"What does it mean then? I don't pretend to be pious—sometimes I think I should like to be."
"Then why don't you?" asked Amity, contemplating her, and thinking that here was a nice opening for the "talk" she had prepared to give Maud.
"Well, for several reasons. I wasn't brought up that way, for one thing; but if I were going to be pious, I would rather have Emma's kind than yours."
The "talk" did not seem possible after this very outspoken remark.
And when Maud said, "I am going to find Emma," Amity did not try to keep her.
[CHAPTER FIFTH.]
THE KNITTING FINISHED.
ALL that evening Amity staid by herself, thinking over the wonderful and glorious things she would do when she was grown-up, and had her fortune in her own hands. She had not been given to thinking very much about this fortune, and therefore it had hitherto done her no harm; for it is not money, but "the love of money," which "is the root of all evil." But now she was thinking of it, and that in one of the most undesirable ways in the world, for she was considering how she should spend it, not for the glory of God and the good of others, but to increase her own consequence in the eyes of the world.
The result was that she quite forgot the cotton and needles she had promised to buy for Johnny, and came near forgetting his lesson in the morning. She was so late in coming that Mrs. Franklin sent a messenger to know if she meant to give the lesson.
"Of course I do," answered Amity, so shortly that her grandfather looked over his spectacles. "I only wish I had said I would come every other morning."