It was received in astonished silence by the rest. Words like these were so new from Kate, and there was no need for any one of them to ask what Master Bessie served. The daily life of the little child showed to all about her whose work she delighted to do in her own simple way, which knew no other rule than what would be pleasing and true to Him.
"But, Kate," said Ella presently, "you don't mean that you call Him your Master?"
"No," said Kate; "I pretend to nothing of the sort, and you know it; but when I saw Bessie waiting for my answer, and knew of what and of whom she was thinking, I could not help feeling that another ear was listening and waiting too; and so—I dared not. There!" and Kate drew up her head defiantly. "You may laugh at me, you may sneer at me, you may call this humbug; but it is what I felt, and why I answered as I did; and I am not ashamed to own it. I tell you because you feel, some of you, that I have meanly broken my promise. It was a mean thing to make it; it would have been meaner to keep it than it was to break it; and it was better to be false to that promise than false to my own conscience and to God. But I never meant to betray any one but myself; and, Fanny, I am only too sorry if you are worse punished for what I have done;" and she held out her hand to her schoolmate.
Fanny was vexed as well as distressed, but she could not resist Kate's frankness; and she laid her hand in hers, saying, "I suppose I ought not to complain; it was my fault in the first place."
Not one of the girls had laughed, not one had sneered; not one but had been more or less touched by Kate's unusual earnestness, and the way in which she had set herself to atone for her past fault.
"Kate would think we were all perfect, if we took Bessie Bradford for our pattern," said one, half jokingly, but not unkindly.
"Not exactly," said Kate, smiling; "but I believe if we took Bessie's standard of right and wrong, and tried to follow it as truly as she does, we should not go far out of the way. I would not be ashamed to have it said that I had profited by such an example. If her light is a little one, it burns very clearly."
"But if Bessie had been guilty herself, do you believe it would have been so impossible to tempt her?" said Fanny. "If she had expected to be punished, would she have been so ready to confess?"
"Have you forgotten the japonica?" asked Kate. "I thought of that too."
"What japonica?" said Fanny.