Kitty was lying on the rug, fast asleep, with the
doll in her arms.
‘I found them like this when I came in,’
whispered Miss Locke; ’she must have been listening
to the music and fallen asleep. How late you have
stopped with Phoebe! it is nearly eight o’clock!’
‘I do not think the time has been wasted,’
I answered cheerfully, as I bade her good-night and
stepped out into the darkness. Is time ever wasted,
I wonder, when we stop in our daily work to give one
of these weak ones a cup of cold water? It is
not for me to answer; only our recording angel knows
how some such little deed of kindness may brighten
some dim struggling life that seems over-full of pain.
A MISSED VOCATION
It was pleasant to wake to bright sunshine the next
morning, and to hear the sparrows twittering in the
ivy.
It had been my intention to set apart Sunday as much
as possible as a day of rest and refreshment.
Of course I could not expect always to control the
various appeals for my help or to be free from my patients,
but by management I hoped to secure the greater part
of the day for myself.
I had told Peggy not to expect me at the cottage until
the afternoon; everything was in such order that there
was no necessity for me to forgo the morning service.
My promise to Phoebe Locke would keep me a prisoner
for the evening, but I determined that her sister and
Kitty should be set free to go to church, so my loss
would be their gain.
I thought of Jill as I dressed myself. She had
often owned to me that the Sundays at Hyde Park Gate
were not to her taste. Visitors thronged the
house in the afternoon; Sara discussed her week’s
amusements with her friends or yawned over a novel;
the morning’s sermon was followed as a matter
of course by a gay luncheon party. ‘What
does it mean, Ursula?’ Jill would say, opening
her big black eyes as widely as possible: ’I
do not understand. Mr. Erskine has been telling
us that we ought to renounce the world and our own
wills, and not to follow the multitude to do foolishness,
and all the afternoon mother and Sara having been talking
about dresses for the fancy-ball. Is there one
religion for church and another for home? Do
we fold it up and put it away with our prayer-books
in the little book-cupboard that father locks so carefully?’
finished Jill, with girlish scorn.
Poor Jill! she had a wide, generous nature, with great
capabilities, but she was growing up in a chilling
atmosphere. Young girls are terribly honest;
they dig down to the very root of things; they drag
off the swathing cloths from the mummy face of conventionality.
What does it mean? they ask. Is there truth anywhere?
Endless shams surround them; people listen to sermons,
then they shake off the dust of the holy place carefully
from the very hem of their garments; their religion,
as Jill expressed it, is left beside their prayer-books.
Ah! if one could but see clearly, with eyes purged
from every remnant of earthliness,—see as
the angels do,—the thick fog of unrisen
and unprayed prayers clinging to the rafters of every
empty church, we might well shudder in the clogging
heavy atmosphere.
