"I do not believe it was easy for her at first," said Rose. "I think her sweet disposition is the fruit of a work of grace in her heart. It is the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which God alone can bestow."
"I wish I had it, then," said Adelaide, sighing.
"You have only to go to the right source to obtain it, dear Adelaide," replied her friend, gently.
"And yet," said Adelaide, "I must say I sometimes think that, as papa says, there is something mean-spirited and cowardly in always giving up to other people."
"It would indeed be cowardly and wrong to give up principle," replied Rose, "but surely it is noble and generous to give up our own wishes to another, where no principle is involved."
"Certainly, you are right," said Adelaide, musingly. "And now I recollect that, readily as Elsie gives up her own wishes to others on ordinary occasions, I have never known her to sacrifice principle; but, on the contrary, she has several times made mamma excessively angry by refusing to romp and play with Enna on the Sabbath, or to deceive papa when questioned with regard to some of Arthur's misdeeds; yet she has often borne the blame of his faults, when she might have escaped by telling of him. Elsie is certainly very different from any of the rest of us, and if it is piety that makes her what she is, I think piety is a very lovely thing."
Elsie's mornings were spent in the school-room; in the afternoon she walked, or rode out, sometimes in company with her young uncles and aunts, and sometimes alone, a negro boy following at a respectful distance, as a protector. In the evening there was almost always company in the parlor, and she found it pleasanter to sit beside the bright wood-fire in her own room, with her fond old nurse for a companion, than to stay there, or with the younger ones in the sitting-room or nursery. If she had no lesson to learn, she usually read aloud to Chloe, as she sat knitting by the fire, and the Bible was the book generally preferred by both; and then when she grew weary of reading, she would often take a stool, and sitting down close to Chloe, put her head in her lap, saying, "Now, mammy, tell me about mamma."
And then for the hundredth time or more the old woman would go over the story of the life and death of her "dear young missus," as she always called her; telling of her beauty, her goodness, and of her sorrows and sufferings during the last year of her short life.
It was a story which never lost its charm for Elsie; a story which the one never wearied of telling, nor the other of hearing. Elsie would sit listening, with her mother's miniature in her hand, gazing at it with tearful eyes, then press it to her lips, murmuring, "My own mamma; poor, dear mamma." And when Chloe had finished that story she would usually say, "Now, mammy, tell me all about papa."
But upon this subject Chloe had very little information to give. She knew him only as a gay, handsome young stranger, whom she had seen occasionally during a few months, and who had stolen all the sunshine from her beloved young mistress' life, and left her to die alone; yet she did not blame him when speaking to his child, for the young wife had told her that he had not forsaken her of his own free choice; and though she could not quite banish from her own mind the idea that he had not been altogether innocent in the matter, she breathed no hint of it to Elsie; for Chloe was a sensible woman, and knew that to lead the little one to think ill of her only remaining parent would but tend to make her unhappy.