"Neither of you will sit next me with such hands and faces," said Mrs. Grey. "I thought I convinced you of that before you left home."
The children looked a little crestfallen, and beat a hasty retreat to their rooms, where they made themselves presentable as fast as they could.
After tea they were going to rush out again, but Belle detained them.
"I want to tell you something funny before you go out," she said. "Some years ago—ten, perhaps—I went to visit an institution for the deaf and dumb, and enjoyed everything I saw. But when school was dismissed, and the boys came running down-stairs, I did not know but I should become deaf myself, they made such a noise. I did not know, before, that one set of fellows made more noise than others; but it seems they do, because they have no idea of sound. Now, you two young men are not deaf, and if you choose to listen to yourselves, you will hear what needless racket you make."
The boys looked in her smiling, kindly, but determined face, and saw they had no help for it but to give in.
"Alice said she knew we woke the babies this afternoon," said Frank, "but Cil had got my hat, and run after it, and I tumbled up to take it away; I'm real sorry I woke the babies."
"Oh, that's not the point. If there wasn't a baby within a mile, I should not approve of your tearing and shrieking like Indians. You may have just as much fun and frolic as you like; the more the better; but I mean to make two little gentlemen of you at the same time. There! be off with you all into the garden, and have as good a time as you can."
This was one of thousands of lessons that Belle had to teach day after day, week after week. She made her little sermons as short as she possibly could, and as quaint; and the mixture of earnestness, and banter, and fun, with which she assailed their bad habits, told upon the lads.
But there was work to do below this surface-work. She had to teach them the life of faith in Christ, a kind of teaching so eminently the province of woman, and to this end had to efface some impressions that had been falsely made in their nursery days. Long before they comprehended her teachings, her courage and patience were put to their full test. But she was a woman mighty in prayer, and day and night the name of every child in the house was mentioned singly to God.
Thus wisely and kindly Providence provided a remedy for Frank Grey's mistaken choice in his wife; thus He will rectify all such errors of judgment for those who put their trust in Him.