Elise smiled sadly. “I remember mamma very well,” she said, “and she always wanted me to do exactly as she said.”
“Well,” said Miss Turner again, after an embarrassed pause, “this is exact enough; she means you to live a good life, you know.”
“I don’t know what it means,” said Elise, moving restlessly. “As for being good, I am not, and I don’t know how to be; I cannot keep my temper a single day. You know I never get through a day without having a tiff of some sort with Cousin Annie; and there are ever so many people who vex me and worry me so that I cannot feel right toward them. That is not being good. Besides, the words seem to me to mean something more than that—something different. I would like to know exactly what they mean, but there is nobody that I can ask. Papa does not understand such things, and uncle and auntie do not. I don’t seem to have any friends who could help in that way.”
Miss Turner gave back the pin, looking very thoughtful indeed. She ought to know more about those things than Elise did, she told herself; her father was not a Christian, and her mother had died when her little girl was six years old, whereas Miss Turner had lived always in a home where the father and mother were earnest Christians, and she knew at this very moment that the greatest desire of their hearts was to see her doing this very thing—“keeping His covenant.” Yet she knew as little about it practically as Elise Burton did; so little, that although she was at least six years older than Elise, she did not know in the least how to help her this afternoon. It was very humiliating. She could help her with her music, and with her French lessons, and her drawing, and to have this most important of all lessons beyond her, seemed strange and wrong. She was still for several minutes, then she said, speaking very gently:
“Elise dear, I can imagine how you feel with this message from your mother; I wish I knew how to help you. But there is a way to learn what it means. There is a verse in the Bible somewhere that explains its meaning.”
Elise looked up quickly. “Where?” she asked. “The Bible is such a big book, and I do not know much about it. I did try last Sunday to find something about covenants that would help me. I went away back to Noah and the rainbow, but I did not get any good out of it for me.”
Miss Dora went to her table and took up an elegantly bound reference Bible, full of help which she did not understand, and turning in a half-bewildered, half-embarrassed manner to the Concordance, ran her eye down the list of words marked “covenant.” Elise watched her curiously. She had no Concordance in her Bible, and did not know how to use one. At last Miss Dora turned to a verse.
“This explains a little of it,” she said, and read aloud: “This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel in those days, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God and they shall be my people.” As she read a curious light came into her eyes.
“It is very strange,” she said; “that is the verse that they are going to talk about this afternoon at the covenant meeting.”
“What is a covenant meeting?” asked Elise eagerly.