While they were talking, Julia Staples called to walk with her to school. Lucy soon told her all about her sister's expected return.
"I should not think you would like it!" said Julia; "she'll want the nicest of everything for herself, and make you wait on her, as if you were her servant."
Before they reached the school-house, Lucy was quite sure that Rosa's coming would make her unhappy. Julia Staples had been talking with little thought, but she had roused evil feelings in Lucy's mind which were strangers there. She was not naturally envious, but now her heart burned at the idea that her sister would always be praised, and go out with her father, while she would be left at home with no one to care for her. Children do not think enough of the harm they may do each other by idle conversation. Julia might have encouraged Lucy in feeling kindly towards her expected sister, and have made her look forward to the meeting with pleasure; but she filled her mind with wicked, envious thoughts.
Do my young friends ever think whether they have roused wrong feelings in their companions? Two children can hardly talk together for half an hour without having some influence over each other, for good or for evil. The wrong thought that you have planted in the heart of a child may strengthen, and lead her to do some very wicked thing when you have forgotten the conversation.
A traveller once took some seeds of a very valuable plant with him on a journey. From time to time he cast them in the fields as he passed, and when he was far away they sprang up and were a great blessing to the people who owned the fields. A wicked traveller might have scattered the seeds of poisonous plants, which would have grown up to bring sickness and death to all who partook of them. Our life is like a journey, and whenever we talk with the people around us, we cast some seeds in their hearts, those which may spring up to bless them, or those which may cause them sin and sorrow.
CHAPTER V.
THE ARRIVAL.
"Your sister is to be here at ten o'clock, and you must be ready to receive her," said Mrs. Maxwell to Lucy, a few days after the occurrences related in the last chapter.
"Shall I put on my white frock?" asked Lucy.
"Nonsense! child," was the reply; "isn't your sister to see you every day, from morning to night, in whatever you happen to have on? Go, get a clean apron, and make your hair smooth, that is all the dressing that little girls need."