“Ethel, dear, I don’t think dear mamma would say we ought to make vows, except what the church decrees for us. I don’t think she would like the notion of your considering yourself pledged; but I do think, that, after all you have said and felt about Cocksmoor, and being led there on that day, it does seem as if we might be intended to make it our especial charge.”
“Oh, Margaret, I am glad you say so. You always understand.”
“But you know we are so young, that now we have not her to judge for us, we must only do little things that we are quite sure of, or we shall get wrong.”
“That’s not the way great things were done.”
“I don’t know, Ethel; I think great things can’t be good unless they stand on a sure foundation of little ones.”
“Well, I believe Richard was right, and it would not do to begin on Sunday, but he was so tame; and then my frock, and the horrid deficiency in those little neatnesses.”
“Perhaps that is good for you in one way; you might get very high-flying if you had not the discipline of those little tiresome things, correcting them will help you, and keep your high things from being all romance. I know dear mamma used to say so; that the trying to conquer them was a help to you. Oh, here’s Mary! Mary, will you get Ethel’s dressing things? She has come home wet-footed and cold, and has been warming herself by my fire.”
Mary was happy to help, and Ethel was dressed and cheered by the time Dr. May came in, for a hurried visit and report of his doings; Flora followed on her way from her room. Then all went to tea, leaving Margaret to have a visit from the little ones under charge of nurse. Two hours’ stay with her, that precious time when she knew that sad as the talk often was, it was truly a comfort to him. It ended when ten o’clock struck, and he went down—Margaret hearing the bell, the sounds of the assembling servants, the shutting of the door, the stillness of prayer-time, the opening again, the feet moving off in different directions, then brothers and sisters coming in to kiss her and bid her good-night, nurse and Flora arranging her for the night, Flora coming to sleep in her little bed in the corner of the room, and, lastly, her father’s tender good-night, and melancholy look at her, and all was quiet, except the low voices and movements as Richard attended him in his own room.
Margaret could think: “Dear, dear Ethel, how noble and high she is! But I am afraid! It is what people call a difficult, dangerous age, and the grander she is, the greater danger of not managing her rightly. If those high purposes should run only into romance like mine, or grow out into eccentricities and unfemininesses, what a grievous pity it would be! And I, so little older, so much less clever, with just sympathy enough not to be a wise restraint—I am the person who has the responsibility, and oh, what shall I do? Mamma trusted to me to be a mother to them, papa looks to me, and I so unfit, besides this helplessness. But God sent it, and put me in my place. He made me lie here, and will raise me up if it is good, so I trust He will help me with my sisters.”
“Grant me to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in Thy holy comfort.”