Peeps Into China; Or, The Missionary's Children

by E. C. Phillips

LEONARD IN THE GARDEN.

"I will try to arouse up my memory, and tell you what I can on board ship, when we shall have, I suppose, seven or eight weeks with very little to do, and when you will, no doubt, be glad of some true stories to while away the time."

"I wish we were going to start to-morrow," rejoined Leonard, who was, I am afraid, a boy without a particle of that virtue which we call "patience." He wanted his mother now to go into the poultry-yard with him to see the roosts he had, and as she liked to enter into all his pleasures and useful occupations, she was very pleased to go.

Before either of them came in again, Sybil had heard "the rest" from her father; that she and Leonard were, after a six months' long holiday in China, to return to England to continue their education. It was a terrible blow to her, to whom a long separation from her parents seemed almost like an impossibility. Her bright eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, father!" she said; "and leave you and mother?"

"It must be for a time, my darling, till your education is completed, as your mother and I both wish you to remain at the school where you are, but when school-days are over, about four years hence, I hope to be able to have you out with us. It will be longer for poor old Leonard, won't it?"

"I don't think I care to go to China now, father," Sybil then said.

"Oh yes you do, Sybil," was the answer; "you like your father to be a missionary very much, you know, do you not?" Her mother had repeated this saying. "And, my child," he continued, "you know that it must be a dreadful trial for so very good and loving a mother as yours to part from her children; but now that a call has come to me to do my Master's work in a foreign land, and she is helping me to obey it, you would not make her trial greater, would you, by letting her see you sad? Oh no! I know you would not; but you would help us to do our duty more bravely. Is it not so, my child?"

Sybil buried her face on her father's shoulder, and sobbed, but on seeing her mother coming up the garden towards them, she quickly wiped her tears away, and tried to look cheerful. Her father had gone wisely to work in giving her such a reason for trying to overcome her sorrow, and he knew that now she would set herself bravely to work to help, and not to hinder, her parents' undertaking.