"Mother might have let him wear his best for once!" she grumbled to herself.
And so all the afternoon she felt things were harder than she could bear.
But now, as she came under the quiet shade of the trees and tried to think, she sat down on a grassy bank and buried her face in her hands.
What was "hindering" her prayers, and her communion with God?
The Missioner said that the word "hindered" meant "that you cut yourselves adrift" from prayer.
He said that the mainland is like communication with God; and that if a person rowed out to a rock, and, after mooring his boat to return, cut it adrift, he would sever himself from returning to the mainland!
So if we went out on to the sea of our daily life, and let pleasure or worry, work or care, cut us adrift from communication with God, all our happiness and peace would go!
Yes, Nellie remembered every word, and sorrowfully she thought, "What is separating me from communion with God?"
At first she was not sure, but after a few moments of thinking it over, she confessed to herself that it was not "pleasure," for she thought she did not get much of that; it was not "work," though she had heaps of that; it was not "care," for as yet she felt but little of that; it was—she paused—she hated to acknowledge it to herself—it was worry! She had got into a kind of vexation with her life, and all that belonged to it. She could not alter it; the more she tried the worse it seemed to be. What was she to do?
She did love God; she did wish to please Jesus all the day, more than anything else in the world; and yet here she was vexed and irritated by the unalterable things in her lot, which (she told herself) her mother could alter, but did not, and which galled and fretted her almost past endurance.