The dinner was now over, and Emma, greatly refreshed, shook hands with the farmer and his family, promising to call again; and then took the short way of the main road to her own home. The old man looked after her, as her white dress glanced through the green trees by the roadside, until she descended the hill, and was out of sight.
"What does thee think of that child, Sarah?" he asked, turning to his wife.
"Well, Enoch," was the reply; "I think that she is ripening for glory."
The good woman was not of the same religious persuasion with her husband; but this small matter never interrupted the most cordial interchange of religious sympathy between them; and now his eyes filled with tears, and he felt as he had often done before, that "the Spirit" moved Sarah to give this testimony.
"Margaret," said he, turning to his daughter, "thee can learn a great deal from that child, though she is much younger than thyself."
Margaret felt the slight pettishness which always attended a reference to her age, and was about to ask her father how he knew her to be much older than Emma Lindsay; but a more rational feeling had been roused in her heart, and for once it predominated over this folly.
Margaret was not like her sister in the matter of romance and abstraction from every-day scenes and pursuits, though she loved to regard Susan as something wonderful, and show off her literary productions. Margaret's foible, on the contrary, was too great a love for the present world. Unfortunately, she had fixed her heart upon what is too evanescent for the love of an immortal. Youth, beauty, and the graces of fashion were the shadows at whose shrine she worshiped, though the substance was gone. Thus precious time was spent in seeking to repair its own breaches, and she saw not that they widened day by day—saw not how the cunning device by which she sought to hide the footprint of years, only left that foot-print more visible. God had given both Margaret and Susan better food for the immortal mind, but they, like many others, chose to feed upon the wind. No wonder that they were ever unsatisfied. The plain people of that region, who boasted of nothing superior to common sense, regarded the Sliver girls as curiosities. Some called them soft, and thought there was a lack of head wisdom; many laughed about them; but no one, save Fanny Brighton, laughed at them. Their parents were highly esteemed; and it may be a matter of wonder how they came to be what they were. The cast of human character is usually taken in childhood—an important fact to those charged with so responsible a trust; and it was during Margaret and Susan's childhood, that a vain and sentimental lady sojourned for two summers at their father's house. The unsuspecting farmer and his wife never thought of examining the stock of books with which she loaded the old case in the "fore-room." Having no time for reading except Sundays, uncle Enoch never expected to get through "Barclay's Apology," without neglecting his Bible, and this he had no intention of doing. It was not, therefore, to be expected, that he would spend time to read even the titles of Mrs. Coolbroth's books. But Margaret and Susan, bright, sensible children then, were beginning to feel the thirst often felt in childhood—the restless craving of the spirit for something new: no wonder, then, that they seized the fruit so "pleasant to the eye," and as it seemed to them "desirable to make one wise." Thus the poor girls were lured from the plain homely path, which, plain and homely as it is, always proves at last the way of pleasantness and the path of peace. They knew that people called them odd, and in this they gloried. Fanny Brighton they regarded as a rude girl, who, though she vexed them, never put them out of humor with themselves. But now, strange as it may appear, the quiet Christian words and manner of Emma Lindsay had done this, and they could not tell why. Those words and that manner, so courteous and kind, were not calculated to wound, yet they felt wounded. Emma had not done it—it was the truth dwelling in her heart, and showing itself in its most appropriate dress, which is Christian courtesy of manner.
Margaret sat down that afternoon, with a desire to redeem some of the time which, when she thought of Emma, seemed indeed to be passing away; and Susan, when she meditated on what Emma had said of Him who never scorned the humble paths of usefulness, and through his life-long went about doing good, felt that it was time to examine the spirit that would worship, without bearing the Saviour's cross.