"If this money were mine, I could buy that willow chair for mother, and a piece of pretty chintz to make a cushion for it, and yet have enough to get Tom the ten-pins he wants so much."
If Ethel had done as she had been taught, she would have put the whole matter aside till she had said her prayers and asked to be guided in the right way. But the confidence in herself which had been increasing for some time put, had arrived at such a pitch, that she no longer felt so much the need of Divine direction. She considered herself, as she said, competent to manage her own affairs; and when a little girl or a large girl arrives at that point, that girl is in great danger of a sad fall. She began to debate the matter with herself, but consciously or unconsciously she looked only at one side of the argument.
"Mr. Beckford said I did the pictures better than any one else, and that the price he first named would not pay for the trouble; so perhaps he meant to give me more. I am sure my work is worth a great deal more than Bessy's and Rosa's."
If Ethel had known Mr. Beckford better, she would have been aware, that though he often gave money away, he never on any occasion paid more than he felt himself bound to do. Neither was she entirely satisfied with her own reasoning, though she tried very hard to be so. If she had been, she would have gone to her father with the matter, and she would have said her prayers without that uneasy feeling at her heart which made them an unwelcome task; nor would the text she had lately learned in school have recurred so vividly to her memory:
"'If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.'"
It was with the same uneasy feeling that she awoke in the morning and came down to breakfast without having again looked at her money.
At the breakfast table she was rather silent, and her father said smilingly—
"You seem rather absent, my daughter; are you calculating the amount of your capital?"
"How much have you got, Ethel?" asked little Tom.
"Perhaps Ethel would rather not tell how much she has," remarked her mother, seeing that Ethel looked a little disturbed. "We must not question her too closely. I suppose you will like to go out this morning to make your purchases, my dear: don't be too extravagant; you know you will want spending money after holidays are over."