Had his efforts been altogether in vain? Or was the fact that both Priscilla and Lewis lay down that night with troubled consciences not the effect in some measure of his brave endeavours to help on the kingdom of God?
[CHAPTER VI.]
THE LOST CHILD.
"Is there in God's world so drear a place
Where the loud bitter cry is raised in vain—
Where tears of penance come too late for grace,
As on the uprooted flower the genial rain?"
OCTOBER was drawing to a close. The bright-tinted leaves were falling with every gust of wind; but the air was pleasant, and Priscilla Warner had taken her book into the garden to enjoy it in quiet, nominally taking charge of little Claude, who was amusing himself gathering the leaves into heaps.
Baby and nurse had come out also; and for a while even her loved book was put aside whilst Prissy took her little sister in her arms and carried her up and down. Truly baby Ruth might be called her sister's guardian angel; for the love which had sprung up in her heart to the little one, who, like herself, lacked a mother's love and care, was beautiful to see, and that love was, under God, the means of preventing the girl's heart from turning cold and hard.
The almost passionate love she gave her father seemed thrown back on her to smoulder only more deeply within her. But with little Ruth it was different. The baby returned her affection, and clung lovingly to her sister, following her with her eyes, and nestling confidingly in her arms as she would have done in those of her mother. And however busy Prissy might be, one sight of those baby arms extended to her was enough to make her stop any occupation in order to take her into her arms.
And even when her father let this motherless babe get a place on his knee, and apparently in his heart, which Priscilla had never got, she stifled her rising feeling of jealousy, and became happy in seeing that Ruth, though "only a girl," was gaining a warm place in her father's affection.
Poor Prissy! Once or twice when she saw the babe seated on her father's knee, where she never remembered to have sat, her eyes would fill with tears; and one day she amazed the doctor by saying, "Happy Ruth! I wonder what it feels like to sit on your knee, father."
He pushed the spectacles he wore up on his brow, and looked at her for a moment, then said, "What do you mean, my daughter? Did you never sit there? Ah! true. I remember I did not care much for babies when you were little. But then you had a mother's knee to sit on, and my wee Ruth has none. Don't grudge her mine, Priscilla."