Esther was accordingly taken into confidence, and expressed a wish to box their ears for a pair of ninnies, until she read the note, which struck terror to her heart.
"I don't feel at all nice," she said. "Though I'm not as bad as many girls. I know Mrs. Mather pays Melville five dollars a month if she isn't saucy to her. And Jane Waite tells fibs. And Jemima Watson threw her mother's watch on the floor and stamped on it."
"What for?"
"Because she couldn't get an example right. Julia, I wish you hadn't shown me that note. It was real mean in you. You knew it would stick in my throat."
Meanwhile Mrs. Thayer was looking forward with anxiety to the day of Esther's proposed lunch party, and the storm that was to follow the announcement that she should not sanction it. Great, therefore, was her surprise when Esther came, voluntarily, to say, in a nonchalant way, put on to hide some real feeling, that she had changed her mind, and did not intend to invite the girls.
"I am very glad to hear it," was the reply, "for I did not intend to provide lunch save for the family, as usual, and you would have had to recall your invitations. Henceforth, when you wish for an indulgence of this sort, come and ask my consent."
The quiet dignity and firmness with which this was said, impressed Esther with such a sense of amazement that she was in no state to wage war.
The family leaf was thus turned over without signs of affray; yet, He who seeth in secret witnessed many a struggle with self and pride, and evil habits on the part of the parents. It is not so easy to own that one's whole theory of domestic life has been wrong; not a trifle to drop all querulous tones, sharp reprimands, and hasty penalties. Again and again they were tempted to try new theories; to imitate this and that successful experimenter; to go on searching books and other human counsel. But every such attempt ended in a failure, and at last they went together hand in hand, confided all their interests to God, and resolved henceforth to consult Him and Him alone in every emergency. And now they found rest of the sweetest kind, and a new influence was shed abroad in the house. It is simply impossible to live this life of trust without influencing children powerfully. The young Thayers were too young to be utterly spoiled, and gradually the new principles that controlled the parents began to act upon them. Rome was not built in a day, neither is a human character suddenly so formed. It took time and patience to undo the work so ill-done; but the Holy Spirit so often wooed was lovingly won. He came and brooded, like a peaceful dove, over the disordered household. There is not a more upright man in Wall Street than Robert Thayer. His character was ripened by the discipline of labor through which he had to pass while earning the means to restore the sum feloniously appropriated, and that one act of dishonesty was his last. For parental prayer stood between him and temptation; and through Heaven-taught wisdom his conscience is as tender as a little child. Esther is living a peaceful life of faith in a nursery of her own, and Julia's energies are legitimately spent in true Christian work. As to the three younger children, they never gave their parents, with all their natural depravity combined, an hour's heart-ache; they were not models and not prigs, but just happy, bright, lovable fellows who had heard very little about law, and a great deal about the Gospel; who knew how to fish, and gun, and garden, and play, and frolic, and also knew how to pray when the right time came. More might be said, with truth, but it never answers to paint too close to nature.
Those who do not understand the life of faith, fancy it to be all mysticism and effeminacy. But while it is mystical to the mere looker-on, to its possessor it is almost homely in its practical details; touching every point of life from worship to service, from service to worship, claiming the whole being for Christ, and spending and being spent for those whom He came to redeem.