“No, ma’am, we can’t do that, because the Bible classes occupy the room, you know, until the last minute. O, dear! how I wish we had known it before. I don’t know what we shall do. Is Angie feeling very ill, Mrs. Conran?”
“N-o,” said the mother hesitatingly, and I knew that her face flushed to her temples; “she isn’t sick, but she is very much—out of sorts. I regret it exceedingly, but you know how Angie is. When she once settles in her own mind that she can’t do a thing it doesn’t seem possible for her to get the consent of her will to do it.”
“Well,” they said, turning away, “it seems too bad, when Dr. Brand asked for that particular anthem, and Angie is the only one who has sung it; but I suppose we shall manage some way. Good-evening.”
Mrs. Conran closed the door after them and came slowly back to the parlor, I, meantime, wishing there had been some excuse for me to slip away, so that she need not have the embarrassment of meeting me. There was a weary attempt at a smile on her face, which had grown pale again, and she said apologetically:
“Poor Angie! she is the victim of her own strong will. I sometimes feel very sorry that she matured in some things so early; she has an idea that her mother does not know what is suitable for young people to wear, and is growing a little too fond of dress, I am afraid. She has been put forward so much in her music that it has injured her. It seems strange that a sweet voice should lead one into temptation, doesn’t it?”
I murmured something about girls being fond of their own way and about their having to learn by experience, the more to give the mother a chance to recover herself than because I felt that I had anything worth saying. I do not think she heard all I said, but the words “learn by experience” caught her attention.
“Yes,” she said, after a moment, speaking with a long-drawn sigh, “that is it. Poor child! she must learn by experience, and experience is a bitter teacher sometimes. Often, when I hear her sweet voice roll out on those solemn words:
“‘Nearer, my God, to thee,
....
E’en though it be a cross