"Oh! I wish I could think so. But you don't know what Felicia has been to her father and me. She was such a beautiful baby that the people in the street used to stop the nurse to ask whose child she was; and when she grew older she never gave us a moment's trouble or anxiety. Then we pinched and pared in order to be able to afford to send her to Fox How; and when her education was finished there wasn't a more perfect lady in the land than our Felicia. Oh! I was proud of her, I can tell you. And now she is ashamed of me, her own mother! I can not help seeing that this is God's punishment to me for letting her marry an unbeliever." And Mrs. Herbert covered her face with her hands and burst out into bitter sobs.
Elisabeth took the weeping form into her strong young arms. "My poor dear, you are doing Him an injustice, you are, indeed. I am sure He minds even more than you do that Felicia is still so ignorant and foolish, and He is training her in His own way. But He isn't doing it to punish you, dear; believe me, He isn't. Why, even the ordinary human beings who are fond of us want to cure our faults and not to punish them," she continued, as the memory of Christopher's unfailing patience with her suddenly came into her mind, and she recalled how often she had hurt him, and how readily he had always forgiven her; "they are sorry when we do wrong, but they are even sorrier when we suffer for it. And do you think God loves us less than they do, and is quicker to punish and slower to forgive?"
So does the love of the brother whom we have seen help us in some measure to understand the love of the God Whom we have not seen; for which we owe the brother eternal thanks.
[CHAPTER X]
CHANGES
Why did you take all I said for certain
When I so gleefully threw the glove?
Couldn't you see that I made a curtain
Out of my laughter to hide my love?
"My dear," said Miss Farringdon, when Elisabeth came down one morning to breakfast, "there is sad news to-day."
Miss Farringdon was never late in a morning. She regarded early rising as a virtue on a par with faith and charity; while to appear at the breakfast-table after the breakfast itself had already appeared thereon was, in her eyes, as the sin of witchcraft.
"What is the matter?" asked Elisabeth, somewhat breathlessly. She had run downstairs at full speed in order to enter the dining-room before the dishes, completing her toilet as she fled; and she had only beaten the bacon by a neck.