"Ah, Bagot, you wouldn't like to be saying that when He comes, you wouldn't."
Or when the clock told that the hour he allowed himself for dinner was over, he would rise, and, pointing to Rule No. 1, he would read it aloud:
"'Do nothing that you would not like to be doing when Jesus comes.'"
"Ah, Jem Bagot," he would say, "you hadn't need be caught a-wasting of your time when your Master comes."
His wife seldom spoke of the rules, but she kept them for all that. I never heard her but once speak an ill-natured word of any one, and then she looked up at the chimney-piece, and I saw tears come in her eyes, as she felt she had broken the third rule on the list.
As for my mistress, I think she lived every day as if it might be the last day before her Lord came. Her life was one long act of loving obedience to the Master; she always seemed to try to please Him in everything she did. The poor people in the cottages round, the sick folks in the little town near, the children playing by the roadside, all knew the sound of Bessie's hoofs on the road, and all of them welcomed the sight of her; for they were sure to get a pleasant word, or a kind visit, or a bright smile from their dear Mrs. Tremayne.
"The Master may come any day," I heard her say once, when some one was urging her not to go out in the rain to see a dying woman; "there is no time to lose."
Over the dining-room chimney-piece there was this verse, which my mistress had illuminated herself:
"The time is short—how short we cannot tell,
Or clearly understand;
But those who read the King's directions well,
Think it is close at hand!
Lord, is it so? Then grant that we
May lose no time, but work for Thee."
And the same thought which stirred my mistress up to work, was also her great comfort in her sorrow. There was a beautiful picture of her husband hanging in her room, and underneath it, on a white scroll, I read these words: