The End of a Coil. Warner Susan
mean what the Lord was speaking of, when He said to His disciples, 'If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.'"
"That means, bad people?"
"Some of them are by no means bad people. Some of them are delightful people."
"Then I do not quite understand, Aunt Harry. I thought it meant not only bad people, but gay people; pleasure lovers."
"Aren't you a lover of pleasure, Dolly?"
"Oh yes. But, Aunt Harry," Dolly said seriously, "I am not a 'lover of pleasure more than a lover of God.'"
"No, thanks to His goodness! However, Dolly, people may be just as worldly without seeking pleasures at all. It isn't that."
"What is it, then?"
"I don't know how to put it. Ned, can you?"
"Why, Hal," said Mr. Eberstein pondering, "it comes to about this, I reckon. There are just two kingdoms in the world, upon earth I mean."
"Yes. Well? I know there are two kingdoms, and no neutral ground. But what is the dividing line? That is what we want to know."
"If there is no neutral ground, it follows that the border line of one kingdom is the border line of the other. To go out of one, is to go into the other."
"Well? Yes. That's plain."
"Then it is simple enough. What belongs to Christ, or what is done for Him or in His service, belongs to His kingdom. Of course, what is not Christ's, nor is done for Him, nor in His service, belongs to the world."
There was a silence here of some duration; and then Dolly exclaimed, "I see it. I shall know now."
"What, Dolly?"
"How to do, Aunt Harry."
"How to do what?"
"Everything. I was thinking particularly just then" – Dolly hesitated.
"Yes, of what?"
"Of dressing myself."
"Dressing yourself, you chicken?"
"Yes, Aunt Harry. I see it. If I do not dress for Christ, I do it for the world."
"Don't go into another extreme now, Dolly."
"No, Aunt Harry. I cannot be wrong, can I, if I do it for Christ?"
"I wonder how many girls of sixteen in the country have such a thought? And I wonder, how long will you be able to keep it, Dolly?"
"Why not, Aunt Harry?"
"O child! because you have got to meet the world."
"What will the world do to me?" Dolly asked, half laughing in her simple ignorance.
"When I think what it will do to you, Dolly, I am ready to break my heart. It will tempt you, child. It will tempt you with beauty, and with pleasant things; pleasant things that look so harmless! and it will seek to persuade you with sweet voices and with voices of authority; and it will show you everybody going one way, and that not your way."
"But I will follow Christ, Aunt Hal."
"Then you will have to bear reproach."
"I would rather bear the world's reproach, than His."
"If you don't get over-persuaded, child, or deafened with the voices!"
"She will have to do like the little girl in the fairy tale," said Mr. Eberstein; "stuff cotton in her ears. The little girl in the fairy tale was going up a hill to get something at the top – what was she going for, that was at the top of the hill?"
"I know!" cried Dolly. "I remember. She was going for three things. The Singing bird and the Golden water, and – I forget what the third thing was."
"Well, you see what that means," Mr. Eberstein went on. "She was going up the hill for the Golden water at the top; and there were ten thousand voices in her ears tempting her to look round; and if she looked, she would be turned to stone. The road was lined with stones, which had once been pilgrims. You see, Dolly? Her only way was to stop her ears."
"I see, Uncle Ned."
"What shall Dolly stop her ears with?" asked Mrs. Eberstein.
"These words will do. 'Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.'"
There was little more talking, for as the evening drew on, the heaviness of the parting weighed too hard upon all hearts. The next day Dolly made the journey to Boston, and from there to her parents' house; and her childhood's days were over.
CHAPTER VII
PLAYTHINGS
Dolly did not know that her childhood was over. Every pulse of her happy little heart said the contrary, when she found herself again among her old haunts and was going the rounds of them, the morning after her return home. She came in at last to her mother, flushed and warm.
"Mother, what are we going away for?" she began.
"Your father knows. I don't. Men never know when they are well off."
"Do women?"
"I used to think so."
"Is it as pleasant in England as it is here?"
"Depends on where you are placed, I suppose, and how you are placed. How can I tell? I have never been in England."
"Mother, we have got the prettiest little calf in the barn that you ever saw."
"In the barn! A queer place for a calf to be, it seems to me."
"Yes, because they want to keep it from the cow. Johnson is going to rear it, he says. I am so glad it is not to be killed! It is spotted, mother; all red and white; and so prettily spotted!"
An inarticulate sound from Mrs. Copley, which might mean anything.
"And, mother, I have been getting the eggs. And Johnson has a hen setting. We shall have chickens pretty soon."
"Dolly Copley, how old are you?"
"Sixteen last Christmas, mother."
"And seventeen next Christmas."
"Yes, ma'am, but next Christmas is not come yet."
"Seems to me, it is near enough for you to be something besides a child."
"What's the harm, mother?"
"Harm?" said Mrs. Copley with a sharp accent; "why, when one has a woman's work to do, one had better be a woman to do it. How is a child to fill a woman's place?"
"I have only a child's place to fill, just now," said Dolly merrily. "I have no woman's work to do, mother."
"Yes, you have. You have got to go into society, and play your part in society, and be married by and by; and then you'll know that a woman's part isn't so easy to play."
Dolly looked grave.
"But we are going to England, mother; where we know nobody. I don't see how we are to go into much society."
"Do you suppose," said Mrs. Copley very irately, "that with your father's position his wife and daughter will not be visited and receive invitations? That is the one thing that reconciles me to going. We shall have a very different sort of society from what we have here. Why you will go to court, Dolly; you will be presented; and of course you will see nothing but people of the very best circles."
"I don't care about going to court."
"Why not? You are a goose; you know nothing about it. Why don't you want to go to court? Your father's daughter may, as well as some other people's. Why don't you care about it?"
"It would be a great deal of fuss; and no use."
"No use! Yes, it would; just the use I am telling you. It would introduce you to the best society."
"But I am not going to live in England all my life, mother."
"How do you know?" very sharply.