"Then tell me, child, how did you get it?"
Ned bent down his tall head, but could scarcely catch the low answer, "I took it."
"Just what I feared," said Ned Franks.
"But indeed—indeed," cried Norah Peele, "I did not know that I was doing so wrong! I would not have touched money or anything like that, but—but mistress would never miss it, I thought, and mother always expects some little present when I come home, and I've nothing to spare out of my wages, and so many, many do the same thing. I never was told that it was such a sin!"
"Did not conscience tell you, my child? Did not the Word of God tell you? Where it exhorts 'servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again, NOT PURLOINING, but shewing all good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.'" *
* Titus ii. 9-10.
"I did wrong, very wrong," murmured Norah, "but it is so difficult to deny one's self, and to deny others, and always to keep duty before one, however hard it may be."
"That is our cross," observed Ned.
"But I thought," said Norah, "indeed I'm sure, that both my mistress and the clergyman have said over and over again, that the Lord bore the cross for us, and that now we've nothing to do to earn our own salvation; we've just to believe, and we're safe."
"Do you forget what the Bible says, 'the devils also believe and tremble.'" *