“Yes; I am quite well—only, perhaps, a little more indolent and self-indulgent than usual.”
About this time there came a letter from Effie, in which there was one sentence that cost Christie many a wondering and anxious thought.
“My dear little sister, let your light shine, and who knows but you may be the means of blessing to this household also?”
“Effie doesn’t know,” said Christie to herself. “She thinks I have grown good and wise, but she is much mistaken. I am sure if I did any good to Mrs Lee I don’t know how it happened. And besides, she was ill and in trouble, and had need of the little help and comfort I could give her. But Miss Gertrude! She is the only one I come very near to here; and she is so quick and beautiful and strong—so much above me in every way. Oh, if Effie were to see her, she would never think of my being able to influence her. Everybody admires Miss Gertrude; and I am but a nursemaid, and hardly that.”
And yet the humble little maid did influence Gertrude as the days and months passed on; but Mrs Seaton and her gay friends in the drawing-room were not more unconscious of the influence for good she was exerting over the wayward young lady than was the little maid herself.
Gertrude only vaguely realised that she was beginning to see and estimate things differently from what she used to do—half thinking, as her mother did, that it was because she was growing older and more sensible. She found herself thinking, now and then, that her standard of right was not exactly what it used to be before she had compared opinions with Christie. In her intercourse with her own family and with others also, she often found herself measuring their opinions and actions by Christie’s rule. But she by no means realised that her own opinions and actions were gradually adjusting themselves to the same rule. Yet so it was.
She liked to watch Christie. She was never weary of admiring the patience with which she bore the changing moods of her little charge, when illness made him fretful or exacting. Gertrude saw that she was learning to love the little boy dearly; but she also saw that it was not merely her love for him that made her so faithful in doing her duty to him, nor was it to please the mother and sister or win their confidence, for she was equally faithful in matters that could never come to Mrs Seaton’s knowledge, and Gertrude knew by experience that her pleasure was never suffered to interfere where Claude’s interest or comfort was concerned.
No; Christie lived that useful, patient life from higher motives than these. “She does what is right because it is right,” said Gertrude to herself. She saw her quite cheerful and contented from day to day, doing the same things over and over again, with few pleasures—with none, indeed, unless the hour or two of reading which they managed almost daily to get could be called such.
And yet, by a thousand tokens, Gertrude knew that she would have enjoyed keenly many pleasures that were quite beyond her hopes—leisure, and books, and going to school, and the power to give gifts and confer favours. To be able to live at home, with no heavy cares pressing on the family, would be real happiness for her. All this Gertrude gathered from the conversations they sometimes had, from occasional remarks, and from her intense delight when letters from home came.
And yet she did not repine in the absence of these things. She was happy in the performance of her duties, whether they were easy or not, and enjoyed the few simple pleasures that came in her way.