“You will have to do that for me, Aunt Ruby. I don’t seem to have any right to do that.”
“Because you can’t submit. But, child, you may set your heart on getting your own will, and you may get it; and, if you do, it will be bitterness to you. Give up your will to be guided by the Lord, and then you will know what it is to be content.”
“How can it be His will that I should leave her who has been more than a mother to me all my life, now that she is so near—Oh, Aunt Ruby, I cannot go!”
To say that Fidelia was heart-sick these days, is not saying too much. She grieved over Eunice; and all her sorrow and her love were embittered by the memory of the “bad dream” which would return; and she hated it and herself, traitor as she called herself. She did not sleep at night, and she was restless and listless by day; her face grew pale, and her eyes grew large and full of anxious pain; and her sister, who had watched her through it all, could keep silence no longer, and so she spoke.
Fidelia had come down as usual with her book in her hand, but, seated at the window, with her eyes on the fading vine-leaves that fluttered about it, she seemed to have forgotten her book and the reading which Eunice had prepared herself to hear.
“Are you ready, dear?” said Eunice.
“Ready?” repeated Fidelia. “I don’t know. I don’t seem to care much about it to-day, or about anything else.”
“Fidelia, come and sit here by me. Never mind the book, dear. What is it that troubles you? Is it the thought of going away?”
“I don’t think I can go, Eunice. I don’t think I had better go.”
“Will you tell me all about it, dear?” said Eunice, speaking very gently. “Come and sit by me.”