Elsie's Widowhood Part 13

"My boy, you are grieving your mother very much," she said, sitting down beside him and laying her cool hand on his heated brow.

"O mamma, I didn't mean to do that!" he cried, throwing his arms about her neck. "I do love you dearly, dearly."

"I believe it, my son," she said, returning his caress, "but I want you to prove it by being obedient to your kind grandpa as well as to me, and by trying to conquer your faults."

"Mamma, I haven't been naughty--only I can't learn such hard lessons as grandpa gives."

"My son, I know you do not mean to be untruthful, but to say that you cannot learn your lesson is really not the truth; the difficulty is not so much in the ability as in the will. And are you not indulging a naughty temper?"

"Mamma," he said, hanging his head, "you don't know how hard Latin is."

"Why, what do you mean, my son?" she asked in surprise; "you certainly know that I have studied Latin."

"Yes, mamma, but wasn't it easier for you to learn than it is for me?"

"I think not," she said with a smile, "though I believe I had more real love for study and was less easily conquered by difficulties; and yet--shall I tell you a little secret?"

"Oh yes, ma'am, please do!" he answered, turning a bright, interested face to hers.

"Well, I disliked Latin at first, and did not want to study it. I should have coaxed very hard to be excused from doing so, but that I dared not, because my papa had strictly forbidden me to coax or tease after he had given his decision; and he had said Latin was to be one of my studies.

There was one day, though, that I cried over my lesson and insisted that I could not learn it."

"And what did grandpa do to you?" he asked with great interest.

"Treated me just as he does you--told me I _must_ learn it, and that I could not dine with him and mamma or leave my room until I knew it. And, my boy, I see now that he was wise and kind, and I have often been thankful since that he was so firm and decided with me."

"But did you learn it?"

"Yes; nor did it take me long when once I gave my mind to it with determination. That is exactly what you need to do. The great fault of your disposition is lack of energy and perseverance, a fault grandpa and I must help you to conquer, or you will never be of much use in the world."

"But, mamma, it seems to me I shall not need to do much when I'm a man,"

he remarked a little shamefacedly; "haven't you a great deal of money to give us all?"

"It may be all gone before you are grown up," she said gravely. "I shall be glad to lose it if its possession is to be the ruin of my sons.

But I do not intend to let any of you live in idleness, for that would be a sin, because our talents must be improved to the utmost and used in G.o.d's service, whether we have much or little money or none at all.

Therefore each of my boys must study a profession or learn some handicraft by which he can earn his own living or make money to use in doing good.

"Now I am going to leave you," she added, rising, "and if you do not want to give me a sad heart you will set to work at that lesson with a will, and soon have it ready to recite to your grandpa."

"Mamma, I will, to please you," he returned, drawing the book toward him.

"Do it to please G.o.d, your kind heavenly Father, even more than to make me happy," she answered, laying her hand caressingly on his head.

"Mamma, what is the text that says it will please Him?" he asked, looking up inquiringly, for it had always been a habit with her to enforce her teachings with a pa.s.sage of Scripture.

"There are a great many that teach it more or less directly," she said; "we are to be diligent in business, to improve our talents and use them in G.o.d's service; children are to obey their parents; and both your grandpa and I have directed you to learn that lesson."

"Mamma, I will do my very best," he said cheerfully, and she saw as she left the room that he was really trying to redeem the promise.

An hour later he came to her with a very bright face, to say that grandpa had p.r.o.nounced his recitation quite perfect and released him from confinement.

Her pleased look, her smile, her kiss were a sweet reward and a strong incentive to continuance in well-doing.

CHAPTER X.

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

--_Isaiah_ 8:20.

Some years before this Elsie had built a little church on the plantation, entirely at her own expense, for the use of her dependents and of her own family when sojourning at Viamede. The membership was composed princ.i.p.ally of blacks.

A few miles distant was another small church of the same denomination, attended by the better cla.s.s of whites; planters and their families.

To these two congregations conjointly Mr. Mason had ministered for a long while, preaching to the one in the morning, to the other in the afternoon of each Sabbath.

He had, however, been called to another field of labor, a few weeks previous to the arrival of our friends, leaving the two congregations pastorless, and the pretty cottage built for him at Viamede without a tenant.

Still they were not entirely without the preaching of the word, now one and now another coming to supply the pulpits for a Sunday or two.

At present they were filled by a young minister who came as a candidate, and whose services had been engaged for several weeks.

Elsie and her family were paying no visits now in this time of mourning, but nothing but sickness, or a very severe storm, ever kept them from church. They attended both services, and in the evening the older ones gathered about the table in the library with their Bibles, and, with Cruden's Concordance and other helps at hand, spent an hour or more in the study of the word.

"Mamma," said little Rosie, one Sunday as they were walking slowly homeward from the nearer church, "why don't we have a minister that believes the Bible?"

"My child, don't you think Mr. Jones believes it?"

"No, mamma," most emphatically, "because he contradicts it; he said there's only one devil, and my Bible says Jesus cast out devils--seven out of Mary Magdalen, and ever so many out of one man, besides other ones out of other folks."

"And last Sunday, when he was preaching about Jonah, he said it was a wicked and foolish practice to cast lots," remarked Harold, "while the Bible tells us that the Lord commanded the Israelites to divide their land by lot, and that the apostles cast lots to choose a successor to Judas."

"Yes," said Violet, "and when Achan had sinned, didn't they cast lots to find out who it was that troubled Israel?"

"And to choose a king in the days of the prophet Samuel," added their older sister. "How strange that any one should say it was a foolish and wicked practice!"

"I don't think his mother can have brought him up on the Bible as ours does us," remarked Herbert.

"Mamma, which are we to believe," asked Rosie, "the minister or the Bible?"

"Bring everything to the test of scripture," answered the mother's gentle voice. "'To the law and the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.' I want you to have great respect for the ministry, yet never to receive any man's teachings when you find them opposed to those of G.o.d's holy word."

When the Bibles were brought out that evening, Isa proposed that they should take up the question of the correctness of that a.s.sertion of Mr.

Jones which had led Rosie to doubt his belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures.

"Yes, let us do so," said her uncle. "It is an interesting subject."