‘Yes, here it is,’ said Claude, who had come into the room on tiptoe behind his mother, looking like a jolly little Jack Tar in his long blue trousers and new reefer coat, into whose pocket the bright-red prayer-book—a present from his godmother—was squeezed; ‘and I have got markers in at all the places. Ronald put them in.’
‘Ronald is very good to you,’ said his mother. ‘And now that you are such a big boy, and have a prayer-book of your own, you will try and sit quite still, and not fidget in the sermon.’
‘I won’t, if it isn’t very long,’ answered Claude gravely, setting his fat legs wide apart and shaking his head until the wealth of golden curls which covered it bobbed up and down like yellow fluff; ‘but if it gets very tiresome, mother, you must let me move my legs about just a little; they get all prickly if they keep still too long.’
Both Isobel and her mother laughed.
‘He means pins and needles,’ said Isobel. ‘I remember I used to get them if my legs hung down too long.’
‘I will give you two footstools, sir, and then you will have no excuse for fidgeting,’ said Mrs Osbourne; ‘and perhaps, who knows, if you sit very still for the first ten minutes of the sermon there may be a picture somewhere in mother’s prayer-book, which she will let you look at.—But I must be off and get on my bonnet, for the carriage will be round in no time. Good-bye, dearie. I will send Anne up with some story-books for you, although I think it would be better for your head if you lay quite quiet, and did not read.’
Bending down and giving her little daughter a kiss, Mrs Osbourne left the room, followed by Claude; and a few moments afterwards Isobel heard the carriage come round, then the sound of voices and footsteps on the gravel, then the door was shut, and the carriage drove away, and a stillness fell over the house. She felt very drowsy; and when presently a tap came to the door she did not turn her head, but murmured a sleepy ‘Thank you,’ as some one—Anne, she supposed—laid down an armful of books on the little bamboo table at the side of her bed, and stole quietly away.
It was not Anne, however, who had brought them, but Vivian, who had been seized with such a violent fit of coughing at the last moment that he had been left behind. He had clearly caught a little cold; and as it was a beautifully sunny morning, his aunt wisely thought that a sharp run round the garden would be better for him than sitting for an hour and a half in a heated church. Besides, he could run up now and then and see how Isobel was getting on. She charged him not to sit all morning in her room; but she felt that it would not be so lonely for the little girl if she knew that he was at home too.
New Years Day is generally a day of good resolutions. We have turned over a page in our lives, as it were, and the old sheet with its blurs and its blots lies behind us. It cannot be recalled, or changed, no matter what mistakes, or failures, or sins are written upon it; and we turn with relief to the fresh page which lies so stainless, and smooth, and white before us, and we determine that, so far as in us lies, we will fill it with records of more strenuous endeavours after goodness, with fewer blots and rubbed-out lines. It is a solemn call to ‘forget’ the things that are behind, and reach forward to those that are before; and our hearts are dull indeed if we do not respond to it.
Vivian was not slow to feel the influence of the day. He felt that there was so much that he wanted to forget, and he tried, as it were, to turn over this black page of his life and glue it down, forgetting, as so many of us do, that the blots on the old page are apt to show through the paper, and reappear on the nice clean sheet in front of us, unless we have repented of the sins that caused them, and have done everything in our power to repair the trouble and mischief that they have caused.