The foster-sisters

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

I think Mrs. Deborah, at first, looked on this practise of preaching in a private house, as a dangerous innovation akin to field preaching, and holding conventicles; but she soon came to like it.

Mr. Cheriton held several long conversations with Mrs. Chloe, and I began presently to perceive a change in her. She left off talking about her past matrimonial chances, and her plans for visiting "my Sister Brown," when warm weather came. Her Bible was constantly in her hand or by her side as she sat in her great chair or lay on the couch, and she spent a good deal of time studying a volume of Mr. Charles Wesley's poems, which Mr. Cheriton had brought to Amabel.

"I don't know how it is, but they seem somehow to express just what I want!" she said rather apologetically to Mrs. Deborah one day. "And, you know, Sister Deborah, that Mr. Wesley is a regularly ordained clergyman of the Church of England."

"Do read them as much as you like, if they are any comfort to you, Sister Chloe!" was Mrs. Deborah's reply.

I think she would even have welcomed a Roman Catholic priest if he had brought any comfort to Chloe. I used sometimes to wonder, by the way, how Mrs. Deborah reconciled her hatred of popery and her almost idolatrous loyalty to the banished Stewarts, but there were a great many others in the same case. I do not believe there were ever a more unreasonable and unreasoning set of people than the English Jacobites. After all the national experience of the faithlessness of their idols, they were just as ready to fall down and adore them again, as though they had never broken a pledge. They worshipped the Church of England. Yet they were ready to set over her a man who was bound by the most solemn obligations to overthrow her. It was certainly a pity to see the blood and treasure that were thrown away, and the misery and distress that were brought about, by the unreasoning loyalty to one particular family, which had never shown itself worthy of trust.

Mr. Cheriton went home at last promising to come again as soon as possible, and leaving a great many well wishes behind him. While he had been very careful not to interfere with Mr. Lethbridge's arrangements, but on the contrary had upheld him in every possible way, the people could not but feel the difference between his ministrations and those of the rector.

"Seems like as if one could talk to that gentleman and open one's mind to him!" said Mary Thorne, a very intelligent old woman in one of the alms houses. "He listens to one, he does, and finds out what one means. I told him all my trouble about the Sacrament,—" a matter on which poor old Mary had been much exercised—"and told him how I was afraid either to come or to stay away. Mr. Lethbridge always said it was want of faith, and Doctor Brown would just say, 'poor soul, poor soul,' kind of pitying like, and then go home and send me some broth or something. He was very kind, but he didn't help me any. But 'Muster Cheriton,' he made it all plain, and now it seems as if I could not wait for Easter to come, that I may go to the Lord's table."

Easter came and passed very happily, and it was observed that there were more communicants than were ever seen before. We all went to church in the morning, except Mrs. Chloe, who had failed a great deal of late, and now seldom left her bedroom before noon.

In the afternoon, Mr. Lethbridge brought the feast to her, and to old Roberts, who was growing very infirm and hardly able to perform his duties.

Amabel and I walked out in the park, gathered a great nosegay for Mrs. Chloe, and talked of our future as young folks will do. Of course, I was to live with Amabel, till I had a home of my own, and was to have the south room which looked toward the church. I was not so light-hearted as Amabel, for Mrs. Thorpe, who wrote to us sometimes, had mentioned in her last letter that her nephew's ship had never been heard from since it sailed for the Indies, and that people were beginning to think something had happened to her. However, I kept my troubles to myself, or rather I tried humbly to lay them on some one better able to bear them than I, and I listened to Amabel's plans and discussed them with real interest and pleasure.