Tired though she is, Betty cannot go to bed until Bob comes home. At last she hears his step, and flies to the door.
"O Bob, I didn't mean——" she begins eagerly, directly she sees him. But he pushes past her without a word, and, running upstairs, shuts himself in his own room.
Betty goes to her own room, too; but not to sleep. What can she do to make Bob understand how sorry she is for her hasty words, how much she wants to help him, how dearly she longs to win his confidence?
She goes over the brief scene between them, sentence by sentence, as nearly as she can remember it.
"Bob was certainly overbearing and unreasonable," she thinks, her anger reviving a little as she recalls his words. "Oh, but it was my place to help him to be better. I have promised to be the Lord's Soldier. I should have been wiser and stronger than he—and I wasn't, not one bit! I lost my temper. I made no effort to check myself."
These are sad thoughts for poor Betty; but it is often through just such a sense of failure and shortcoming, through just such self-reproaches as hers to-night, that the Lord renews our strength. No spiritual blessing is so full of power as that which follows a time of humiliation. In distrusting ourselves we learn to put a more perfect trust in Him.
Bob still wears an air of deep injury at breakfast next morning. He answers all Betty's rather timid remarks with "Yes" or "No," and seems even to take trouble to show that all confidence between them is at an end.
Sick at heart, Betty starts out on her weary round of rent-collecting. Her sorrow is heavy upon her, and she walks with drooping head and unheeding eyes.
"Bob is wrong to bear malice like this," she thinks. "If he won't listen to anything I have to say, how can I ever make things right between us again? Would it be right for me to go and ask his pardon? It is plain that unless I do something he means to have a grievance against me. Oh, dear, I just feel no heart for my work or anything while things are like this! Lord, do lift the burden, do show me what to do! Do help me to put a stop to the mischief my foolish words have caused."
"The Captain!"