“Yes, only to the woods, where I can sit and read in the shade.”
Mrs. Churton glanced suspiciously at the book in her daughter's hand—a thick volume bound in dark-green cloth. There was nothing in its appearance to alarm anyone, but she did not like these thick green-bound books that were never by any chance found lying about for one to see what was in them. However, she only answered:
“Then I wish you would persuade Fan to go with you. She is looking pale, it strikes me.”
“I shall be glad if Fan will go,” she answered, a slight accent of surprise in her tone.
Fan ran up to get her hat and sunshade, and when she returned to them her pallor and headache had well-nigh vanished at the prospect of an afternoon spent in the shady woodland paradise. Mrs. Churton, with a prayer in her heart, watched them going away together—two lovely girls; it made her anxious when her eyes rested on the portly green volume her daughter carried, but it struck her as a good augury when she noticed that the younger girl in her white dress had The Pleasures of Hope in her hand.
For now a new thought, a hope that was very beautiful, had come into Mrs. Churton's heart. All her life long she had had the delusion that “spiritual pride” was her besetting sin; and against this imaginary enemy she was perpetually fighting. And yet if some shining being had come down to tell her that her prayers for others had been heard, that all the worthless and vicious people she wished to carry to heaven with her would be saved, and all of them, even the meanest, set above her in that place where the first is last and the last first, joy at such tidings would have slain her. She had as little spiritual pride as a ladybird or an ant. Now the new thought had come into her mind that her daughter would be saved; not in her way, nor by her means, but in a way that would at the same time be a rebuke to her spiritual pride, her impatience and bitterness of spirit, and zeal not according to knowledge. Not she, but this young girl, herself so ignorant of spiritual things a short time ago, would be the chosen instrument. She remembered how the girl had taken to her from the first, but had not taken to her daughter; how in spite of this distance between them, and of her infidelity, her daughter had continued to love the girl—to Mrs. Churton it was plain that she loved her—and to hunger for her love in return. It was all providential and ordered by One
Who moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.
“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength,” she murmured, praising God who had put this gladness in her heart, the Christian's and the mother's love filling her eyes with tears. Up till now it had been her secret aim to keep the girls as much apart as possible out of school hours; now it seemed best to let them come together; and on this August afternoon, as we have seen, she went so far as to encourage a greater intimacy between them. Poor woman!
After they had entered the wood Fan began straying at short intervals from the path to gather flowers and grasses, or to look more closely at a butterfly at rest and sunning its open brightly-patterned wings.
“I think I shall sit down on the grass here to read,” said Constance at length. “You can ramble about and gather flowers if you like, and you'll know where to find me.”