"Now, you will be sure to wait for me this afternoon, will you not?" said the gentleman to his daughter as he left her at Mr. Brown's door. "Oh yes, father, I will wait, of course," Bessie replied, and for once she really intended to keep her word. But when afternoon came, and with it no appearance of her father, Bessie began to grow impatient. She suddenly remembered an arithmetic lesson which she had promised to learn for the next Monday, and which she had not before thought of, and she felt slightly uneasy in regard to the verse which she had assured Miss Ellers she would be able to recite on the next day, and which now for the first time came to her recollection. You see her conscience was not quite dead, after all, only it troubled her at the wrong time. However that may be, Bessie imagined that she had a sufficient excuse for not keeping the promise to her father, as, by observing that, she would be in danger of breaking two others made before it; so she said to Mary: "Mary, I don't believe father will be here till evening, and mother will be anxious about me, so I am going home. See, it is growing dark already."
Neither Mary nor herself knew that the darkness was caused by the gathering storm, and not by the approach of night.
So Bessie set out on her return, feeling, meanwhile, very guilty and unhappy. She had not gone more than halfway before the raindrops began to fall. They came faster and faster until the single drops became torrents of water. Bessie took shelter under a large tree, and looked about her in dismay. Above her all was blackness, around her the pouring rain. The branches over her head swayed to and fro in the wind until Bessie was afraid that they might fall and crush her, and the rain penetrated beneath them, and came and made a little pool at her feet. Bessie remembered the story of the flood which had once been sent to punish people for their wickedness, and she began to fear that the water around her would continue to rise gradually until she should be swallowed up in the waves, just like the transgressors who were drowned in the time of Noah. She was in the act of looking about her to see whether there might not be a board that she could get to float upon, as some were represented as doing in the picture in the large Bible at home, when suddenly the sky grew brighter, the clouds overhead began to break and move away, and before her, reaching from the glowing hills in the east higher and higher up along the brightening heavens, shone, all the more beautiful for the darkness that had gone before, a rainbow. Bessie was comforted. "How foolish I was!" she said to herself; "I might have known that there could not be another flood, for God promised Noah that there never should be one again. I remember now that the rainbow was the sign of the promise." And as Bessie thought of the faithfulness of the great Father in keeping his word to his children, and of how far she had been from imitating his example, she began to cry. As she stood there under the tree, the very image of distress, troubled with mingled sorrow for her naughtiness and anxiety to reach her home, Dr. Burroughs came riding slowly along, his old gray horse looking almost as rueful as Bessie herself, and his gig bespattered with mud from top to bottom.
"What, little girl! out here in this storm? Crying too! Well, I don't wonder. Jump in here by me, and I'll take you where you can get some dry clothes. Strange that your mother should let you be out when she saw the shower coming on!"
"She didn't let me," sobbed Bessie; "I promised father to wait for him at Mr. Brown's, and instead of that I started alone. I'm so sorry."
"Yes, I should think you would be," said the doctor. He was a kind-hearted man, but not sparing of his words. "I guess you will remember to keep your promise the next time you make one. When people neglect to keep their word they generally get into trouble." And with this remark the doctor left Bessie to her own reflections, not speaking again till he came before her own home. There he put her down, saying: "Let me give you one piece of advice, little girl: Never make a promise unless you mean to keep it, and never break a promise after it is made."
Bessie entered the house feeling very miserable and forlorn, but it is to be hoped a wiser and a better girl than when she had left it in the morning.
Reader, whoever you may be, whether boy or girl, if you would be happy and prosperous in this world, if you would enjoy the confidence of your friends, would win the favour of the God above, speak always the "truth in the love of it." Be so honest, so upright in your engagements that all who know you may be able to trust in your good faith, your fidelity to your word. Remember that "it is better not to vow than to vow and not perform," and that the seat of faithfulness is in the heart where God's Holy Spirit dwells, for "the fruit of the Spirit is faith."