"Yes, I do believe it. Why is it? I'd like to know. The children are obstinate and fretful when I have most to do. I cannot understand it."
"My dear sister," said the old man, taking her hand, and speaking in a voice full of tender and earnest emotion, "do pardon me for my freedom, when I tell you I think everything depends upon yourself."
"Upon me?"
"Your example, dear sister, is all-powerful. You have no conception of the immense influence you exert over those young and impressive minds. Oh, do not be offended, if I am plain with you!"
Mrs. Royden told him to go on; she needed his counsel; she would not be offended.
"Every mother," said he, "makes the moral atmosphere of her household. She is the sky overhead; they are lambs in the pasture. How they shiver and shrink beneath the shelter of the fences, and look sullenly at the ground, when the sky is black with storms, and the wind blows cold and raw and damp from the dismal northeast! But look when the drizzling rain is over, when the clouds break away, when the wind shifts around into the southwest, when the bright sun pours floods of soft, warm light upon the earth; how the grasses then lift up their beaded stalks, and shake their heads, heavy with tears; how the streams laugh and babble; how the little lambs skip about, and crop the moist herbage, and rejoice that the sky is blue again, the breezes balmy and mild!"
"But storms will come, sometimes," said Mrs. Royden.
"You cannot control the weather out of doors, but you may make just the kind of weather you choose in your household. Only keep the sky of your own heart cloudless and blue. And you can do it. Every one can. Parents, of all persons, should do this. They owe it to their children; they owe it to the good Lord, who has given them those children, to train aright the vines of their wayward affections, in their tender youth. Sister, you do not realize your responsibility. What are the petty trials of to-day, compared with their immortal destiny?"
The old man went on in the same kind but plain and impressive manner. At first Mrs. Royden had been impatient to return to her work; but the words of wisdom, each a golden link, formed a chain to hold her gently back. Her hands fell upon her lap, her eyes sought the floor, and it was not long before her cheeks were wet with downward-coursing tears.
And still the old man talked. Such sweet, simple, earnest and touching eloquence, her soul had never tasted. He did not forget to plead for Hepsy,—the lonely, unhappy and oft down-trodden girl, for whom her pity was seldom moved; and now she wept to think how thoughtless and cruel she had sometimes been.