"Oh, such good news, aunt Prudence. Miss Layton is coming back, and she is going to teach a select school, and so she will stay all the time, and I was just wishing that she would come and live with us again."
"Well, child, I think you're quite likely to have your wish. I had a letter from her this morning asking if I would take her to board again, and I shall write back that I'll be very glad to have her, for she's very pleasant company, and I don't have half the trouble with you when she is in the house."
The next week Miss Layton returned to S——, and became once more an inmate of Miss Clinton's family, and soon afterwards she opened her school. It was not long before Miss Layton noticed a change in Ella. She never had any of those violent fits of passion now; she was more patient and humble, and though she seemed to care less for praise than formerly, she was more anxious than ever to do right; she read her Bible more—not now as a task or a duty, but because she loved to read it—and she was more thoughtful and quiet, and listened attentively, and apparently with pleasure, when any conversation on the subject of religion was introduced in her hearing.
One evening as they sat together on the porch, Miss Layton said to her, "Ellie, what is the matter with you? you have grown so thoughtful and quiet lately. What are you thinking about?"
"I was just looking up at the stars, Miss Layton, and thinking of what you said to me once about the great love of Jesus Christ in coming down to our little world to suffer and die for us, and I was wishing—Oh, so much!—that he would give me a new heart, and teach me to love him as I ought."
"If you really wished it with all your heart, Ellie, it was a prayer; and a prayer that God will hear and grant, for he says, 'Ye shall seek me, and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart.' But don't you love the Saviour, Ellie?"
"Oh yes, Miss Layton, I hope I do. I love to read about him, to think about him, and to pray to him; and Oh, I want to be one of his children! Oh, I wish I could be a Christian!"
"Dear Ellie, I hope you are one. You love the Saviour, and want to love him more; you love to pray to him, to think of him, and to read and hear about him; you love the society of his people, and I have noticed for some time that you seem to be trying to do right that you may please God. By your fruits we are to know you, and judging by them, I hope that with you, Ellie, 'old things have passed away and all things have become new.'"
"O Miss Layton, do you think it can be that I am a Christian? my heart is so hard and full of sin. But Oh, I am sure I do love Jesus, and I wish more than anything else that God would make me good!"
And now perhaps you, my reader, are thinking that all Ella's troubles are over; that everything will now go on smoothly, and she will have no more struggles with pride, indolence, or ill-temper. Alas! you are sadly mistaken.