The foster-sisters

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

The first day's travel was very dreary, and the inn where we stopped at night was not particularly comfortable; though the good people of the house did their very best to accommodate us, and were so civil and obliging, that we could not in conscience find fault. They gave us the best they had for supper—brown bread, and freshly toasted oat cakes, bacon and eggs, and a noble dish of trout from the stream near by, and we had our own tea; so we fared well enough as to eatables.

But the beds were terribly hard, and Mrs. Philippa complained dolefully in the morning that she had not slept a wink, and felt as if all her bones were broken. Amabel and I had a great chamber to ourselves, with a high carved mantel, and a fireplace as big as a chapel, with a great roaring wood fire in it, which did not do much to warm us, and doors opening on all sides into dark closets and passage-ways. The building having once been a fine manor-house, room was the last thing wanting.

"It is a ghostly-looking place, is it not?" said I, with a little shiver, after we had fastened the doors as well as we could.

"It makes me think of some of the great disused rooms at St. Jean!" answered Amabel. "I suppose the poor old house is left quite alone by this time. How I wish we could hear from the dear mothers and sisters."

"What do you think they would say to what you are doing now?" I asked, for Amabel was at that moment taking our Bibles out of our hand-bags.

"They would be grieved, no doubt!" answered Amabel. "I think of it often, and wonder whether I can really be the same person I was a year ago."

"People would say we had changed our religion very suddenly!" said I. "Only think! It is not yet six months since we first saw a Bible. I don't know how it was with you, but with me, it has been more a finding of religion, than changing one for another. I believed what I was taught, because I knew nothing else; but I cannot say it ever satisfied me."

"If I had had any one to dispute or argue with, I dare say I should have held out longer!" remarked Amabel. "But Mr. Wesley was too wise for that. He just gave us the truth, and left it to make its own way. But Lucy, we must not sit up talking. Let us read our chapters and go to bed, that we may be bright in the morning."

I thought I should certainly lie awake to listen to suspicious noises, but as it happened, the first noise I heard was Tupper's voice at the door, calling us to get up.

The breakfast was a counterpart of the supper, except that as our meal was seasoned with Mrs. Philippa's doleful forebodings, so the other was with her still more doleful complaints. The bed was hard—she had heard strange noises—an owl had screeched close by the window, and a death-watch had ticked at her head five times over, and then stopped; and she knew it was an omen of her death, which would happen in either five years, five months, five weeks, or five days.