"Oh, very well!" said Marion, actually trembling with anger. "If Maggy is to be put over my head as well as the children, I think it is time I went away. I should like to go directly, if you please. I see plainly that I am not wanted here."
"You will never be wanted anywhere, Marion, unless you learn a little Christian humility," said her mother, more severely than usual. "You are setting a very bad example to Bessy and the other children. Cousin Helen has complained of you more than once for meddling and interfering. Unless you try to do better, I shall have to speak to your father. I can't think what Barbara was about to spoil you so."
Marion burst into tears.
"There is no use in crying," said her mother, with some sharpness, for she was not well and very busy. "Try to do better another time, that is all."
Marion retreated to her own room to go though her usual fit of crying, and then of mortification and vain regret. But, as usual, her regret was not so much that she had done wrong, as that others would think her wrong, and, above all, that they would think her silly. It was not "How could I be so obstinate and self-conceited as not to follow mother's directions?" but "How silly I was not to see that those were not common sticks of firewood! Even Maggy, that stupid old Irish woman, knew better. And I need not have been so angry and have spoken so to mother. What will they all think of me? Oh dear. There never was anybody pursued by such an evil fate as I am. I meant to be so amiable and set such a good example, and now I have lost all chance of ever influencing those boys."
"Oh, come, sis, never mind any more about the scientific woodpile," said Frank, an hour or two afterward, finding Marion leaning on the verandah railing with a very doleful face. "I am sorry I was so sharp; but you must admit it was rather aggravating to have my fine collection that I had been making so long tumbled into the kitchen wood-box. Come, don't mind anything about it. Don't you want to go up the Cedar Run with us? We are going after ground-pine and ferns to dress up Stannie's room. You know she is coming to-morrow. You have never seen the Cedar Run. There is a dear little waterfall on it; and when Stannie comes, we mean to have a tea-party up there. Come!"
"I'm sure you are very good, Frank," said Marion, her ill-humour fairly overcome by his good-nature.
"Fiddle!" said Frank, boy-fashion. "What is the use of laying up things? Come, put on your oldest and shortest dress, for we are going 'cross lots, and you'll see sights in the way of climbing fences, I can tell you."
And so this matter seemed happily disposed of, but Marion still felt very unhappy. She had made herself laughed at, she had shown less sense than Maggy. The boys would despise her, and her mother would think she was not a Christian.
I once read in a Roman Catholic book of devotion a direction which has always seemed to me full of wisdom: