Part 4

But Etty was past hearing reason. As Stella drew near her, she threw herself forward and seized hold of her sister. Stella tottered, lost her balance, and both the children fell into the pool below. When Etty came to herself she was lying on the bed, in a room of the fisherman's little house on the point, with Eleanor and the fisherman's wife attending upon her, but Stella was not to be seen.

"Keep still, Etty," said Eleanor, as Etty tried to rise.

"But where is Stella? I want Stella!" cried Etty.

"Stella cannot come to you, and you must not go to her," said Eleanor, seeing that Etty was determined to get up. "You have done terrible mischief by your perverseness and folly, Esther, and the only amends you can make is to try and do no more."

There was something in Eleanor's tone which quieted Etty at once.

"Is Stella dead?" she asked, in an awestruck whisper.

"No—at least we hope not—but she has not revived yet, and we fear that her head is hurt. Be quiet now, and drink the tea Mrs. Fiske is bringing you."

It was a long time before Stella came to herself, and when she did, she knew no one. She was carried on board the steamer and laid on one sofa and Etty on another. As the boat drew near to the wharf, Stella opened her eyes, and seeing her aunt bending over her, she said, feebly: "Please, aunt, don't scold Etty."

Etty hid her face and cried bitterly but silently, as she remembered all her unkind speeches to Stella. She was put to bed in her own room, and left alone for what seemed an age. At last Mrs. Grey came in and sat down by her bed.

"Oh, aunt, how is Stella?" exclaimed Etty, starting up.

"She is better," replied her aunt. "The doctor hopes she will live. You ought to be very thankful." Mrs. Grey paused a little and then said: "Etty, what has been the matter to-day? What has made you behave so badly?"

"I don't know, aunt," replied Etty. "It has been one of my bad days."

"What do you suppose makes you have bad days, Etty?"

"I don't know, aunt," repeated Etty. "I can't help them."

"Are you sure of that, Etty? I am not so, by any means."

Etty looked surprised.

"Let us go over the day's history and see if it could not be helped. What was the first trouble?"

"Being late for breakfast, aunt—no, breaking the cologne bottle was the first trouble."

"Well, both of these troubles came from the same source—not getting up in time. How did that happen?"

"I was so sleepy, aunt."

"You should not have been sleepy. From half-past nine till six is long enough for any little girl to sleep. Did you go to bed as soon as you came up-stairs?"

Etty hesitated.

"I know you did not," continued Mrs. Grey. "Your candle was new last night and it was more than half burned out this morning. What were you doing?"

"Reading, aunt."

"Then the first trouble came from your disobeying my direct commands. Could you not help that?"

"Yes, aunt, I suppose so."

"And could you not have got up when Eleanor called you?"

"Yes, aunt."

"Then here were two troubles which certainly could have been helped, and which being helped would have prevented most of the others. I will pass over your conduct at the breakfast-table and at your lessons; but could you not have dressed yourself as I told you instead of following your own perverse fancy?"

"I did not want to wear that dress," murmured Etty.

"That was no reason at all, Etty. When you are commanded to do a thing by those who stand in the place of your parents, your liking or not liking is no excuse for disobeying. Now, to go on to the great trouble of all. Did you not hear your uncle tell you not to go upon the rocks?"

"Yes, aunt."

"And could you not have helped going where you were told not to go?"

Etty was ashamed to excuse herself by saying that she wanted the flowers, so she said nothing. She was beginning to see that her troubles had been of her own making.

"In every one of these cases you could have 'helped it,' as you say, by merely doing your duty," continued Mrs. Grey. "If you had risen in time, you would not have been hurried and fretted in getting ready for breakfast. You would not have broken your bottle, and spoiled my table, and lost your own temper, and put yourself out of tune for the whole day. If you had trusted your uncle as you ought, you would not have made yourself ridiculous on the wharf as you did. If you had not been so perverse and unreasonable you would not have spoiled your best dress and your own temper as well as that of every one else. To conclude, if you had obeyed your uncle to-day, you would not have run heedlessly into danger, and thus have sacrificed perhaps the life of your poor little sister."

"Do you think Stella will die, aunt?" asked Etty.

"I cannot tell. She is very dangerously hurt, and even if she should live, it may be months before she can walk. Now tell me, Etty, could you not have helped all these things?"

"Well, I cannot help crying when anything troubles me," said Etty. "I have so much feeling."

"Feeling for yourself, Etty, not for other people. Selfish feeling, which makes you hard-hearted and unkind even to your poor little sister, who would do anything in the world for you. Selfish feeling, which shows that you have never learned to love God or your neighbors, but only to love and please yourself—which will and does make you a torment to yourself and all about you."

"I shall say no more now, Etty, only to recommend you to ask God for the light of His Holy Spirit to teach you to see yourself as you really are. There is no use in trying to cure people unless they can be convinced that they are sick, and there is no use in talking of amendment to one who cannot see that she is to blame. I shall pray for you, my child, and I shall continue to take care of you as well as I can, but I do not know what is to become of you unless you learn to be a better girl."

"Please don't go away, aunt," sobbed Etty: "don't leave me alone. Indeed I will try to be a good girl, if you will forgive me."

"I forgive you, my dear Etty, but there is One whom you have offended more than you have me, whose pardon you ought to ask."

"Please ask Him for me, aunt!" whispered Etty. "And ask Him to make Stella well."

Mrs. Grey knelt by Etty's bedside, and prayed, and for the first time in her life Etty really joined in a prayer.

She wanted very much to see Stella, but her aunt said no, and for once Etty minded without a word.

When Mrs. Grey left her, Etty slipped out of bed, and kneeling down, she prayed herself, with many tears, that her Father in Heaven would spare her dear sister; and that she herself might have grace to be a good girl. That prayer was the beginning of a new life to Etty.

Then feeling a little comforted she rose from her knees. As she did so she felt a sharp pain in her foot, so sharp that she almost screamed. She had felt a pain in the foot a good many times during the afternoon, but her pride would not let her speak of it, lest her aunt should say something about her thin boots.

"O dear, what a wicked little fool I have been!" said she to herself. "Now I have hurt my foot and I dare say I shall have to sit still and be waited on, instead of waiting on Stella."

So it turned out. The next day Etty's foot was found to be so bruised and inflamed that she could not put it to the floor. Here was an end to all her hopes of helping her aunt and waiting upon Stella. Instead of that, she had to be carried up and down-stairs for a month, like a baby, and all she could do for any one was to give as little trouble as possible. She had taken a severe cold which settled in her eyes, already weakened by reading at night, and she could hardly use them at all.

This confinement was one of the best things that ever happened to Etty. She learned for the first time to appreciate the kindness of those who took care of her. She learned to be thoroughly weary of idleness, and to find it a privilege to be employed. She found out too that much as she might try, she could not be a good girl without help from above, and she learned to pray earnestly for the help of God's Holy Spirit. Her "bad days" became fewer and farther between, and at last ceased entirely.

Stella, was ill for a long time, and has never been as well as she was before her fall: but she is happier than ever before, for Etty is now always kind and affectionate to her.

Dear girls, be careful how you excuse your faults by saying you "can't help it!" Remember that you can always have God's help by asking for it in faith and humility, and with Him on your side, you have no right to say that you "cannot help" doing what is wrong.

MARTHA,

OR,

"CHARITY THINKETH NO EVIL."

"I HAVE just been to see Betty Allis," said Emily Dunbar to her cousin Martha. "She is a great deal better, but she is not able to go to school."

"Then she has really been sick!" said Martha.

Emily looked at her in surprise.

"What do you mean, Martha? Of course she has been sick. She would not be very likely to stay out of school just now, unless she was obliged to do so."

"I don't know that!" returned Martha.

"If a girl has been working for a prize, and finds out that she is not likely to get it after all, it may be very convenient to stay out of school a week or two, and then say, at last: 'Oh, of course, I had no chance. I lost so much time by being sick.'"

"Martha, you have no business to say such things," said Emily. "Betty is not that sort of girl at ell."

"I think she is exactly that sort of girl!" interrupted Martha.

"And besides," continued Emily, smiling, "I think it as likely as not that Betty will gain the prize, after all. She was ever so far before the rest of us, and she has only been out of school a week, you know."

"Very likely she will. She is a rich man's daughter, and I am a poor man's child; though I dare say she is not so rich as she pretends."

"I don't see that Betty makes any pretence at all," said Emily. "She seems to me as quiet and unpretending as any girl in school, and I don't think you have any right to accuse Miss Lyman of partiality. The fact is, Martha, you have taken such a dislike to Betty Allis, that it makes no difference what she does."

"Well, I have a right to dislike her," replied Martha. "She has treated me shamefully, and she is just as proud, and artful, and hateful, as she can be."

"Who is so proud, and artful, and hateful, Martha?" asked Miss Margaret, who had been sitting all the time behind the blinds of the window which opened on the verandah where the girls were now talking. "Those are hard words to apply to any one."

Martha did not answer, but Emily said:

"We were talking about Betty Allis, Aunt Margaret."

"I am surprised at that," replied Aunt Margaret. "I have always thought her a very nice girl."

"And so does almost every one," said Emily; "but Martha does not like her."

"Well, I do not, and I have good reasons for not liking her," said Martha. "She never loses a chance of provoking and spiting me."

"How does she provoke you?" asked Aunt Margaret.

Martha did not reply.

"Come, Martha, if Betty has done so many bad things, you can surely tell of some of them."

"Well, she puts on such airs, for one thing," said Martha. "You would think she owned a whole gold mine, to hear her. The other day, several of the girls were talking about examination dresses. Miss Lyman wants all our class to wear white with black ribbons, on account of Annie Grey's death, you know. Some one asked Betty who was going to make her dress. 'Oh, I am not going to have a new dress made,' she answered, with such an air. 'Mamma likes me to wear white, and I have plenty of white dresses.'"

"I did not see that she put on any airs at all," remarked Emily. "She just said it as a matter-of-course, and she does wear white a great deal."

"Well, what else, Martha?" asked Aunt Margaret.

"Well, last March, when there was snow on the ground, I went over to carry auntie something. I was in a hurry and did not stop to dress myself, but just put on mother's plaid shawl, and tied my old worsted scarf round my neck. I was hurrying along, for I did not want to meet anybody, when I heard some one call me. I turned round, and there was Miss Betty, dressed up in her blue plush frock, and her cape trimmed with sable fur, holding up my old scarf as if it burned her fingers. 'Why, Martha, is it you?' said she, in a tone of affected surprise. 'I did not know you. I found this scarf lying on the snow, and hurried to come up with you, thinking it might be yours.' I could have boxed her ears with a good will."

"But why? I do not see anything wrong in that."

"She did it just to mortify me!" said Martha. "She knew I should be ashamed of such a dirty old thing."

"And so you ought to be," said Aunt Margaret. "I tell you, you will meet with a great mortification some day if you are not more neat in your dress and habits. But I do not see that Betty was to blame. From what you say, it seems that she had not recognized you when she spoke. I dare say she thought you were some poor body, to whom the scarf would be a serious loss."

"I don't see what business she had in the lane," said Martha.

"Probably the same business that you had," replied Emily. "She goes over to the Home two or three times a week to read to Mrs. Grimes, the blind woman, and I suppose she has a right to take the shortest road, if she pleases."

"That going over to the Home is just another specimen of her," said Martha. "She likes to have the old ladies make a fuss over her, and to have all the managers say what a charitable, amiable girl Betty Allis is. You would not catch her doing any such thing unless she were sure that people would hear of it."

"Martha, how can you say so?" interrupted Emily. "You know how she helped poor Julia Curtis with her lessons, all the time her eyes were weak, so that she might not lose her place in school. The girls all wondered how Julia could keep up so well; but nobody would have known it if little Fanny had not let out the secret: for Betty made Julia promise not to tell."

"She knew it would come out somehow, or she would not have taken all that trouble," said Martha. "Then her name sounds so silly for a girl fifteen years old Belly Allis! Why does she not call herself Elizabeth?"

"Perhaps for the reason, amongst others, that it is not her name," replied Aunt Margaret, drily. "She was christened Betty at her grandmother's special request."

"She likes the name, though, for she says so," persisted Martha. "Then she makes such a parade of goodness. Miss Lyman said one day, last Lent, that she wished the girls to use their prayer-books in church; and the very next morning, Betty, instead of putting her head down, as she had done before, kneeled down and kept her head up and her book open before her all through the prayers and the Litany. Then she got up with such an air, as if to say, 'Just see how good I am!'"

"I fancy the air was in your imagination," said Emily. "I sat by Betty all through Lent and saw none of those airs that you speak of. Betty is a great deal more serious than she used to be, and I think she is trying hard to be a good Christian girl; but I am sure she makes no parade of it."

"Pray, Martha, what were you doing all through the prayers that you had so much time to observe Betty?" asked Aunt Margaret.

Martha blushed, but made no answer.

"I think you are cherishing a very wrong spirit," continued Aunt Margaret, seriously; "a spirit which makes you see wrong in everything which Betty does or leaves undone."

"That is just so, Aunt Margaret," said Emily. "I don't want to hurt Martha's feelings, but I am sure she is wrong in that. One Sunday Betty puts fifty cents into the collection and Martha thinks she does it to make a display. Another day she puts in a five-cent piece, and Martha thinks she might have saved something more than that out of all her pocket-money. And that is just the way all the time."

"Such a spirit is a very dangerous one for anybody to cherish," continued Aunt Margaret. "It shows a great want of that charity, without which all our doings are nothing worth:"

"I don't think it is fair to accuse me of want of charity, Aunt Margaret, considering how I saved—"

"How you saved all your pocket-money to give away," said Aunt Margaret, as Martha checked herself. "I am aware that you used a great deal of self-denial in that matter, my dear. I was very glad to see it. But, Martha, St. Paul says, 'though I give all my goods to feed the poor, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.' So you see that it is possible to be very liberal without being charitable at all."

"Charity means LOVE, does it not, Aunt Margaret?" asked Emily.

"Yes, my dear. St. Paul, in that beautiful thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, gives us a description of this greatest of graces. He tells us both what it is, and what it is not, and assures us that unless we have it, our greatest gifts and graces are as nothing—

"'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, though I have faith so that I could remove mountains, though I bestow all my goods to food the poor, or give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.'"

"I advise you to examine your feelings toward Betty by the aid of this chapter, and see if it does not throw some light upon them."

"If she had not served me such a mean trick, I should not care so much!" said Martha. "But it was so shameful in her to go and tell Miss Lyman and get me into disgrace. I don't believe there is another girl in the school who would have done such a thing."

"What did she do?"

"She went and told Miss Lyman of something I did, and got me into disgrace," said Martha.

"You don't know that it was Betty," said Emily.

"I do know!" returned Martha, angrily. "There was not another person who could have seen me."

"You do not know for certain that any one told," persisted Emily. "Miss Lyman never said so, and you have no proof against Betty except your own fancy."

"Of course you will take her part against me," said Martha. "All I have to say is that I can't bear her, and never shall."

"You are wrong, Martha, and you must know that you are wrong," said Aunt Margaret, gravely. "If you examine your own conscience you will see that it is so."

Martha did not reply. She was not without religious principle, and lately she had been feeling very anxious to become a true Christian. She had tried to give herself to her Saviour, but something seemed to hold back. She had no comfort in prayer, she did not feel as if God heard her, and all her efforts to do good and to love Him seemed hard, up-hill work. Now, as she thought over what her aunt had said to her, she began to wonder whether she had not found out her real hindrance, in the spirit which she had allowed herself to cherish toward Betty Allis.

Martha was a truthful girl. She was very much in earnest, and disposed to be honest in her self-examination. As she read over the description of Charity, she paused at every verse, and compared herself with the words.

"Charity suffereth long and is kind." Kind she certainly had not been. She had never lost an opportunity of saying and doing unkind things where Betty was concerned.

"Charity envieth not." It was rather hard for the naturally proud girl to admit to herself that she had envied her rich school-mate, that a great part of her dislike to Betty arose from the expensive furs, from those same fine white dresses, and the carriage, and the man-servant that called for Betty on rainy days; but One was dealing with Martha who would not let her deceive herself. Yes, it was even so.

"Charity thinketh no evil." She had thought of nothing else. She had put an evil construction on every act of Betty's, however simple, and she was always looking out for bad motives in all she said or did.

"Rejoiceth not in iniquity." Had she not been secretly glad that unlucky day when Betty was surprised into laughing aloud in church, and was afterwards reproved by the clergyman? Had she not rejoiced openly whenever Betty gained a bad mark, or had an imperfect lesson?

There is no use in our going over the whole chapter, though Martha did so to the very end. Then she closed the book and knelt down. She shed many tears as she prayed, but when she rose, her face was full of quiet peace. She had overcome her hindrance for that time. She had acknowledged her sins, and prayed for forgiveness, and for grace to resist her besetting sin, and something in her heart told her that her prayer was granted.

"You were right about Betty Allis and me, Aunt Margaret, and I see I have been wrong all through!" said Martha, after breakfast, when they were alone together in the dining-room.

Martha was washing the breakfast things, which was a part of her regular duty.

"I am very glad you do," replied Aunt Margaret. "To see when you are wrong is more than half the battle. But, Martha, had you never known before that you were wrong in cherishing such a spirit? Had not your conscience told you so?"

"Yes, Aunt Margaret, but I would not listen. But I cannot think it was right in Betty to tell Miss Lyman of me. It was none of her business what I did."

"Perhaps not. Nevertheless, Martha, you must forgive, if you would be forgiven."

"I hope I have done so, aunt. I could not help it," added Martha, in a low tone; "when I thought how He forgave me. I would like to be friends with Betty if I could, but I don't know how to set about it."

"Pray for guidance, and keep your eyes open," said Aunt Margaret. "Depend upon it, your way will be made plain."

"Martha," said her mother, opening the door, "suppose you run over to auntie's and carry her these fresh ducks' eggs. She likes them very much, and they will just come in time for her breakfast, if you do not stop to change your dress. You can go through the lane."

"Auntie," was a great-aunt of Martha's, a very old lady. She breakfasted very late, and Martha often ran over to her house with a plate of warm biscuits, a dish of freshly gathered berries, or some other dainty which it was thought the old lady might fancy. She hastily throw on her sunbonnet, and without even taking off her white apron she went to carry the eggs. She staid nearly an hour, doing various little services for auntie, and sharing her morning cup of coffee. As she was returning, she overtook Betty Allis, who was walking slowly in the same direction.

"Just like her!" was Martha's first hasty thought. "Sure to meet me if I look like a fright!"

But she checked herself the next moment and gave Betty a cordial greeting. "Why, Betty, I did not expect to see you out this morning."

"And I am not sure that I ought to be out," replied Betty: "but the morning seemed so pleasant that I could not bear to stay in the house, so I went round to the Home for a little while. Have you been to see your aunt?"

Martha explained her errand.

"It must be nice to have an old lady of one's own to go and see!" said Betty. "I wish you would take me to visit your aunt some day, Martha. Do you think she would like to see me?"

The old feeling of jealousy rose in Martha's heart, but she put it down by a brave effort, and answered cheerfully:

"I am sure she would like it very much. She is always fond of young people. I think you must be fond of old people, Betty, you go to the Home so much."

"I am," replied Betty. "I do love to hear the old ladies talk. One learns so much from them. It must be strange," she added, thoughtfully, "to look back upon such a long life."

"We shall know how it seems some time," observed Martha, "that is, if we live."

"I shall not," said Betty, abruptly. "I shall never live to be old."

"How do you know?" asked Martha.