“Yes,” replied Isa; “though, Wildwaste not being in the parish of Axe, we do not belong to his flock. Mr. Eardley had heard, through your steward’s wife, I believe, that we wanted a girl to help in the house. He called to recommend to us a young protegée of his own, a black-eyed gipsy-looking little creature, who blushes scarlet when she is spoken to, and seems to be afraid of the sound of her own voice. I think, however, that with a little training Lottie Stone will suit us very well.”
“Do you not like Mr. Eardley?” said Edith, looking as if assured that the answer must be in the affirmative.
“Very much; I wish that he were our clergyman instead of Mr. Bull, who must be nearly eighty years old, and who—but I don’t think it well to criticize preachers.”
“We attend the service at Axe—we drive there, for it is much too far off for a walk,” said Edith Lestrange. “You shall come with us every Sunday—that is to say,” she added, with a little hesitation, “if you don’t mind leaving your brother. Papa does not like more than three in the carriage.”
“Perhaps I ought not to leave Gaspar,” said Isa, gravely; and she added, but not aloud, “if I were not with him, I fear that he would not go to a place of worship at all.—No, Edith,” she said to her cousin, “I am afraid that I cannot accompany you to Axe on Sundays, but I have promised Mr. Eardley to bring Lottie twice a week to the little cottage-lectures which he gives in the dwelling of Holdich the steward.”
“Then we shall always meet there,” observed Edith. “I have such a sweet remembrance of those cottage-meetings, though I was such a little girl when I went to them that of course I could not understand all that I heard. I felt as if there were such peace, and holiness, and Christian kindness in that quiet home-church, where young and old, and rich and poor, gathered to hear God’s truth, and pray and praise together. And Holdich himself is such a good man,” continued Edith warmly: “it is not merely that he does not mind openly confessing his religion—whatever people may think of it—but that he lives up to what he professes. Papa went on the Continent, you know, rather in haste, and there had been a little confusion in his affairs, and no time to set them right. Papa was always so generous, and those about him had abused his confidence so sadly.”
“Yes, I heard something of that,” observed Isa, who, like the rest of the world, was aware that Sir Digby’s ostentatious extravagance had plunged him into pecuniary difficulties, and that change of air for his invalid child, though the ostensible, had not been the only cause of his retreat.
“But Holdich has brought everything into such beautiful order,” continued Edith,—“he has quite surprised papa by the way in which he has managed the estate. He has cared for his master’s interests as much, I think more than if they had been his own. Papa used to suspect people who had the name of being very pious, but he said this morning at breakfast, ‘A man like my steward, who brings his Christianity into his daily dealings, does more to convince infidels of the real power of faith than all the learned books that ever were written.’ I treasured up the words to repeat them to Holdich’s wife. I think that she and her husband are the happiest people that I know, and especially now that their son is doing so well as a schoolmaster under Mr. Eardley.”
“The subject of the new series of cottage-lectures is to be Gideon’s Triumph over Midian,” observed Isa.