“Then for my sake, lass, try to suffer and be still. I’ve a hard enough fight with my own rebellious heart; at times I feel I shall never be able to bring it into meek submission to His will who doeth all things well.”
“But it isn’t His will! it isn’t His doing! I’ll never believe it, no, never!” cried the girl, clinching hands and teeth in impotent fury; “it’s the will and the doings of the adversary of souls, the father o’ lies, him that the Bible tells us was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.”
“Marian, Marian, ye’re tempting your mother to the sin she maun ficht against nicht and day,” groaned Mrs. McAlpine, relapsing into Scotch, as they were both apt to do under strong excitement, “an’ oh, beware, lassie, that you dinna wrest Scripture to ye’r ain destruction and to mine.”
“Wrest Scripture! ’tis they wrest it,” cried the girl, in tones of fierce indignation; but before the words had fairly left her lips her mother had risen from her chair and fled from her presence, as one would fly from temptation.
Marian too rose, closed the house, and went to bed, while alone in her own apartment the mother spent a long time upon her knees wrestling in prayer for submission and strength to endure the cross she mistakenly deemed that He, her loving Lord and Master, had laid upon her.
CHAPTER XI.
Marian McAlpine was setting the breakfast-table for the Raymonds, when Lulu came into the room looking bright and fresh in one of the new dresses her father had directed to be made for such excursions as that proposed for the day.
“Good-morning,” she said, in a pleasant, sprightly tone.
Marion returned the salutation, and Lulu went on, “We are going to visit the mine today, and papa sent me to ask if you would like to go with us.”
“Thank you, Miss; it’s very kind in your father and yourself to invite me, and I should be blithe to go if mother could spare me; but I’m afraid she can’t. Good help is very scarce about here, and we have to do a great deal of the cooking and other work ourselves.”