"Oh, don't! you bother me so I can't think myself." "You're real mean not to help me;" and such dutiful little speeches found their way from her lips.
"Well," said Mr. Stone, after he had shown more patience with the spoiled child than most fathers would or should have done, "perhaps the word you want is 'watchword.'"
"Yes, that is it," said Mamie, her face clearing, and her lips and shoulders settling themselves into their proper places; "watchword! I am going to have a watchword, and behave myself by it."
"And what is your watchword?" asked Mr. Stone.
"Now stop! you shan't laugh, or I won't tell you," pouted Mamie. "It is 'the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.' So when I am good, He sees me, and is pleased."
"Yes," said her father, becoming grave; "but how is it when a little girl wears a scowling brow and puckered lips at her papa? For 'the eyes of the Lord are in every place.'"
Mamie sat silent, quite confounded for the moment. This was bringing it closely home to her. That All-seeing Eye had then marked the cross, fretful face she had put on to her father; that All-hearing Ear—for it flashed across her mind that the ear of the Lord was as quick to hear as His eye to see—had heard her disrespectful words to him when he was so kindly trying to help her out of her difficulty. Here, within a few moments, she had been selfish and unkind to Lulu, undutiful to her father; just, too, when she had been saying she wanted to be a good girl; and "the eyes of the Lord" had been watching her all the time. It was not a pleasant thought.
Mamie turned her face away from her father, and, planting both elbows upon the window-frame, gazed out, but without seeing or heeding much of the rapidly changing landscape. She was thinking, half ashamed of herself, half vexed at she scarcely knew what. But she began to doubt if, after all, she would have "a watchword." It seemed likely to prove troublesome, perhaps more of a reproach than a help to her; and she half resolved that she would keep it in mind no longer. She "wished Belle had not told it to her."
However, her reflections, unpleasant though they were, kept her quiet and thoughtful for so long, that her father, not wishing to see her make herself unhappy, spoke to her, saying,—
"There, never mind then, daughter. Papa did not mean to make you fret. We will think no more about it."