“Do you mean that nothing ever goes wrong with you, or that you do not mind anything—which?”
“Nothing goes wrong enough with me to give me a handsome excuse for minding it.”
“Then it must be all your good temper.”
“I don’t think so,” said Meta; “it is that nothing is ever disagreeable to me.”
“Stay,” said Ethel, “if the ill-temper was in you, you would only be the crosser for being indulged—at least, so books say. And I am sure myself that it is not whether things are disagreeable or not, but whether one’s will is with them, that signifies.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“Why—I have seen the boys do for play, and done myself, what would have been a horrid hardship if one had been made to do it. I never liked any lessons as well as those I did without being obliged, and always, when there is a thing I hate very much in itself, I can get up an interest in it, by resolving that I will do it well, or fast, or something—if I can stick my will to it, it is like a lever, and it is done. Now, I think it must be the same with you, only your will is more easily set at it than mine.”
“What makes me uncomfortable is, that I feel as if I never followed anything but my will.”
Ethel screwed up her face, as if the eyes of her mind were pursuing some thought almost beyond her. “If our will and our duty run the same,” she said, “that can’t be wrong. The better people are, the more they ‘love what He commands,’ you know. In heaven they have no will but His.”
“Oh! but Ethel,” cried Meta, distressed, “that is putting it too high. Won’t you understand what I mean? We have learned so much lately about self-denial, and crossing one’s own inclinations, and enduring hardness. And here I live with two dear kind people, who only try to keep every little annoyance from my path. I can’t wish for a thing without getting it—I am waited on all day long, and I feel like one of the women that are at ease—one of the careless daughters.”