MAY VINTON WAITING FOR HER PONY PHAETON.
HELD BACK.
SHE made a pretty picture standing there on the veranda waiting for the carriage to come around. It was the last time she would ever stand there looking so fresh and fair in the morning light. This is a sad story, yet it has its bright side, so I hope you will not turn away from it without gathering up some of the sweetness that is shed as a perfume from May Vinton's daily life.
May was an only, a much-petted, and some people said, a spoiled child. However, this last was a mistake. What might have been, had not her Heavenly Father interfered, we cannot tell. A friend of Mr. Vinton who was spending a few days with the family was interested in the management of a theatre, and this gentleman had been studying this fair young daughter of his host and had discovered what others among her friends already knew, that she was a girl of unusual talent, and he fancied that if she were educated for the stage she would, as he expressed it, "create a sensation." He had proposed to Mr. Vinton to take May home with him and educate her for his favorite profession. He had pictured to the young girl the pleasures of such a life, dwelling upon the sweetness of the world's praises which she was sure to win. It would have been no wonder if May's head had been turned by all the flattery and promises of a brilliant future. Mr. Vinton had given his consent to the proposal of his friend, but May hesitated.
May Vinton was the only Christian in that household; while at boarding-school she had been led to give her heart to the Saviour, and now that she was at home again she had found it not quite easy to keep herself unspotted from the world. Mr. Vinton had not openly opposed her in what he termed her "fanaticism," but now that her religion was in the way of what was becoming his ambition for her, there was likely to be trouble. And the perplexity into which May was thrown showed itself in her face that morning. There was just a slight shadow in her brown eyes as she waited for her pony phaeton to come around to the steps. She had come from her room with this prayer on her lips: "Dear Father, help me to decide rightly. I am so ignorant and so foolish that I cannot tell what is right. Canst thou not settle this question for me? Shut up every path but the right one, I pray thee."
How speedily God sometimes answers our prayers!
It was the common story of a runaway horse, a carriage thrown over a steep embankment. And May Vinton, helpless and limp, was carried home, not dead, but to hear the verdict of the physicians who were hastily summoned, "She may live for years, but she will never walk again."
The father groaned when he heard it, but to May even in that first hour of the terrible knowledge there came a swift flashing thought "The question is settled!"