He was puzzled how to answer Christie’s praises of Pandora. He did not wish to throw cold water on the child’s delight, nor to damage her newly found friend in her eyes. But neither did he wish to drag her into the thorny path wherein he had to walk himself—to hedge her round with perpetual cautions and fears and terrors, lest she should let slip some word that might be used to their hurt. An old verse says—
“Ye gentlemen of England
That sit at home at ease,
Ye little know the miseries
And dangers of the seas.”
And it might be said with even greater truth—Ye men and women, ye boys and girls of free, peaceful, Protestant England, ye little know the dangers of life in lands where Popish priests rule, nor the miseries that you will have to endure if they ever gain the ascendancy here again!
Roger Hall had never heard Dr Abernethy’s wise advice—“When you don’t know what to do, do nothing.” But in this emergency he acted on that principle.
“I trust, my dear heart,” he said quietly, “that it may please the Lord to make thee and this young gentlewoman a blessing to each other.”
“Oh, it will, I know, Father!” said Christie, quite unsuspicious of the course of her father’s thoughts. “Only think, Father! she told me first thing, pretty nigh, that she loved the Lord Jesus, and wanted to be like Him. So you see we couldn’t do each other any hurt, could we?”
Roger smiled rather sadly.
“I am scarce so sure of that, my Christie. Satan can set snares even for them that love the Lord; but ’tis true, they be not so like to slip as they that do not. Is this young mistress she that dwelt away from home some years back, or no?”
“She is, Father; she hath dwelt away in the shires, with her grandmother, these five years. And there was a good man there—she told me not his name—that gave her counsel, and he said, ‘To do God’s work is to do God’s will.’ That is good, Father, isn’t it?”
“Good, and very true, sweeting.”