Was I right?

by Mrs. O. F. Walton

"Oh, is he?" said little Maggie. "How nice!"

And I was very pleased also. I expected to see exactly the same Claude as I had parted from at the garden gate, a year ago; and I thought that all would go on just as it had done when he was a boy at school, and came home for the holidays.

So when I saw him coming up the road, I ran into the garden to meet him.

"Oh, Claude, I am glad to see you!" I cried, as soon as he opened the gate. And then, in a moment, I stopped short, and went up to him quite quietly, and giving him my hand, said in a very different voice: "How do you do, Claude; when did you come home?"

For in a moment it flashed across me that Claude Ellis and I were not the same as we were when we had parted at that very gate a year ago. We were both older than we were then; our childhood was a thing of the past. Claude and I had grown out of the boy and girl into the young man and woman since we had last met. All this flashed across me in a moment, as I noticed the difference in Claude's dress, manners, and appearance, as he came in at the gate. And a chill came over me as I noticed it, and I wished that I had not run to meet him quite so eagerly.

And yet, when he began to talk, I felt that he was in many ways the same Claude still, the same, but changed.

Was he changed for the better? In many ways he was. He was more manly, and more gentleman-like, and had much to tell us of his college friends, and college life, which made him a more amusing and pleasant companion than before.

And yet, there was another change in Claude, which I could not help noticing, in spite of my efforts not to do so. Claude Ellis was more of a man, more of a gentleman; but he was, yes, he certainly was, though I tried to persuade myself to the contrary, less of a Christian.

Before Claude went to college, we had often talked together of the Bible, and he had explained to me many things which I did not understand. We used sometimes to sit on the garden seat on Sunday afternoons, and read a chapter together; and Claude used to talk so nicely about it, and I thought he loved the Lord Jesus, and wished to serve Him. He often spoke of the time when he would be old enough to be ordained, and when I should come to his church and hear him preach; and he told me what his first text would be, and how he had already written some pages of his first sermon.

But after Claude's return I noticed a change in him. At first, he always avoided any mention of religious subjects, and when, either in his own home or ours, any allusion was made to them, he quickly turned the conversation to some other topic.