"Mother," said Bessie, after she had duly announced the intended picnic, "can't I have a new pink sash for my white frock? Nancy Parker is going to have ever so many new things."
"No, child," said her mother, "you don't need a new sash. Your frock looks quite well enough without one. But I've been thinking you'd be the better of a new hat, for the one you have looks a little brown. And as you've been a pretty good girl, and a deal less forgetful of late, I wouldn't mind getting you a new hat, if you'll hurry and finish up that plain sewing you've had in hand so long. It's time it was done and put away."
Bessie looked a little disappointed. The new hat was not so attractive as the sash would have been. Suddenly her mother's remark on the brownness of her hat suggested the image of Nelly's tattered, dingy one, which she had noticed that afternoon.
"What would you do with my old hat, mother," she said, "if I get a new one?"
"I don't know. You've your sun-bonnet for wearing about the farm. Put it by for Jenny, perhaps," suggested the thrifty Mrs. Ford.
"Might I give it to Nelly Connor, mother? Hers will hardly stay together."
Mrs. Ford had never seen Nelly, but she knew something of her forlorn situation. "I'm sure," she said, "I shouldn't mind if you did. I dare say it would be charity to her, poor thing." And it occurred to her to think whether she, a well-to-do farmer's wife, had been as abundant in deeds of charity as she might have been.
Bessie considered the matter settled, and next day set to work with renewed zeal on the "plain sewing," which had been getting on very languidly; for Bessie was not fond of long, straight seams, or of sitting still for any length of time. She set herself a task as she took her seat under the spreading butternut-tree; and Jenny and Jack came to beg for "a story." Bessie's story-telling powers had been largely developed of late, to make the Sunday lessons she had begun to give the restless little things more palatable to them. Only the promise of "a story" could fix their attention long enough to commit to memory a simple verse. And her powers once found out, she soon had demands upon her for stories to a greater extent than her patience was always equal to satisfying.
Bessie had become, as her mother had noticed, much more thoughtful of late. Her card, hung up in her room, kept always before her mind her resolution to "look to Jesus" for help to live to please Him. And though she still often forgot and yielded to temptation, yet, on the whole, she was steadily advancing in that course in which all must be either going forward or backward. Her mother noticed that this decided improvement dated from the day when she had brought home the card,—a day which had not been without influence on herself,—although, when worldly principles have been long suffered to hold undisputed sway, it is difficult at once to overcome old habits; and lost ground is not less hard to retrieve in spiritual than in earthly things.
Bessie was still diligently working at her "task," when she saw Nancy Parker running up across the fields.