Once upon a time, in a bright little village, there was a girl named Karla who was as cheerful as the day was long. If ever a girl put her whole heart into helping people, that girl was Karla. Whatever she did for her father or her mother or her brothers, or even for their neighbours, she did it cheerfully. Her father said, “Karla, put on your hat and get a pail of water in the brook, will you?” And Karla ran and got the hat and the pail and away to the brook, singing all the way. Her mother would say, “Karla, your brothers are coming from school, and you have something nice for them in the oven; you must stand by the gate to show that you see them coming.” And Karla would say, “Yes, mother,” and trot away to the gate.
A good many times a day Karla’s mother would send her with messages, or to ask some of the neighbours to come in and sit with her. The messages could not always be agreeable. Karla might have to say, “Mrs. Grey, mother wants to know if you will lend her a quarter of a pound of brown sugar.” Or Mrs. Brown, “Mother wants to borrow a cup of fresh butter.” But she always brought the loan back with a smile that melted away the little cloud that naturally lowered on a borrower. Just at this time some very nice neighbours were living with Karla, Mr. and Mrs. White and their little boy, Johnny. Johnnie was a white boy, but not as white as his father and mother. Johnny himself liked to be white better than anything else, and there was nothing so bad as being dark; but his father and mother were both so dark that people sometimes said they must have been black.
Mr. and Mrs. White got all the neighbours together to be present at Johnny’s christening, and everybody was to help. Johnny’s good fairies were to be angels, who were to give him golden gifts; but the bad fairy was to give him only a dark piece of money. Johnny’s gold ones were so white and bright that they might have passed for recently washed. And when his dark penny rolled between his little white fingers, people said, “By and by that boy will grow so black, that nothing will ever wash the colour out.”
They did not say so much of Mrs. White, because she was married; but they said of Mr. White, that his children would take after his family. One day Karla called her neighbours together to ask their opinion about his family.
“I don’t think there was ever a black person in it,” said she; “and I guess that Johnnie was touched up with a little Indian paint.” Everybody sat still, for nobody could tell.
In this way the time passed on, and at last everybody was invited to see Mr. and Mrs. White’s second child. Mrs. White was in bed, with her curtains drawn, and half a dozen blanket-skates round her. There were three blankets at the top, and Mr. White was obliged to sit in a chair nearly all the day long, or the little boy would have been crowded out.
“Well, neighbour, how do you do?” cried the Americans. Mr. and Mrs. White never spoke of neighbours. To be sure, they were neigbours to everybody, for they all lived together. But Mr. and Mrs. White wouldn’t have their family talked of so.
“What do you call your little girl,” said one of the neighbours, scornfully.
While Mr. White was going to say, what did that matter so long as she was one of his family, Karla, who was standing by, said quietly, “She is christened Clara.”
Then the Americans went away, for it wouldn’t do for a poor people to mix with people of no manners.
But Karla went in and kissed Clara, who was very pretty. She put on a blue dress, changed all her lace; and a new white dress and black lace; and another of such light muslin even the smallest child might wear. No one in the colony wore lace but the little girls. For mothers should wear black dresses, fastened in front with her husband’s watch-chain; and fathers seem in some way to flow all over their neighbours.
“God is merciful,” said Karla in a whisper, as she kissed her. “And those who are really dark are very good people.” And so they all were. If they saw a poor man walking down the street late at night, your heart beat quicker for fear he should knock you down, but you saw at once that he had spent all his money for drink, and was only going to lie under the telegraph-posts. If one of the neighbours was sick, there were ten people beside him in a minute. They seemed to have no other love, but think how they could save each other’s bodies and souls.
If Mrs. White’s neighbours had been doubtful about visiting Mr. White and his family before little Clara was born, they were more so after. But the very day Mrs. White was to be tapped, her tea was finished, and her neighbours all came in tea-bless, a thing that had then never happened.
“‘Eat, neighbour,’ said the men, pouring their tea into their saucers, and handing them to the ladies.”