“Indeed, it has, dear friend. We are all well, happy, and I believe useful. Isabelle has, through her domestic talents,—the very last she dreamed that she possessed three years ago,—found entrance into the households of the rich, and has there learned that no amount of money can give happiness. She has by a despised faculty been enabled to cultivate her highest; and it is one of the good things we have to tell you to-night, that her last picture will be hung, ‘on its own merits’ and on the line! at the forthcoming exhibition in the National Gallery. This coming year she proposes to go into town regularly for the instruction which she desires, and which her ‘servant wages’ will pay for. But, Roland, speak for yourself. Mother does not wish to monopolize the talk.”
“I have nothing to tell, Motherkin, except that I have had a few bits of verse accepted at the Criterion, and am therefore satisfied that it was a golden opportunity you offered me of coming into the country and learning to be—a man! And I am grateful for the hard work which kept me from writing trash till I could write some simple thing the people would care to hear.”
“An’ I—I have got a hundred dollars in the bank!” cried Robert “the mercenary,” at which all laughed.
“How about you, my Bonny? Do you regret that the only chance you have to sing is in the house of God and in your own home?”
“Surely,” exclaimed Miss Joanna, “she cannot regret that! For, if she did but know it, more people come to church of a Sunday to hear her rich young voice in her solos than to hear the pastor’s sermon. The one last Sabbath was heart-moving.”
“The more shame to them, then! And to me that I cannot do better. No, I regret nothing, save my own limitations. But, like my sister, I think I will also treat myself to a few lessons this coming year, and try to do ever so much finer work. Though I shall never sing any more really—out of my heart and because I can’t help it, you know—than I do now. Nor, if the chance were offered me, which it won’t be, would I exchange my life here for that of any prima-donna living!”
“Preemer donners are awful rich, Bonny!” admonished Robert.
“Well, so are you, small sir, if you had sense enough to believe it! So are we all, I think.”
“Amen!” said Miss Joanna, earnestly.
But Mrs. Beckwith quietly rose and struck a few chords on the well-used instrument beside her. There was a moment’s hush; then out upon the gathering twilight floated the first strains of the familiar Doxology.