Katherine's Sheaves Part 8

"I think I will have to run away, dear," Katherine interposed, "for it is almost tea time, you know."

"Please--please! haven't you time to tell me just one thing more?"

"Yes, I have time for that, but--" and she lifted a doubtful look to her princ.i.p.al.

"Papa, may I ask her?" pleaded the girl, intuitively realizing that her new friend feared his disapproval.

The man never refused his child anything in reason, and he could not now, although he felt secretly antagonistic, and his look was almost stern as he responded:

"Very well, dear, if Miss Minturn will kindly have patience with you."

"Well, then," and Dorothy eagerly turned again to Katherine, "if G.o.d is Mind, Intelligence and Life, as you said, how can man be His image and likeness?"

For a moment Katherine was dismayed, in view of the depths involved in this query, and at a loss how to reply in a way to clearly convey the truth to this inquiring mind, while a slightly ironical smile curved the lips of the learned professor, as he said to himself:

"This is a poser for the young woman."

"You do not think the account of the creation of man as G.o.d's image and likeness refers to this imperfect mortal or physical body, do you, Dorothy?" she inquired, after a moment of thought.

"Why, yes; I've always supposed it did. I've thought that perhaps G.o.d made him perfect in the first place and then, somehow, He let him get all wrong. I can't see how or why, though I've heard ministers and other people say 'it was for some wise purpose.'

It's a great muddle, I think," Dorothy concluded, with a sigh.

"No, G.o.d never let any of His children 'get wrong.' He could not, for 'all His ways are perfect,' you know. The man of G.o.d's creating is the spiritual image and likeness of Himself,"

Katherine explained.

"Oh-o! I begin to see. Why, papa, don't you see? That must be what that verse means--the express image of His person--His character!"

and Dorothy turned to her father, her face all aglow as she grasped this new thought.

"No, don't go just yet," she pleaded, as Katherine made another effort to release her hand. "Tell me this, please: if everybody became good, perfect in character, would their bodies grow perfect, too? would sick people get strong and well and happy?"

"I believe G.o.d's Word teaches us so," said Katherine, softly, and wondering why Prof. Seabrook did not put a stop to a conversation which he must know was trespa.s.sing upon forbidden ground.

"How could they? I wish I knew how," said the child, plaintively.

"You know Paul tells us, 'Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,' and to 'put off the mortal and put on the immortal.'"

"'Put off the mortal,'" repeated the girl, with a look of perplexity, "but how?"

"It is a growth, dear; it is to put out of mind, one by one, every wrong thought, and think only good thoughts--G.o.d's thoughts--and in this way one grows good, pure and perfect. Let us take a simple ill.u.s.tration," Katherine continued, as she saw how eagerly the child was drinking in her words. "You have seen a lily bulb?"

Dorothy nodded.

"It is not at all pretty, and one would throw it away as of no account, if he did not know of the precious little germ and its possibilities hidden away inside. We know how, when the warm sunlight shines upon the spot where it has been put away in the earth, when the dews and soft rains fall upon it, something begins to happen down there in the dark; the ugly bulb begins to change, to soften and melt away; one by one the brown husks drop off and disappear as the tiny germ within, awakening to a new sense of life, starts upward to find more light and freedom and a purer atmosphere. Then two small leaves of living green--harbingers of better things--begin to unfold; after that a st.u.r.dy stalk, with a bud of promise, appears, and all the time reaching up, up towards the brightness beyond and above, until at last the pure, perfect and fragrant lily bursts into bloom."

"That was very prettily told, Miss Minturn; but your figure is incomplete, for, after all, you have only a material flower--it is far from being spiritual or immortal," Prof. Seabrook here interposed.

"Ah!" said Katherine, lifting a pair of sweetly serious eyes to him, "it is only a simple ill.u.s.tration--a little parable pointing to spiritual development and perfection, and the pure and flawless lily is but the type of that which mortal 'eye hath not seen.' The homely bulb corresponds to the mortal man, wrapped up in the density and husks of materiality; the tiny 'germ is the symbol of that ray or spark of immortality that is in every human consciousness and which, governed by the perfect law of Life, 'whose eternal mandate is growth,' [Footnote: "Science and Health," page 520.] and nourished by the sunlight of divine Love, puts off, one by one, the husks, or the mortal man's wrong ways of thinking and living, and, ever reaching G.o.dward, puts on or unfolds first the tiny leaves of living green, then the stalk and bud, and, last, the white flower of purity, which is the image and likeness of G.o.d; and this image and likeness is immortal."

"Oh, what a lovely--lovely story!" breathed Dorothy, with luminous eyes. "Then, if one never had any but good thoughts, perfect thoughts, one would grow to be perfect and spiritual."

"That is what I think the Bible teaches."

"I think it is beautiful. I never heard anybody talk like this before!" cried the child, with a joyful ring in her tones. "And now tell me how--"

Katherine laughed out musically, and, stooping, kissed the small hand that she was still holding.

"You dear child! do you know how long we have been talking?" she said. "I think we must stop right here, and--I hope Prof. Seabrook does not think I have said too much," she concluded, glancing at the man who stood like a statue, with an inscrutable look on his high-bred face.

He made no reply, and the situation might have become awkward if Dorothy had not exclaimed:

"No, indeed; you haven't said half enough; and will you tell me some more things that you believe, another time?"

"If--your father gives me permission," Katherine replied, with heightened color. "Now I must go, for I am sure the bell will ring in a few minutes."

"Will you--may I kiss you before you go?" begged the girl, who was used to much petting from everyone, and lifting her pale face to the bright one looking down upon her and which seemed to radiate love.

"Yes, indeed," said Katherine, and heartily returned the caress.

"Now, good-by," she added, and, with a respectful bow to her princ.i.p.al, left the room, whispering to herself as she tried to put out of thought the misshapen little figure in the chair:

"G.o.d never made one of His children imperfect. He made man upright, and there is no power apart from G.o.d."

CHAPTER VI.

MATERIA MEDICA AND MIRACLES.

The days and weeks sped swiftly by, Katherine gradually becoming mentally acclimated, so to speak, amid an adverse environment. She did not make many acquaintances, for most of the students still held aloof from her; but she was content, even happy, for, with a stanch friend in Miss Reynolds, whom she found most congenial, and with whom she spent much of her leisure time, she did not miss other companionship so much.

Sadie, her roommate, was an affectionate and kind-hearted girl; but being of an indolent, ease-loving temperament, she was often a trial to Katherine, who loved order and system and believed it to be the duty of everyone to maintain them.

The girl had often attempted to lean upon her in the preparation of some of her lessons, now and then asking to see her problems in mathematics and her translations in German and Latin. But this was something that Katherine would not lend herself to, except in so far as, occasionally, to remind her of some forgotten point in a rule that would suggest a way to work out the knotty problem, or to give her a cue as to case or tense, that would a.s.sist in the translation.

While she shrank from wronging her, even in thought, there were times when she felt sure that she had taken advantage of her absence from the room to look over her papers and copy from them.

"I cannot let you see my work," she said one day, when, after repeated but unheeded hints, Sadie had asked her outright to allow her to look at her problems, saying that she had not had time to do them for herself. "It would not be honest," she continued, determined to settle the matter once for all; "it would simply be showing Miss Reynolds my work and claiming it as your own."

"Now I call that downright mean and disobliging," Sadie returned, with an injured air, but flushing uncomfortably and forgetting for the moment the many other acts of kindness Katherine had shown her. "Of course, I don't expect you to do it every day, but just this once, so that I can make a good showing in the cla.s.s, could do no harm; and, honey, I'll promise to spend all my recreation time, this afternoon, going over the work for myself."

"But that would be like using a key, which is forbidden, you know.

No, Sadie, I can't do it," Katherine reiterated, firmly but kindly. "It may seem 'disobliging' to you, but you know that is not my motive. I feel that I should be doing you a personal wrong, besides deceiving others, to allow you to lean on me in any such way. You have just as much time to prepare your lessons as I have; you are naturally quick and bright, and, if you would spend fewer hours in shopping and visiting, there is no reason why you cannot make as good a record for yourself as anyone else. One must do one's own work, or be robbed of mental capacity and strength if one depends upon another."

"Oh, shucks!" retorted Sadie, with an impatient shrug and a very red face, as she employed the Southern localism, "don't preach to me. I reckon my 'mental capacity' will hold out long enough to pull me through Hilton." And with this sharp and angry thrust she flounced out of the room, banging the door after her.

This was the first time there had been an open rupture between them, although on two or three occasions, when Katherine had quietly resisted being imposed upon beyond a certain limit, the girl had manifested something of her hot Southern temper. She had always gotten over it very quickly, however, and harmony had been restored.