection, mother, a missionary collection.”

“I’m afraid your Aunt Serinda will think – ” began Mother faintly.

“Yes, I know what you think,” Jenny agreed. “She will say, “How perfectly ridiculous!’ But before I get through she will give me a bed and very likely a blanket. I shall start out tomorrow morning and see what I can do.”

True to her word, the sun had not dried the dew from the grass that was rapidly growing green under its spring warmth before Jenny was on her way up the neat box-bordered walk at Aunt Serinda’s.

“The Johnsons!” puttered that good woman when Jenny began to relate to her Aunt their forlorn condition. “Johnson weeds I call ’em. Of all the shiftless, good-for-nothing lots! They can’t be much worse off now that Jim’s gone.”

“No ma’am” said Jenny; “They don’t need to be. They are going to be better off, Aunt Serinda. They are coming to live in our barn. You know we never use it, and it’s a specially tight barn, with more windows than most.”

Aunt Serinda held up her hands in horror.

“In your barn? How perfectly ridiculous! Why, they’ll bring enough lice to poison you all. And they’ll run over everything.”

“I hope so,” said Jenny promptly. “Little Johnson weeds have to run somewhere. It would be better to be over our good clean grass than down there in the centre of town, where there is mischief waiting to be done every minute. They won’t bring any lice, though, because I mean to have them burn up all their old things before they come. I’m taking up a collection this morning to furnish the barn. You are going to give me a bed and some other things out of the attic, aren’t you, auntie?”

“Well, of all things!” Aunt Serinda stood with her hands on her hips, and stared at Jenny. “If you aren’t the best of any girl I ever saw! I suppose you’d like to have me take down my kitchen stove for them also, and send along the spring rocker from the parlor, besides.”

Jenny laughed cheerily.

“Oh, no, auntie, only just the things up in the attic that you can spare. You know you’d rather someone would have the use of them than to have them wasted up there. Couldn’t we go up now and see? I ought to hurry a little. I may have to go to lots of places before I get enough.”

Aunt Serinda turned, and led the way up the stairs without a word.

“There is a bed,” she admitted when they stood under the peaked roof. “I took it down from the spare room when Mary Ellen bought the brass one to sleep in when she comes. The mattress wouldn’t fit any other bed; so I suppose it might as well go along. There are some quilts in that chest, too, that Mary Ellen never liked. I guess you could have some of them.”

“It was very exciting, picking out and setting aside. Just why Aunt Serinda, with all her abundance, had treasured so many old things was a question. Probably it was because few people knew the keys to her heart as Jenny did, and so no one had ever asked her for them. And it was not Aunt Serinda’s nature to give without being asked.

Once started, however, it seemed to be easy enough.

“Those chairs over there,” she said finally, dusting her hands up on her apron when the collection had grown to a very respectable size, “they don’t need much mending; I guess James can do it tonight. How are you going to get all this stuff over to the barn?”

“I don’t know.” Jenny paused aghast. “I never once thought of that. I’ll find a way, though, or make it.”

“Yes, I expect you would,” said Aunt Serinda, smiling grimly; “but this time you needn’t. I’ll have James hitch up the long wagon and take them over when you are ready, and he could pick up anything else you collect, on the way.”

Jenny stood for a minute with shining eyes, irresolute. Then she flew at Aunt Serinda, and, throwing both arms around that astonished person’s neck, planted a warm kiss on the nearest cheek.

The kilometer down the road to Mrs. Squires’ house seemed to slide from under Jenny’s feet. Mrs. Squires was round and rosy and sympathetic.

“Why, yes, my dear, of course I’ll help. I’m through cleaning, and there are some things I’ve been wondering what to do with. I haven’t any beds but there is a rusty cook-stove in the cellar that I’ll be only too glad to have you take. I should think that it could be cleaned up and do very well.”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” said Jenny eagerly; “I can black it and all that. And Aunt Serinda’s James will come for it.”

There were several additions to the cook-stove before Jenny hurried on to Judge Beaker’s, following the suggestion that the Beaker girls had just refurnished their bedroom.

It was close after house-cleaning time, and rummage sales had not yet found their way into East Greenfield; so it was not very wonderful that by noon Jenny really had enough things promised her to furnish the barn with a comfort that would seem luxury to the young Johnson’s and their mother.

The finishing touch for Jenny came when she leaned out her window sill to tell the story to little lame Ruthie West, not because she expected anything there, but because she was so happy that she could not help stopping to share it with someone. Ruthie laughed over the yellow soap feelingly offered by Mrs. Evans, and cried over the cook-stove, and when it was all told exclaimed earnestly: –

“Oh, Jenny, I must do something; I just must! I haven’t any things, even if you needed them; but come in please, and get my Japanese box out of the bureau drawer. It’s got my gold piece in it. It’s truly mine, Jenny; Mr. Graves gave it to me last Christmas, and I haven’t been able to think of anything nice enough to do with it. Now I know. You take it, Jenny, and buy some pretty stuff to make some frilly things and some curtains, maybe Ð if there’s enough. They’ll love to have some pretty things; I know they will. And, Jenny, maybe it will help them to be good, those little Johnson Ð weeds,” quoting Aunt Serinda softly.

Tears rolled down Jenny’s cheeks onto the shining piece of gold in Ruthie’s hand.

“You Ð darling!” she whispered, and could not say anything more.

Mother’s potatoes grew quite cold while she listened to Jenny’s excited reports, and grew as much excited herself by listening.

“I’ll begin to sweep the barn this afternoon,” she declared, hustling the dishes off the table. “I don’t want that poor Johnson soul to wait a minute longer than she must to have it all.”

The dust was flying in clouds from the open barn doors when the “Poor Johnson soul” herself came dragging up the path with the baby in her arms and a dingy black dress, manifestly borrowed, trailing forlornly behind her.

“Oh, my!” thought Jenny as she watched her coming. “I never remembered the clothes. They’ll have to have them. I wonder.

“Come right in, Mrs. Johnson,” she interrupted herself; “come in and sit down here. You must be tired with such along walk.”

“I’m no more tired than I always am.” Mrs. Johnson answered wearily, dropping into the rocker Jenny pushed forward. “I never get to rest, and I don’t expect to. I’ve come to see if you’ve got anything I can do to earn some money. People have been good, and we’ve had enough to eat so far; but it stands to reason that I’ve got to do something for myself.”

“Yes,” Jenny nodded gravely, “and the children will have to help. Maybe your oldest son can do some of the gardening your husband used to do, and your daughter Judy is big enough to take care of the little ones and help do the housework so you can go out part of the time.”

“I guess all the housework won’t hurt her,” sighed Mrs. Johnson, brushing away a slow tear that was stealing down her cheek. But at the same moment a ray of hope began to steal into her heart with Jenny’s brisk planning.

“I’d be willing to do anything,” she went on more energetically. “I’m not lazy, though people may think so; but I’ve just become discouraged.”

“And now you are going to take heart and begin again,” declared mother, coming in with her broom over her shoulder in time to hear the last words. “I suppose, then you’re willing to come and scrub my barn floors for me tomorrow morning. They won’t be very hard, but I can’t get down so long on account of my knee. I can pay you fifty cents.”

“Oh, I’ll come.” Mrs. Johnson straightened up so eagerly that she nearly dropped the baby. “And I’ll get them clean, too. I know how even if I don’t look it.”

Jenny and mother looked at each other and smiled, but they decided not to say anything about the moving at present. Nevertheless, Mrs. Johnson went home much lighter of heart and foot than when she came, though she carried several extra pounds in the way of vegetables and fresh bread.

Hardly was she out of sight when Mrs. Thomas Benton, president of the Ladies’ Aid Society, knocked on the front door.

“You see,” she told Jenny when she had recovered her breath, being somewhat portly for so steep a hill, “we’ve heard about your barn plan, and we thought we’d better have a finger in the pie. So we decided that instead of packing clothing for heathen lands this year, we would just dress up the Johnsons so they can match their new home. Oh, we shall send something to the heathen lands later; only we thought maybe this was an ought to have done and not leave the other undone.'”

Bright and early next morning Mrs. Johnson was on her knees scrubbing the barn floors, little dreaming that she was helping lay the foundation for her own future happiness.

She could not have been more thorough, had she known, much to Mother’s satisfaction.

“There’s a good person inside of her,” was the verdict. “She may be a weed, but she’ll pay for cultivation.”

It was nearly a week before the barn was ready, a week so busy that Jenny’s bones ached when she stretched them in bed each night, but so happy that she cared not for all the aches. Aunt Serinda’s James toiled up and down the hill with the long wagon loaded more than once; Ruthie’s loving fingers flew upon the ruffles and frills; Jenny and her mother set things straight, nailing and tacking diligently; and gradually the barn became transformed.

“It blossomed like a rose!” Jenny announced joyously. “It isn’t a barn any longer; it’s a cottage. Oh, mother, it’s better than a cottage; it’s a home.”

Oh, it was very plain and simple; to some it might even seem bare, in spite of Ruthie’s pretty things. But to Jenny, with the tumble-down house fresh in her memory, it was all that could be desired.

The morning it was all ready at last, in spotless order with the bright sunshine and the soft spring breezes pouring in at the open windows, Jenny ran down the hill to the Centre.

The little Johnsons were not playing in the mud outside the tumble-down house as usual. Mrs. Johnson met Jenny at the door in a trim dark calico dress that made a different woman of her. Seated in a beaming circle within were the five children, each clad from top to toe in clean, fresh garments.

“Aren’t we splendid, Miss Jenny?” cried the little girl, pushing a glowing face out from behind the baby’s head. “Ma’s just got us dressed up, and we’re going to have a bonfire of the old ones.”

“It was the Ladies’ Aid, Miss Jenny,” added Mrs. Johnson almost excitedly. “They’ve just gone, Mrs. Benton has, and they brought us all these things and more. Did you ever see anything like it? Of course, I’m going to help clean the church to help make up,” she added with a new womanly dignity that was very becoming; “But I could never pay for the kindness, never!”

“It’s beautiful,” said Jenny, “beautiful! I couldn’t tell you how glad I am. I’m so glad, too, that you’ve got them on, for mother wants you to come to the house for a few minutes. All of you. It’s something very important.”

Seizing Tommy, the two-year-old, by the hand, she hurried off ahead of them, fearing she could not keep her secret if she delayed another instant. Up the hill and across the wide grassy yard she led them, straight to where Mother stood in the barn doorway.

“I’ve brought them,” she said, and stopped, overwhelmed by this crowning moment.

“We want you to see our new house that we’ve fixed up,” Mother explained, coming to the rescue. “Come in, all of you.”

Considerably bewildered, Mrs. Johnson obeyed, shooing the children before her like a flock of chickens. It was not usual for her to be called upon for opinions or approval; and she made the most of it, exclaiming with admiration and delight as they made the rounds of the tiny bedrooms, and stood once more in the long, shining kitchen with its neatly blackened stove and its row of polished tin pans.

“It couldn’t be more complete in any way,” she pronounced her judgment. “Nor could it be prettier.”

“It’s all for you, Mrs. Johnson. You’re to come here this very day, and this is to be your new home. You are to sleep in the bedrooms, and cook in the kitchen, and – ”

“But I don’t understand,” faltered Mrs. Johnson, her bewilderment deepened with every second. “Where did it all come from? Whose is it? How – ”

“It came from everybody,” laughed Jenny. “Lots of people helped. And its yours, I tell you, to live in as long as you want to, you and the children. Don’t you see, dear?”

Little Mrs. Johnson dropped down suddenly in the middle of the shining floor.

“Oh, my land! My land!” she sobbed, rocking to and fro. “I never knew there were such kind folks in the world. I feel just as if I’d got into one of the many mansions.”

Mother patted the bent shoulders gently.

“You have,” she said, “into one He’s been preparing for you. Only instead of angels He used a lot of warm, loving human hands to do it with.”