Marion was silent. She had not thought of matters in that light.
"As for these details of which you complain," continued Mrs. Campbell, "they belong to every kind of work as much as to housework, and are often of a much more disagreeable character. I assure you I have found it so. You don't like sweeping. How would you like to superintend a school of twenty girls not one of whom had ever known the use of a nail-brush or a fine comb, to say naught of other troubles? How would you like to associate all day with such people?"
"Anyhow, I should feel that I was bringing something to pass."
"You are bringing, in the end, just the same thing to pass in one case as in the other, and that is your duty," said Mrs. Campbell, "the thing which your heavenly Father gives you to do, and which you please and honour him in doing. That is the secret, my lassie—to learn to do everything to and for him; and believe me, my child, he is by far the easiest master we can have. It not seldom happens that we do our best in this world, and, after all, we are misunderstood, and to the eyes of men we may seem to fail utterly, but our heavenly Father never misunderstands us, and no work which is done for him ever fails. Here we are at last. How slowly we have walked!"
Marion was not sorry. She had lately become very impatient of any religious conversation, especially when it appealed to herself.
"Aunt Christian doesn't understand me any better than the rest," she said to herself, when she went up to her room. "Nobody ever does. If my father had lived, he would have felt for me. I suppose I am like him, and that sets them all against me. Oh dear! I wish I could only have a chance I would show them what was in me."
Nevertheless, the events of the day made so much impression that Marion learned all her lessons for next morning before "the heiress of the McGregors" was allowed to enter upon a career of active usefulness among her tenantry, for which she was bitterly persecuted by her wicked uncle.
[CHAPTER VI.]
"WHERE CAN SHE BE?"
FOR two or three weeks Marion's lessons went on better. Bending all her powers of mind, which were by no means contemptible, to the construing and understanding of her lessons in Virgil, she made the remarkable and delightful discovery that she was reading poetry. Now, I am well aware that there are many teachers who either never make this discovery for themselves, or if they do by any chance find it out, they use every effort to conceal the fact from their unlucky pupils, and try to make those pupils consider the "sweet singers of old days" as only so much material for parsing.