“Hush! children,” said the mother; “it is time for prayers. We will not wait for papa, because he will be very tired and cold. No, Letty, you need not get the books, there has been enough reading for the little ones to-night. We will sing ‘Jesus, lover of my soul,’ and then David will read the chapter.”
“Oh! yes, mamma, ‘Jesus, lover;’ I like that best,” said little Mary, laying her head down on her mother’s shoulder, and her little shrill voice joined with the others all through, though she could hardly speak the words plainly.
“That’s for papa,” said she, when they reached the end of the last line, “While the tempest still is high.”
The children laughed, but the mother kissed her fondly, saying softly:
“Yes, love; but let us sing on to the end.”
It was very sweet singing, and very earnest. Even their cousin, Francis Oswald, whose singing in general was of a very different kind, joined in it, to its great improvement, and to the delight of the rest. Then David read the chapter, and then they all knelt down and the mother prayed.
“Not just with her lips, but with all her heart, as if she really believed in the good of it,” thought Francis Oswald to himself. “Of course we all believe in it in a general way,” he went on thinking, as he rose from his knees and sat down, not on a chair, but on the rug before the fire; “of course, we all believe in it, but not just as Aunt Mary does. She seems to be seeing the hand that holds the thing she is asking for, and she asks as if she was sure she was going to get it, too. She hasn’t a great deal of what people generally are most anxious to have,” he went on, letting his eyes wander round the fire-lighted room, “but then she is content with what she has, and that makes all the difference. ‘A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesses,’ she told me the other day, and I suppose she believes that, too, and not just in the general way in which we all believe the things that are in the Bible. Fancy Aunt Ellen and my sister Louisa being contented in a room like this!”
It was a very pleasant room, too, the lad thought, though they might not like it, and though there was not an article in it which was in itself beautiful. It was a large, square room, with an alcove in which stood a bed. Before the bed was a piece of carpet, which did not extend very far over the grey painted floor, and in the corner was a child’s cot. The furniture was all of the plainest, not matching either in style or in material, but looking very much as if it had been purchased piece by piece, at different times and places, as the means of the owners had permitted. The whole was as unlike as possible to the beautifully furnished room in which the greater part of the boy’s evenings had been passed, but it was a great deal pleasanter in his eyes at the moment.
“I have had jolly times here, better than I shall have at home, unless they let me read again—which I don’t believe they will, though I am so much better. I am very glad I came. I like Uncle and Aunt Inglis. There is no ‘make believe’ about them; and the youngsters are not a bad lot, take them all together.”
He sat upon the rug with his hands clasped behind his head, letting his thoughts run upon many things. David had gone to the window, and was gazing out into the stormy night again, and his brother Jem sat with his face bent close over his book, reading by the fire-light. Not a word was spoken for a long time. Violet laid the sleeping little Mary in her cot, and when her mother came in, she said: