Really Amy felt as if it would have been less dreadful to have been locked up in her room, or sitting sewing with Jessie in the workroom, than sitting up in the parlour with the rest, and hearing her father show his pride in her, making her fetch her prize for the religious examination, and talking of her almost as if he wanted to compare her with Aunt Amy's missionary son.
And then when Ambrose Cuthbert was questioned about his plans, and told in a very modest quiet way where he was to go, and the work he was to do under a missionary to the Red Indians, Amy saw more and more how foolish she had been. What was that conceited groom whose boast was of the horses he had ridden, and the bets laid on them, compared with this young man? Which was the gentleman of the two? And this was her own first cousin, and she had forfeited the respect and esteem which he might have carried out with him! He would only—in those far countries—think of his cousin, Amy Lee, as a giddy, deceitful, hypocritical girl, who had carried on a flirtation under cover of a good work.
Amy burnt to tell all the excuses she thought she had, and how she had been led on, and that it was not so bad as no doubt Aunt Rose thought; but she must keep all back. Only at last her father remarked that his darling was very silent—shy, he thought, with her grand scholarly cousin. He said he should like them to hear what a pretty voice she had, and told her to sing one of her hymns, such as "Abide with us;" but Amy could not do that. She put her face in her hands, choked, and began to cry.
"Ah!" said Aunt Charlotte; "poor dear, it has been a great shock to her, the poor little boy being taken so much worse."
It was a comfort to every one that at that moment Miss Manners came in through the shop, asking for Jessie Hollis.
"The poor little boy is very ill," she said. "The only thing that seems to soothe him is a bit of a verse that his sister Mary says her teacher taught her. That was you—is it not, Jessie? Mary can only say half, and we can't make it out; but she says, 'If teacher was but here.'"
Of course Miss Lee was ready to spare Jessie for such a reason, and she folded up her work while Miss Manners had a little talk with Mrs. Cuthbert, on the mingled pain and sweetness of the giving up her only son to be one of those sent forth "to sow beside all waters."
"I am so glad he should have seen you, ma'am, before he leaves us," said his mother, the tears rising in her quiet eyes. "I only wish he could have seen Miss Edith—Mrs. Howard; for indeed, ma'am, I always feel that whatever good my children have learnt at home, was owing to the way I was brought up and the way Miss Edith used to talk to us."
"Nothing will make my sister so happy as to hear it, Amy," said Miss Manners. "Somehow it seems to chime in with what I had ventured to bring as a little remembrance of your old home for your son. I had prepared it to send the St. Augustine's scholar, before I knew I should see him."
She gave him a beautiful little Christian Year and Lyra Innocentium in a case together, and as the book-marker was the illuminated text—