“Do you know Miss Madden?” inquired the baronet’s daughter.
“Do I know her?” repeated Isa slowly, with her hazel eyes bent on the ground. Then suddenly she raised them, as she uttered the abrupt question, “Edith, do you know what it is to hate?”
“Hate? no, not exactly,” replied the gentle girl; “but there are some persons whom I do not like at all—some with whom I feel angry at times. I was angry with Miss Madden one day when she was laughing at Mr. Eardley, and mimicking his manner. I thought her doing so was so silly, so wrong. Besides, rudeness to one’s friends tries one’s patience a great deal more than unkindness to one’s self.”
“Cora reminds me of the description of the wicked in the Psalms,” observed Isa—“‘They shoot out their arrows, even bitter words.’ She cares little where the darts alight, or how deep they may pierce.”
Edith, who had a very tender conscience, was very doubtful whether such an application of a text from Scripture was consistent with Christian charity. Without venturing, however, to reprove, she merely observed in her gentle tone, “I am sorry that I spoke of Cora at all. It was breaking a rule which I had made.”
“What is your rule?” asked Isa.
“Never to speak of those whom I cannot like, except to God,” replied Edith.
“And what do you say of them to God?”
“Oh, if I speak of them to God, I must speak for them,” answered little Edith; “I dare not do anything else, for the Lord has told us to love our enemies, and we could not bring malice into our prayers.”
“Yours is a good rule, darling,” said Isa, and she turned to imprint a kiss on the forehead of her cousin. “Let us speak no more of Cora Madden, and may God help us to obey the most difficult command contained in all the Bible!”