Lucy was silent a minute, then she spoke: "She wanted me. She liked me better than anybody."
"Well, now you see what selfish attachments can turn into," returned Mrs. Berry. "Do you remember the teaching about the worthlessness of mortal mind love? Here are you and Ada, yesterday thinking you love one another, and to-day at enmity."
"I'm going with Alma Driscoll now, and I'm going to eat my lunch with her, and everything. I should think that was unselfish."
"Perhaps it will be. We'll see. Isn't it a little comfort to you to think that it will be some punishment to Ada to see you do it?"
"I don't know," replied Lucy, who was so honest that she hesitated.
"Well, then, think until you do know, and be very certain whether the thoughts that are stirring you so are all loving. You see, dearie, we're all so tempted, in times of excitement, to begin at the wrong end: tempted to begin with ourselves instead of with God. The all-loving Creator of you and Ada and Alma has made three dear children, one just as precious to Him as another. If the loveliness of His creation is hidden by something discordant, then we must work away at it; and one's own consciousness is the place where she has a right to work, and that helps all. It says in the Bible 'When He giveth quietness who then can make trouble?' You can rest yourself with the thought of His great quietness now, and you will reflect it."
Mrs. Berry paused and her rocking-chair swayed softly back and forth during a moment of silence.
"You know enough about Science," she went on, at last, "to be certain that weeks of an offended manner with Ada would have no effect except to make her long to punish you. You know that love is reflected in love, and that its opposite is just as certain to be reflected unless one knows God's truth."
"But you don't say anything at all about Alma," said Lucy. "She's the chief one."