“I believe you are. I don’t think your father can do without you.”
“Why can’t he? Hilda is at home quite enough to look after the servant. What else does he want with me?”
“Much else, dear Rhoda. Your sympathy, your aid in his work, your child’s love. Remember that your father’s life is not a very happy one. You are old enough to understand that. You know, I think, that it never has been very happy. Can’t you find work enough in cheering him?”
For reply the girl burst into tears.
“Cheer him!” she sobbed. “How can I cheer any one? How can I give comfort to others when my own life is bare of it? It’s easy for you to show me my duty, Mrs. Clarendon. Tell me how I am to do it!”
Isabel put her arm about the shaken form, and there was soothing in the warm current of her blood.
“I cannot tell you how to do it, Rhoda,” she said, when the sobs had half stilled themselves. “My own is too much for me. But I can—with such force of love as is in me—implore you to guard against mistakes, beseech you not to heap up trouble for yourself through want of experience, want of knowledge of the world, through refusal to let older ones see and judge for you. My own life has been full of lessons, though I dare say I have not suffered as much as others would have done in my place, for I have a temperament which easily—only too easily—throws aside care. If only I could live it over again with all my experience to guide me!”
“You don’t understand me,” said the girl, with a fretfulness she tried to subdue. “You don’t know what my trials are. No amount of experience could help me.”
“Not against suffering; no. I won’t talk nonsense, however well it may sound. But you speak of taking active steps, Rhoda. There experience can give very real aid.”
“Mrs. Clarendon,” said Rhoda, after a short silence, “I’m afraid I haven’t a very good disposition. I don’t feel to my father as I ought; I don’t care as much for anybody as I ought—for any of my relations, my friends. I’m not happy, and that seems to absorb me.”