Mrs. Morgan heard it—heard the tune; caught no words—wanted to hear none. The spirit of song was not in her heart that morning. All she said was,—
"Don't, for pity's sake, go to singing over the dish-pan. I always thought that was a miserable, shiftless habit. There is a time for all things."
And Dorothy, wondering much when was her time to sing, hushed her voice and finished the melody in her heart. So it seemed to her, when the day was done, that really it had been an unusually hard one. Many steps added to the usual routine. A dish broken; a leaking pail sending water all over the clean floor; John's muddy feet tracking through the kitchen just after the mopping was done; John's hands—traces of them on the clean towel; and then, by reason of trying to do two things at once at the mother's bidding, she actually allowed the starch to scorch. So that, in truth, when she sat down in the wooden-seated chair of her own room for a moment's breathing space, before it was time to set the table for tea, she looked back over the day with a little wondering sigh. What had she done this day for the glory of God? How could he possibly get any glory out of her honest efforts to do her whole duty that day? True, she had resisted the temptation to slam the door hard, to set down the tea-kettle with a bang, to say, in an undertone, "I don't care whether it is clean or dirty," when her attention was called to some undone task. Yet what had been the result? Mother certainly had never been so hard to please.
"She has found more to blame to-day than she ever did in the days when I only half tried," said poor Dorothy to herself.
So where was there any glory for the Master to be found in the day? Even then came the mother's voice calling,—
"Well, are we to have any supper to-night? or must I get it, with all the rest?"
Then Dorothy went down, and I am afraid that she set the cups and saucers on the table with more force than was needed. Life looked full of pin-pricks that hurt for the time being as much, or at least she thought they did, as though they had been made with lancets.
What was the trouble with Mother Morgan?
I do want you to understand her. She did not understand herself, to be sure; but that is no reason why you should not show more discrimination. It had been an unusually trying day to her. Apart from the pressure of domestic cares, which she, in common with many other housekeepers, made always twice as heavy as they should be, her nerves, or her heart, or her conscience, or all these combined, had been stirred within her by the words of prayer in the twilight of the Sabbath. Memory took her back to an old hillside farmhouse, surrounded by fields less rich and fruitful than those near which she dwelt; to an old arm-chair, in which an old man sat night and morning, by his side another chair, in which an old woman sat night and morning; and together they read out of the same Bible, together they knelt and prayed, and this cold-faced mother had heard herself prayed for many a time, not only by that old man, but by the gray-haired woman. And they were her father and her mother, both sleeping now, side by side, under the snow; and being dead, yet speaking—speaking loudly to her on that very Monday. As she looked at Dorothy she felt as though she were wronging her of a birthright. Dorothy had never heard her mother pray as she had heard her old mother many a time. Dorothy's mother had never said to her,—
"Dorothy, I want you to be a servant of God more than I want anything else."