CHAPTER XII.
Little Impulse beaten again.
After breakfast the next morning, Jessie sat down to her work with a resolute will. Her impulse, was to spend the hours playing with Madge. But her purpose to act by rule was strong, and it conquered. Guy went out for the brown worsted, which her meeting with Madge, kept her from buying the previous evening. So giving her protégé a seat on a cricket by her side, she worked merrily, and with nimble fingers, on her uncle’s slippers. The tongues of the two girls, you may be sure, were as nimble as Jessie’s fingers.
While they were thus happily employed, Uncle Morris was out, looking after the young outcast’s mother.
Jessie had not been seated more than an hour before her brother Hugh, with his friend, Walter Sherwood and his sister Carrie, came in, each armed with a pair of skates, and well wrapped up, as was fitting they should be, on a cold day in November. Carrie bounded into the room like a fawn, and kissing her friend, exclaimed:
“O Jessie! this is a capital morning for skating! Walter has found a nice safe place, and we have come to take you with us.”
This was a strong temptation. Perhaps a stronger could not have been offered, to incline her to break her purpose, and drop her work. There had been no day since her skates had been given her, in which there had been ice enough to try them. It was a new amusement, too, and her heart was set upon it. Hence, an impulse came over her, to pitch the slipper into the basket, seize her skates, and hurry away to the desired spot. In fact, she half rose from the chair, and words of consent were rising to her lips, when she thought of the little wizard, and reseating herself, replied:
“I would like to go ever so much, Carrie, but I must stay in until dinner-time, and work on uncle’s slippers.”