“Yes, indeed, sister! I grow fonder of her every day, she’s so sweet and bright, often merry and full of innocent fun, without a particle of rudeness, so gentle and humble and unselfish. She doesn’t think herself good at all, but I think she’s as nearly perfect as anybody can be in this world.”
“And I quite agree with you,” said Mildred. “No wonder her father doats on her as he does.”
“And she on him; but the way Enna sometimes treats her makes me angry. I can hardly help telling Miss Enna she ought to be ashamed of herself, and could almost scold Elsie for being so meek and patient.”
“Meekness and patience are very good things, little sister,” Mildred said, with a slight smile; “I often wish I had more of them.”
“You needn’t then, you have quite enough, I think,” returned Annis.
“The Bible bids us ‘let patience have her perfect work,’ and it is certainly a lack of the spirit of forgiveness that makes us irritable and impatient under little annoyances, slights, and rudenesses,” remarked Mildred; and opening her Bible at the seventh chapter of Ecclesiastes, she read aloud, “And the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”
“But, Milly, do you think it means we ought to put up with everything and just let people trample on us?”
“No, I agree with Edmund Burke that ‘there is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.’ See here, Solomon says, ‘surely oppression maketh a wise man mad.’ And,” turning to the New Testament, “here in Acts we read that when the keeper of the prison said to Paul, ‘The magistrates have sent to let you go, now therefore depart and go in peace,’ Paul’s answer was, ‘They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison, and now do they thrust us out privily? nay verily, but let them come themselves and fetch us out.’”
“Yes,” said Annis meditatively, and as if thinking aloud, “I’ve an idea he wouldn’t have put up with as much as Elsie does from Enna.”
“What is it Enna does that seems to you so unendurable?” asked Mildred, with some curiosity.