“Really, Mabel, you do wrong to speak thus of her.”
“Well, I won’t if you don’t like it, darling, but she’s so intensely common-place and matter-of-fact! I don’t believe that she understands or could enter into our feelings any more than if we had been born in different planets!”
Ida sighed. “It is our appointed trial,” she replied; and these few words, though well intended, did more to impress upon her young sister the hardship of having an uncongenial stepmother, than open complaint might have done. Mabel regarded her gentle sister as a suffering saint, and had no idea that there might be two sides even to such a question as this.
Ida’s conscience warned her that the preceding conversation had been unprofitable, to say the least of it, and she knew well what Scripture saith against every idle word. She therefore turned the channel of discourse, and told Mabel of her new plan of having a class for farm-boys, which she intended herself to conduct.
“You can’t manage more upon Sundays, Ida; you have two classes already, you know.”
“True; this must be on the Saturday evening, when the lads have left off work.”
“You can’t have the school-room, then; that’s Mrs. Aumerle’s time for the mother’s class.”
“I have been thinking about that,” said Ida, gravely; “but there is really no other hour that will be suitable at all for mine. I must ask Mrs. Aumerle to have her women a little earlier in the afternoon.”
“I would not ask a favour of her!” said Mabel proudly.
“It is never pleasant to ask favours,” replied Ida; “but it is sometimes our duty to do so.”