"You are always at it, Jean. We are working you to death. What will Miss Lorraine say?"
"She will be glad that I am making myself useful. I want to get away from myself, Barbara. You don't know what a selfish creature I am, and what a struggle it is, to keep my wishes and my desires in the background!"
Barbara only dimly understood, but while Jean was earnestly trying to quench her self-will and self-indulgence, there was another influence slowly growing and increasing in her heart, that was helping her successfully to cope with her besetting sin, and this influence was bringing a new tenderness and softness into her eyes and voice, and a deep undercurrent of peace and happiness into her soul.
Jean was a slow learner at the feet of her Master. But she was learning. From being a dreary irksome book, her Bible was giving her fresh thoughts, day by day. She stumbled very often, her self was her worst enemy, but she thanked God that her life was widening, and that now she could feel as much interest, and perhaps more, in others than in herself.
Chris continued to write her bright, amusing letters. She told of a long day in Edinburgh with her godmother, of lunching with Mr. George Fergusson, whom she thought very nice, but not a quarter good enough to be the son of his mother, of the sightseeing she had done, and of the charming Scotch people she had met. She described a day when she lunched at Strathglen, and found little Sunnie on her couch underneath an old chestnut-tree on the lawn. Dr. Fergusson had carried her down, and Chris described her as "a quivering, radiant sunbeam."
"I don't wonder Jean loved it all," she wrote. "The sombre old house, with its rich carvings and stained windows, and gallery of portraits, the sad, silent self-contained mistress, the devoted old servants and the little bit of sparkling quicksilver with her ringing laugh, her quaint conceits, and her wonderful love for everything and everybody, it impressed me tremendously, and the bond of union between the doctor and that tiny child is most touching!"
Then she spoke of Sunnie's portrait.
"It is marvellous! Jean must be a genius. She seems to have caught and held the spirit of the child in her canvas. It isn't only the outside of Sunnie, but the indescribable sweet witchery of the little darling, the absolute purity and innocence of her nature."
Jean read these extracts, smiled and sighed, and waited impatiently for the next to come.
A fortnight passed, three weeks, and then Chris wrote, saying she was coming back.