“I did not see any so small as you are, Jennie.”
“Oh dear, I do so wish I could go with you. Don’t you think I could walk easily?”
“Not every day, Jennie; and besides, we are going to study in the evening, you know; and what I learn at school I will teach you at home.”
“Will you? Oh, that is so good;” and she clung to my hand, this little sister that my mother had said I must love and care for. Then she drew me down to the brook, its waters leaping over the stones with a gurgling music, like the trill of a laughing child; the sunshine glinting through the pines and climbing up the bank to our feet.
It was a scene of peculiar beauty, and dear Jennie enjoyed it with a keen relish. I tried, but could not enter into the same sense of enjoyment. To tell the truth, I was weary, perhaps hungry, and my new book did not seem to me quite as easy as I expected to find it.
Then I recollected that, in climbing the mountain, the object was not accomplished by one effort, but by a succession of continued struggles. It was by pressing through the undergrowth, catching hold of the cliff, going around the rocks, creeping where it was impossible to walk, yet advancing steadily all the time, that the ascent was made. Mr. Kirby had told me it would be just so in my studies; and I looked above me into the bright blue sky, and thought of the prayer offered in that jewelled dell—the prayer that I might be led by God’s Spirit, guarded and guided by his grace, and that a path might open for me. It had opened thus far; and was not this in answer to Mr. Kirby’s prayer and my mother’s supplications? and again I resolved to use my time wisely.
The oak grows stronger by the very winds that toss its boughs; so the heart, from the burdens that apparently weigh it down, gathers new power to soar above the mists of gloom and discontent.
“You have not noticed my book,” I said at length, holding out my Latin grammar; “and besides, you forget that I have not been to dinner.”
“It is so pleasant here, brother; don’t it rest you?” and her arms were twined about my neck.
“Yes; but my lesson for to-morrow will require all my time,” I answered.