CHAPTER XXXII.
PENITENT.
Marion’s first plan in order to extend her religious influence was to get up a small prayer-meeting in her room.
To be sure, the room was shared by three others, and she had never quite gotten over the uncomfortable feeling that she was an intruder, particularly as Susan so often showed hostility to her; but a prayer-meeting surely was a thing no right-minded girl ought to object to. Of Dorothy’s approval she had no doubt. Gladys, if she did not wish to stay, would go away without the least hesitation. Susan! What Susan would do, who could tell? Knowing the need she had of a vital change in character, in order to be a Christian, Marion made no attempt to conceal from herself that her conversion alone was an object worth earnest and constant prayer; really the reward for the conquering of any diffidence she might have to overcome in instituting the meeting. It was not an hour after she had decided upon the twelve girls she would invite, before the tempter had her in his power again. She was planning the order of exercises for the meeting, which was as it should be; but 224 it was not as right that she was leaping forward in her thoughts to the criticisms which the girls would make upon the part she should take, the hope that they would admire her fluency and spirituality, and say to her when they were leaving the room,—
“O Marion! how much good you have done us! We shall be grateful to you as long as we live.”
If any one had told her that here, by this same desire for self-aggrandizement, or, to call it by its more common name of popularity, Susan had fallen, she would have been astonished indeed.
Prayer-meetings were by no means uncommon in this academy; but they were under the care of a teacher, and it was not long before the necessity of asking leave for the one in her room occurred to Marion; but here was a difficulty! Would not Miss Ashton ask her questions about this, which she would find difficult to answer; such as, “What made her propose it? What did she expect to accomplish?” If she did ask these, what could she say?
There followed another day of poor recitations, and Marion, for almost the first time since she joined the school, was undeniably cross. By night she was sitting on the penitential stool, ashamed, tired, and full of wonder as to what had happened to her. As is not unusual in such cases, she was inclined to blame every one but herself. Miss Palmer had lost her patience with her because she hesitated over a difficult place in her mathematical lesson, and had snapped her up before the class; Anna Dawson 225 had laughed at her blunder, and the whole class had most unkindly smiled. Dorothy had put her arm around her and asked her if she was sick, when she knew there was nothing the matter with her. Even Gladys had stopped scratching with her slate-pencil, looking at her in a way that said as plainly as words could, “What a nervous thing you are, not to bear the scratching of a pencil without wincing;” and as for Susan, tormenting as she had been on other days, she had been angelic in comparison with this. After all, she had too much good common-sense and true religious feeling to sit upon her stool long without beneficial results. It was nearly time for the lights to be put out before she began to see the first thing to be done was the right one; that is always sure. Do the duty nearest to you, then those more distant fall readily into line and are easily met. This was, to see Miss Ashton, no matter how awkward it would be to tell her that the thought of the prayer-meeting was first put into her head by Miss Ashton’s letter home; that before, her religious influence had not been a thing of which she had for a moment thought, but that now she wished to make it tell.
“I’ll go at once,” she said to herself. “I won’t give it up because I’m a coward. I shall not sleep a wink unless it’s settled. Life is short; death may come at any unexpected moment. I should not like to have my Judge ask why I had not done my duty, when, perchance, I, even I, might have been a poor, 226 weak instrument, but still an instrument, in saving a soul.”
In this spirit Marion went to Miss Ashton’s room, quite forgetting the lateness of the hour, and knocked timidly at the door.