"No, my lamb," answered Mary, "not to stand at the corner of the street in this bitter sharp wind, and just catch your death of cold. It chills one to the bones," added the widow, stirring up in her little grate the fire which burned brightly and briskly, for the weather was frosty and keen. Mary then took the remains of the morning's meal, the half loaf and small jug of milk, and put them on the mantel-piece, out of reach of the child. Her last care was to place a wire-guard before the fire. Having often to leave her little girl alone in the room, Mary dreaded her falling into danger, and had, by self-denial, scraped up a sufficient number of pence, to buy an old wire fire-guard.
"Now remain quiet there, my jewel! Don't get into mischief," said Mary. "Look at the pretty prints on the wall; mother won't be long afore she comes back with something nice for her darling!" So saying the widow kissed the child, took up her basket, and went to the door.
"Good-bye, mother!" cried Emmy. The last sound which Mary heard as she went down the old creaking stair was the "good-bye" from the sweet little voice whose tones she loved so well.
"She's a-blessing me without knowing it," thought Mary, recalling the words of the Catechist. "She's a-saying 'God be with you!' I'm afraid all's not right with me, for it seems as if I couldn't take any comfort from the thought of God being with me! It makes my conscience uneasy to know that He is watching me now that I'm a-going to break his law, and sell on his holy day."
O reader! If ever the thought of the presence of your heavenly Father gives you a feeling of fear, rather than a feeling of comfort, be sure that you are wandering from the right way, and—whatever excuse you may make for yourself—that you are doing or thinking something that puts your soul in danger!
As Mary slowly made her way with her heavy basket to the corner of the street where she usually stood to sell, a friend of hers passed her on the way, but stopped and turned round to ask after Emmy who had not been well. A few words were exchanged between the two women, and then the friend, who had a Prayer-book in her hand, said, "I can't stop longer now; I don't like to be late for church. Good-bye, Mrs. Cowell."
"Good-bye!" repeated poor Mary. "Ah!" she said with a sigh, as she watched her friend hastening on, "God will be with her, to bless her, for I know that Martha serves Him. Oft-times I've heard her say, 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shalt not want;' and though she's no better off than myself, it's wonderful, it is, how she has always had friends raised up for her in her troubles; and when trials came the thickest, how somehow or other a clear way out was always opened afore her! Martha says the best thing is to trust God and obey him, and that we don't obey because we don't trust. May be there's truth in that word; for if I really believed what Aylmer told me, that God cares for me as I care for my Emmy, I should do even just as he bids me, and keep this day holy. But it's hard to be hindered getting my bread honestly on one day out of seven; I don't see the harm in a poor widow woman selling a little on Sundays."
And yet Mary's mind was not easy; she had learned enough of God's word to know that by selling her oranges and nuts upon the day which the Lord has set apart for Himself, she was not only sinning herself, but leading others into sin. When little children thronged round her basket, eager to buy her fruit, Mary could not forget—she wished that she could—the solemn warning of the Lord: "Whoso shall offend (cause to sin) one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
There was a struggle in the mind of Mary between faith and distrust,—between duty and inclination—between the desire to follow her own will, and the knowledge that in all things we ought to follow the will of God. Which side in the end won the victory will appear in the end of my story. We will leave the widow doubting and hesitating at the corner of the street, and return to little Emmy, whom her mother had left carefully shut up in her lodging.
The child amused herself for some minutes as the widow had desired her to do, by looking at the coarse prints which were stuck with pins on the white-washed wall. But Emmy soon tired of this, she had seen them so often before. Then she sat down in front of the fire, and warmed her little red hands at the kindly blaze, and wished that that tiresome wire-guard were away, that kept so much of the glow out.