Stories Told to a Child. Jean Ingelow
very severe nature; our cheeks were dyed with shame, and our hearts beating with apprehension. At length we heard a distant step sedately and steadily mounting the stairs; now it was coming along the uncarpeted passage, then a hand was on the door, and 'sister' entered, asking us, with her usual sweet gravity, whether we knew the parable she had set us.
She paused for a moment, evidently surprised by our troubled, shamefaced expression; but she asked no question, and, to our utter confusion, advanced straight to the curtain, as if to pull it back. 'Sister, sister!' exclaimed Lucy, springing forward, but not in time to prevent what she was doing; she flung aside the curtain, and O, inexpressible relief and astonishment, no grandmother was there!
We had both risen; and now the full sunshine streamed up over the ceiling and rested on sister's quiet forehead; it did not fall low enough to reach us; we were left in shadow, but the shadow had passed away from our hearts. She said to Lucy, 'Why didst thou check me, child?'
Lucy replied with a sigh of relief, 'I thought grandmother was there.'
We entered the little sanctum, saw how the grandmother's garden shawl and bonnet were thrown over the chair, remarked her garden over-shoes, which had frightened us, the scissors with which she had dressed her plants, and the gloves lying beside her Bible; then we looked at one another with feelings of gratitude, and followed sister to the grandmother's chair, where she sat down while we stood before her and repeated our parable. As she sat there, her tall figure slightly bending forward, the open Bible lying upon her knee, her serene eyes fixed on ours, and the sweet sunshine touching her soft hair and tranquil forehead, she presented a picture which is indelibly impressed upon my memory, together with a sense that I had of the trust between her peace and my own consciousness of misdoing. She returned the Bibles when we had finished, saying to me with serious sweetness, 'I am pleased with thee; thou hast learned thy verses well, and said them reverently.'
She again looked at us as if puzzled by our faces, and then she rose and would have left the room, when we stopped her, for her praise was not to be received when we knew we did not deserve it. We asked her to sit down again, and then half laughing, half crying, related the whole of our adventure; we concealed nothing; we told over all our conversation, how we had been chattering and playing, what we had said about the grandmother, our terror and shame when we thought we were in her presence, and our indescribable relief when we found she was not there.
Much as we respected sister, we so wanted her to sympathize, that, though we knew she would disapprove of our behavior, and perhaps reprove us, we by no means softened our tale in the relation, but described how every rustle of the curtain had disturbed our guilty consciences; how we had sat upright on our seats, not daring to look about us, so conscious were we of the grandmother's presence, even though we knew she could not see us.
Sister looked from one to the other with an expression of regret, but not the least tendency to a smile. 'I thought grandmother would never forgive us, and she would tell father,' said Lucy, 'how we had played and laughed, and talked about her, and all on First-day evening. I was so ashamed I wouldn't have had her know for anything. I thought I should never be happy again.'
'And, after all,' I added, 'there was no harm done.'
'No harm!' said sister, quietly, 'what dost thou mean?'
'Why, you know,' said I, carelessly, 'the grandmother was not there.'
'Thou heedless child,' she answered, with that look of pity and regret, 'art thou really so much afraid of my grandmother, and dost thou wholly forget the ear that did listen to thy talking, and the eye that was upon thee all the time?'
We both looked about us, at the curtain, at the places where we had been sitting, and in sister's face, with a sudden sense of the presence and nearness of God, that I believe we had never felt before. When she added, 'What wouldst thou have done if, when I drew back the curtain, thou hadst seen the Redeemer standing there? Shouldst thou have said then there is no harm done? We neither of us answered a word, so completely were we surprised into awe by the aptness of this word in season.
'Years have passed since then,' said my friend, 'but I believe the effects of that gentle rebuke have not altogether passed away with them; it made a greater impression upon us than even the grandmother's anger could have done, however great that might have been.'
When 'sister' had left us, we went to one of the open casements, and I well remember the sensation of repose with which we congratulated one another on the grandmother's not having been present; and though the consciousness of a far higher presence was strong in our hearts, we experienced also somewhat of that feeling which made King David say, 'Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, and let us not fall into the hand of man.'
In our childish fashion we began to speculate as to how we should behave if we always believed and remembered that the Great God was observing us; and then, as I suppose, most children have done at some time or other, we suddenly formed a resolution, that from that day forward we would behave quite differently; that we would reform all our faults, never be idle over our lessons; nor play at improper tunes, nor conceal any mischief that we might have done; nor tease the little ones, nor hide ourselves in the shrubberies when we knew the nurse was looking for us to call us in to bed.
In short, we passed in review all our childish faults as far as we knew them, and made a set of rules for future good behavior.
We had a fashion at the school where I was for writing sets of rules; one would have thought the rule under which we lived was stringent and inflexible enough; but no, we copied Madame's favorite phrase, 'I shall make a rule, Mes Demoiselles,' and we made more rules than even our rulers.
We often spent part of one half holiday in writing rules for the spending of the next—elaborate rules, as to how long we would play with our dolls, how long've would spend over our home letters, how long in. reading our story-books, how long in feeding our birds; in short, we had scarcely one half hour which we could call our own that we did not hamper with rules containing as many additions and subtractions as a long division sum. I had imparted this fashion to Lucy, and we had already made, and altered, and broken several sets of these rules, but, on that delightful Sunday evening, while the sun was sinking into the distant sea, and reddening the sky, the water, the walls, our white frocks, and the fluttering leaves of our Bibles, we made one set more. The particulars of them I have forgotten, but the intention formed, in all childish simplicity, was to help us to keep the presence of God always in our recollection.
There was a little picture in one of my books which represented Hagar in the parched wilderness sitting apart from the fainting Ishmael; underneath it were the words, 'Thou, God, seest me.' This, we said, we would hang on the wall opposite to our two stools, where every afternoon we sat learning our lessons for the next day, or doing our playwork, as we called it.
How little, for all the sympathy of love, a child is known to his elders! How little during the ensuing week our childish troubles, our wavering endeavors to do right, our surprise at our own failures, were suspected in that orderly household! The days, however, went and came, and our rules it appeared must have had some real influence over us, for I well remember that the nurse and housekeeper commended us to 'sister' as 'excellent good children, as toward, friend, as thee would wish to see.' The restrictions which we had laid upon ourselves were not light ones for children to observe, and, though they only bound us to do our duty, it was not wonderful that we sometimes broke through them, and sometimes lightly forgot them, considering that the red curtain did not always hang in our sight, and considering that childhood and youth are vanity.
Another Sunday evening came; we learned our lessons in the upper room, and were so quiet and diligent that the presence of no grandmother in the world could have frightened us.
The next morning we were awakened early by the rooks in the trees, close by our windows, and we rose and went out for a ramble before breakfast.
Within the grounds, which were laid out partly in grass and flowers, and partly in shrubbery, there was a walled fruit-garden; and this we were only permitted to enter on the express understanding that we were on no pretence to gather, or to pick up, or to touch any of