A Letter of Credit Part 104

"You think that knowledge would have affected her measures?"

"I know it would!"

"It is an unfruitful subject to inquire into. I am afraid your vacations can hardly have been pleasant times, spent in your aunt's family?"

"I was not always with her. Quite as often I staid with Mrs. Mowbray--my dear Mrs. Mowbray! and with her I went to Catskill, and to Niagara, and to Nahant, and to the Adirondacks. I had great times. It was the next best thing to--to the old days, when I was with you."

"I should think it would have been much better," Mr. Southwode said, forbidding the smile that was inclined to come. For Rotha's manner did not make her words less flattering.

"Do you? Do you not know me better than that, Mr. Digby?" said Rotha, feeling a little injured.

"I suppose I do! You were always an unreasonable child. But I can understand how you should regret Mrs. Mowbray."

"Now?" said Rotha. "I do not regret anything now. I am too happy to tell how happy I am."

"I remember, you are gifted with a great capacity for happiness," Mr.

Southwode said, letting the smile come now.

"It is a good thing," said Rotha. "Sometimes, even this summer, I could forget my troubles in my flower beds. Did you notice in what nice order they were, and how many flowers still?"

"I am afraid I did not specially notice."

"Awhile ago they were full of bloom, and lovely. And when I took them in hand they were a wilderness. n.o.body had touched them for ever so long. I had a job of it. But it paid."

"What else have you done this summer?"

"Nothing else, except study my Bible. It was all the study I had."

"How did you study it? as a disciple? or as an inquirer?"

"O, as a disciple. Can one really _study_ it in any other way?"

"I am afraid so. There is deep study, and there is superficial study, you know. Then you are a disciple, Rotha?"

"Yes, Mr. Southwode; a sort of one. But I am one."

"When did that come about?"

"Not so very long after you went away. I came to the time that you told me of, that it would come."

"What time? I do not recollect."

"A time when everything failed me."--Rotha felt somehow disappointed, that she should remember so much better than he did.

"And then you found Christ?"

"Yes,--after a while."

"What have you been doing for him since then?"

"Doing for him?" Rotha repeated.

"Yes."

"I do not know. Not much. I am afraid, not anything."

"Was that because you thought there was not much to do?"

"N--o," said Rotha thoughtfully; "I did not think _that_. Only nothing particular for me to do."

"That was a mistake."

"I did not see anything for me to do."

"Perhaps. But the Lord has no servants to be idle. If they do not see their work, it is either that their eyes are not good, or that they are looking in the wrong direction."

A silence followed this statement, during which Rotha was thinking.

"Mr. Digby, what do you mean by their eyes being not good?"

"Not seeing clearly."

"And what makes people's eyes dim to see their work?"

"A want of sensitiveness in their optic nerve," he said smiling. "It is written, you know the words--'He died for all, that they which live should not live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them'--How has it been in your case?"

"I never thought of it," Rotha answered slowly. "I believe my head has been just full of myself,--learning and enjoying."

"I do not want to check either, and the service of Christ does not check either. I am glad, after all, the _enjoying_ has formed such a part of your experience."

"With Mrs. Mowbray, how should it not? You know her a little, Mr.

Southwode?"

"Only a little."

"But you cannot know her, for you never needed her. O such a friend as she is! Not to me only, but to whoever needs her. She goes along life with her hands full of blessings, and she is forever dropping something into somebody's lap; if it is not help, it is pleasure; if it is not a fruit, it is a flower. I never saw anybody like her. She is a very angel in the shape of a woman; and she is doing angel's work all the day long.

I have seen, and I know. All sorts of help, and comfort, and cheer, and tenderness, and sympathy; and herself is the very last person' in all the world she thinks of."

"That's a pretty character," said Mr. Southwode.

"It comes out in everything," Rotha went on. "It is not in giving only; she is forever making everybody happy, if she can. There are some people you cannot make happy. But nursing them when they are sick, and comforting them when they are in trouble, and helping them when they are in difficulty, and supplying them when they are in need, and if they are none of those things, then just throwing flowers in their lap,--that is Mrs. Mowbray. Yes, and she can reprove them when they are wrong, too; and that is a harder service than either."

"In how many of all these ways has she done you good, Rotha? if I may ask."

"It is only pleasant to answer, Mr. Digby. In all of them." And Rotha's eyes filled full, and her cheek took fire.

"Not 'supplying need' also?"

"O yes! O that was one of the first things her kind hand did for me. Mr.