“Now, my little darling,” said nurse, “you look quite white. You’ll just read a verse or two, and then you’ll go off to your bed.”
“I want to find a special verse,” said Sibyl. “When I have read it I will go to bed.” She knitted her brows and turned the pages in a puzzled, anxious way.
“What’s fretting you, dear? I know the Bible, so to speak, from end to end. Can old nursie help you in any way?”
“I know the verse is somewhere, but I cannot find the place. I remember reading it, and it has come back to me to-night.”
“What is it, dear?”
“‘God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.’”
“Oh, yes, love,” answered nurse promptly, “that’s in the Epistle of St. James, fourth chapter, sixth verse. I learned the whole of the Epistle for my mother when I was young, and I have never forgotten a word of it. Here it is, dear.”
“But what are you fretting your head over that verse for?” asked the puzzled old woman; “there’s some that I could find for you a deal more suitable to little ladies like yourself. There’s a beautiful verse, for instance, which says, ‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord.’ That means all those in charge of you, dear, nurses and governesses and all. I heard its meaning explained once very clear, and that was how it was put.”
“There is not a bit about nurses and governesses in the Bible,” said Sibyl, who had no idea of being imposed upon, although she was in trouble. “Never mind that other verse now, nursie, it’s not that I’m thinking of, it’s the one you found about ‘God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.’ It seems to ’splain things.”
“What things, dear?”