"I tell you what it is, Winifred Rexford; we've not one of us much to bring Him in the way of service. If there's one thing more than another I'm fond of it's to have my kitchen places to myself, but I've often thought I ought to ask yer ma to send one of you over every day to learn from me how a house ought to be kept and dinner cooked. Ye'd learn more watching me in a month, you know, than ye'd learn with yer ma a fussin' round in six years. Don't tell yer ma it's a trial to me, but just ask her if she'll send you over for an hour or two every morning."
"Thank you," said Winifred, reluctantly. "Do you think I ought to come?"
"Well, I'd want to be a bit more use to my ma if I was you."
"It's very kind of you," acknowledged Winifred; "but—but—Mrs. Martha, if it was true about this—this August, you know—what would be the use of learning?"
"Child," said the woman, and if her voice was sad it was also vehement, "them as are mad in religion are them as thinks doing the duty of each day for His sake ain't enough without seeing where's the use of doing what He puts to our hand."
"Mrs. Martha," besought Winifred, timidly, "I—don't like cooking; but do you think if I did this I should perhaps get to be glad to think—be glad to think our Saviour might be coming again so soon?"
"To love Him is of His grace, and you must get it direct from Him; but it's wonderful how doing the best we can puts heart into our prayers."
The scarlet tanager rose and flew from tree to tree like a darting flame, but Winifred had forgotten him.
CHAPTER XIII.
Midsummer came with its culmination of heat and verdure; and a great epoch it was in the Chellaston year, for it brought the annual influx of fashionable life from Quebec and Montreal. To tell the plain truth, this influx only consisted of one or two families who had chosen this as a place in which to build summer residences, and some hundred other people who, singly or in parties, took rooms in the hotel for the hot season; but it made a vast difference in the appearance of the quiet place to have several smart phaetons, and one carriage and pair, parading its roads, and to have its main street enlivened by the sight of the gay crowd on the hotel verandahs.