"You have written very little about yourself lately, but I can see from your mother's letters, and from your own, too, that the Bird of Love is beginning to speak in your voice; that my dear Betty is letting the Lord Jesus rule in her heart.
"You have much to learn yet, dear, and little to help you to learn it. Can you not go to The Army Meetings? I hear that Captain Janet Scott, a dear young friend of mine, has just gone in charge of the Corps in Duke Street. I have written to her about you. Do ask your mother's leave to go to the Meetings."
"O Grannie, I should so love to go," murmurs Betty; "but I am afraid—I'm quite sure—mother would never let me, even if I asked her!"
"Go on fighting bravely, dear; do not allow these little troubles to wear away your courage. Trust the Lord more and more. Lean on Him; fight in His strength, and a bright day of victory will dawn for you at last. Ah, Betty, it is dawning for you now! Already the true, unselfish love that will make you a happy girl is beginning to shine in your heart."
"Oh! how can she say that?" and the tears that sparkle in Betty's eyes now are tears of joy. "Can that really be true?"
"I knew mother wouldn't let me go to The Army Meetings—I was perfectly sure of it!" exclaims Betty to herself the morning after Grannie's letter. Her eyes are heavy with trouble again, her heart sore with painful recollections. She has asked for permission, and been refused, and the words of mother's refusal have been hard to bear.
"How can she be so unjust, so unreasonable?" thinks Betty, angrily, as she enters the crowded district where Mr. Duncan's property lies, for she is rent-collecting again.
Grannie's letter had cheered her for awhile, but the talk with mother this morning has plunged her again into the depths of gloom. Just now everything seems dark and sad indeed.
"Oh, dear, I've the same dreary round of calls to make, I suppose, the same unhappiness to see everywhere.