Janet's Love and Service

by Margaret M. Robertson

Mr Snow paused and looked at his wife in the deprecating manner he was wont to assume when he was not quite sure whether or not she would like what he was going to say, and then added:

“However, she don’t worry about it. She is just as contented as can be, and no mistake; and I rather seem to remember that you used to worry a little about her when they were here last.”

“About Miss Graeme, was it?” said Mrs Snow, with a smile; “maybe I did. I was as good at that as at most things. Yes, she is content with life, now. God’s peace is in her heart, and in her life, too. I need not have been afraid.”

“Rosie’s sobered down some, don’t you think?” said Mr Snow, with some hesitation. “She used to be as lively as a cricket. Maybe it is only my notion, but she seems different.”

“She’s older and wiser, and she’ll be none the worse to take a soberer view of life than she used to do,” said Mrs Snow. “I have seen nothing beyond what was to be looked for in the circumstances. But I have been so full of myself, and my own troubles of late, I may not have taken notice. Her sister is not anxious about her; I would have seen that. The bairn is gathering sense—that is all, I think.”

“Well! yes. It will be all right. I don’t suppose it will be more than a passing cloud, and I might have known better than to vex you with it.”

“Indeed, you have not vexed me, and I am not going to vex myself with any such thought. It will all come right, as you say. I have seen her sister in deeper water than any that can be about her, and she is on dry land now. ‘And hath set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings,’” added Mrs Snow, softly. “That is the way with my bairn, I believe. Thank God. And they’ll both be the better for this quiet time, and we’ll take the good of it without wishing for more than is wise, or setting our hearts on what may fail. See, they are coming down the brae together. It is good to see them.”

The first weeks of their stay in Merleville had been weeks of great anxiety. Long after a very difficult and painful operation had been successfully performed, Mrs Snow remained in great danger, and the two girls gave themselves up to the duty of nursing and caring for her, to the exclusion of all other thoughts and interests. To Mr Snow it seemed that his wife had been won back to life by their devotion, and Janet herself, when her long swoon of exhaustion and weakness was over, remembered that, even at the worst time of all, a dim consciousness of the presence of her darlings had been with her, and a wish to stay, for their sakes, had held her here, when her soul seemed floating away to unseen worlds.

By a change, so gradual as scarcely to be perceptible, from day to day, she came back to a knowledge of their loving care, and took up the burden of her life again. Not joyfully, perhaps, having been so near to the attaining of heavenly joy, but still with patience and content, willing to abide God’s time.

After that the days followed one another quietly and happily, with little to break the pleasant monotony beyond the occasional visits of the neighbours from the village, or the coming of letters from home. To Graeme it was a very peaceful time. Watching her from day to day, her old friend could not but see that she was content with her life and its work, now; that whatever the shadow had been which had fallen on her earlier days, it had passed away, leaving around her, not the brightness of her youth, but a milder and more enduring radiance. Graeme was, in Janet’s eyes, just what the daughter of her father and mother ought to be. If she could have wished anything changed, it would have been in her circumstances, not in herself. She was not satisfied that to her should be denied the higher happiness of being in a home of her own—the first and dearest to some one worthy of her love.