“And how about the beam in my little girl’s own eye?” asked Mrs. Berry gently.

“Haven’t I been telling you all about it?  I’ve been just as selfish and cowardly as I could be.”  Lucy’s voice was despairing.

“I think there’s a beam there still.  I think you are angry with Ada.”

“How can I help it?  If it hadn’t been for her I shouldn’t have been so mean.”

“Oh, Lucy dear!” Mrs. Berry smiled over the head on her shoulder.  “There is old Adam again, blaming somebody else for his fall.  Have you forgotten that there is only one person you have the right to work with and change?”

“I don’t care,” replied Lucy hotly.  “I’ve been calling evil good.  I have.  I’ve been calling Ada good and sticking to her and letting her run me.”

“Was it because of what you could get from her, or because of what you could do for her?” asked Mrs. Berry quietly.

Lucy was silent a minute, then she spoke:  “She wanted me.  She liked me better than anybody.”

“Well, now you see what selfish attachments can turn into,” returned Mrs. Berry.  “Do you remember the teaching about the worthlessness of mortal mind love?  Here are you and Ada, yesterday thinking you love one another, and to-day at enmity.”

“I’m going with Alma Driscoll now, and I’m going to eat my lunch with her, and everything.  I should think that was unselfish.”

“Perhaps it will be.  We’ll see.  Isn’t it a little comfort to you to think that it will be some punishment to Ada to see you do it?”

“I don’t know,” replied Lucy, who was so honest that she hesitated.

“Well, then, think until you do know, and be very certain whether the thoughts that are stirring you so are all loving.  You see, dearie, we’re all so tempted, in times of excitement, to begin at the wrong end:  tempted to begin with ourselves instead of with God.  The all-loving Creator of you and Ada and Alma has made three dear children, one just as precious to Him as another.  If the loveliness of His creation is hidden by something discordant, then we must work away at it; and one’s own consciousness is the place where she has a right to work, and that helps all.  It says in the Bible ‘When He giveth quietness who then can make trouble?’ You can rest yourself with the thought of His great quietness now, and you will reflect it.”

Mrs. Berry paused and her rocking-chair swayed softly back and forth during a moment of silence.

“You know enough about Science,” she went on, at last, “to be certain that weeks of an offended manner with Ada would have no effect except to make her long to punish you.  You know that love is reflected in love, and that its opposite is just as certain to be reflected unless one knows God’s truth.”

“But you don’t say anything at all about Alma,” said Lucy.  “She’s the chief one.”

Mrs. Berry smiled.  “No,” she returned gently.  “You are the chief one.  Just as soon as your thought is surely right, don’t you know that your heavenly Father is going to show you how to unravel this little snarl?  You remember there isn’t any personality to error, whether it tries to fasten on Ada, or on you.”