"Then it was your work, Audrey."
"Oh, well, I am very sorry. I quite forgot, but I expect Joan will be all right. Now I will read to you, mother. Which hymn would you like?"
Mrs. Carlyle's mind at that moment was not in tune for any reading. She was troubled about her baby girl, and almost more troubled about her big girl. Her heart was heavy, her head ached, she felt tired too, and faint.
Audrey also was out of humour with herself and everything. She was disappointed in her mother's advice about her writing. She was angry with herself for failing in her duty, she was nervous about Joan, and over and above all she was disappointed in her Sunday. It did not seem like a Sunday—the happy beautiful day that comes bringing sunshine to the heart and sweetness and peace to the home, giving to all strength and courage to take up the burden of daily work again, and go singing on one's way.
Audrey had been late for prayers in the morning, and Debby had annoyed her on her way to church by appearing with a hole in her stocking; while at dinnertime she had been so annoyed by the sight of finger-marks on her tumbler, that she had neither given thanks for her food nor returned them.
The afternoon which she had longed to give up to reading she had had to devote to the Sunday School. She did not like children, and she detested teaching, "but, of course, if you very much dislike a thing you are bound to have it thrust on you, and if you love a thing very much, well, that is quite enough to prevent your being able to have it." She cried bitterly in the solitude of her own room. She went to the school and she took her class, but neither pupils nor teacher benefited by the lessons. To the children she was cold and unsympathetic. She took no interest in them or their doings; and they in their turn did not like her. And, more than that, they judged other teachers by her.
"If that's what Sunday School teachers is like, you don't catch me coming again," declared Millie Pope, who had been coaxed by a friend into coming for the first time. "If being good makes you as sharp and sour as she is—well, I don't want to be good."
Audrey had not heard the remarks that were made, but she felt that she had been a failure, and her heart was heavy. She was vexed and sorry, and annoyed with herself and everything, for she knew that she had not done her best, that she had failed in her duty. And she knew as well as though they had told her that the children had not liked her.
Oh, it had been a failure, that May Sunday. The birds had sung their blithest, the hedges were white with hawthorn, the air sweet with the scent of flowers, the sun had shone all day—and yet it had been a grey Sunday, begun badly, continued badly, ending badly—because the right spirit was lacking.
"Would you like me to read to you now, mother?" she asked again, but doubtfully. Something told her that the time was past, that the sweet calm pleasure was not to be caught now. And before Mrs. Carlyle could answer her, footsteps sounded in the garden, and Faith, followed by Debby and Tom, came rushing up the stairs.