“Well, it may be that if I found her enough of a governess for Rosaline and Flora, we may make a permanent engagement; but I shall prefer seeing what is in her first, which I can very well do during the holidays. She is very young, I believe.”
“Barely seventeen. Too young for Arbell.”
“Oh, I am not thinking of Arbell. Arbell is getting on very well at present; the chief danger is of her doing too much. She is growing fast, and I shall not be sorry to slacken her lessons a little for some months. If I find I can leave the children quite comfortably with Miss Prout, at Hardsand, Mr. Pevensey and I shall probably take Arbell with us on a tour of some extent. It will open her mind, and give her something to remember with pleasure, all the rest of her life.”
“It will, indeed, be a great treat to her; and it is such an advantage to young people to see new and interesting places with their parents. Is she sorry Mademoiselle is going away?”
“Not sorry; but she behaves to her very pleasantly, and is busy in my room, at every spare moment, working a present for her. Arbell is very clever at her needle.”
“That is a good thing, for every woman ought to be so, whatever her condition. How it beguiled the captivity of Mary Queen of Scots! Queen Caroline, the wife of George II., used to do great quantities of knotting. And think how Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, and Madame Royale, used to mend their own clothes and those of the poor king, in the tower of the Temple. No doubt it, in some measure, diverted their thoughts from their sad fate. The tranquillizing effect of needle-work is what our impulsive, excitable sex cannot be too grateful for.”
“My mother knew an old Scotch countess,” said Mrs. Pevensey, “who, in her latter days, used often to exclaim, piteously, ‘Oh, that I could sew!’”
After a pause she resumed:—“I have sometimes puzzled myself about the much-vexed question, ‘Should we try to do good in the world at large, before we have done all the good that needs to be done at home?’ There is a great cry got up against Mrs. Jellaby, and other pseudo-representatives of a class whose sympathies are widely engaged; and so much has been said about ‘charity beginning at home, and charity that ends there,’ that one gets rather perplexed. The Bishop of Oxford has, I think, lately settled the question. He said, ‘Our Saviour foresaw and provided against it, by dispersing His disciples far and wide, while yet much remained to be done in Jerusalem.’ Here is a guide, then, for us: we may do all the good we can, far and wide, even though we should be disappointed nearer home, or even in our homes, of doing all the good we wish.”
After this, we fell into a very interesting conversation, which I only hope was as profitable to her as I felt it to be to me. I have been stupid and sluggish of late, but this interchange of thought, feeling, and experience quite roused me.
Christian and Hopeful were approaching the end of their journey when they came to the drowsy land called the Enchanted Ground; and the way they kept themselves awake was, by conversing freely on their past experiences of God’s mercies and providences.