"Grandma is awfully mad with me."
"Now I know that isn't true. And you ought not to talk so. The idea of saying aunty is 'mad!'"
"Gabrielle, why are you here?" asked Mrs. Grey, in a tone of surprise. "Did I not send you to your room?"
Gabrielle made no answer, but moved sullenly away.
"Oh, aunty," said Margaret, "it doesn't seem right for you to be fretted in this way!"
"I am not fretted, dear. I foresaw all these troubles before I came home. The child is trying a series of experiments with me, to see if she can't tame me down. When she once finds that the attempt is useless, we shall get on better."
"Aunty—"
"I know what you wanted to say. You wonder I do not go to the root of the matter, and try to lead her to Christ. I am praying that she may be drawn to Him, but until she learns to submit to me, it is useless to expect her to submit to Him. Her father thinks the same; and I have his full sympathy in every effort I make to do her good."
It must not be supposed that Gabrielle was always unruly and always in disgrace, and that she had no pleasant traits of character. Almost everybody has agreeable little ways that cannot be transferred to a book; and this girl, at times so rude and self-willed, had her gentle, even winning moods, and won love and good-fellowship. Nor was it strange that at an age when young people are apt to be unlovely if they have not been handled aright, she resented the sudden bit and curb of her new surroundings, and fancied herself ill-used. Mrs. Grey did not, in the least, lose heart. She knew she was not working in her own strength, and knew, by long experience, that though for a time the Lord answers never a word, He invariably does answer in His own time, and that that is always the best time. About a number of Gabrielle's faults she said nothing to her; too much fault-finding is almost worse than none; but she deplored them before God, and then tried to meet them with contrary example.