What She Could Part 23

"You ate it up here, instead of in the dining-room?"

"Why, mamma, you know we often----"

"Answer me. You ate it up here?"

"Yes."

"What did you do with the core and the peel?"

"Mamma, I--you know I had no knife----"

"What did you do with it?"

No answer, except that Maria's cheeks grew bright.

"You know what you did with it, I suppose. Now bring it to me, Maria."

Colouring angrily as well as confusedly, Maria went to the mantelpiece where stood two little china vases, and took down one of them.

"Carry it to your Aunt Candy," said her mother. "Look at it, Erminia.

Now bring it here. Take this vase away, and empty it, and wash it, and put it in its place again; and never use it to put apple peels in, as long as you live."

Maria burst into tears and went away with the vase.

"Just a little careless," said her aunt.

"Heedless--always was," said her mother. "Now Matilda is not so; and Anne and Let.i.tia were neither of them so. It is a mystery to me, what makes one child so different from another child?"

"Matilda is a little piece of thoughtfulness," said her aunt, drawing the child to her side and kissing her. "Don't you think a little too much, Tilly?"

Matilda wondered whether her aunt thought quite enough.

"Now, Maria," Mrs. Englefield went on as her other daughter came in, "are you purposing to enter into all Mr. Richmond's plans that Clarissa has been talking about?"

"Yes, ma'am, of course," Maria said.

"Well, I want you to take notice, that I expect in the first place that all your home and school duties shall be perfectly performed. Religion, if it is good for anything, makes people do their duties. Your lessons must be perfect; your drawers kept in order; your clothes mended; you must be punctual at school and orderly at home; do you hear? And if all this is not done, I shall take all your pretended religion for nothing but a sham, and shall pay no respect to it at all. Now go to bed and act religion for a month before I hear you talk another word about it."

Maria went silently up-stairs, accompanied by her little sister; but once in their room, she broke out--

"Mamma is real cross to-night! It is just Clarissa's doing."

"I'll tell you what it is, Maria," her sister said; "she is not cross; she is worried. I know she is worried."

"About Mr. Richmond?" said Maria.

"I don't know about what. No, I guess she was worried before we came back."

"She was cross anyhow!" said Maria. "How can one do everything _perfectly?_"

"But that is just what Mr. Richmond said," Matilda urged gently.

"What?"

"That we should be light-bearers, you know. That is the way to be a light-bearer; to do everything perfectly."

"Well, you may, if you can," said Maria. "I can't."

CHAPTER VIII.

"Tilly, that money burns my pocket," Maria said the next morning.

"Then you had better put it somewhere else."

"I suppose you think that is smart," said Maria, "but it isn't; for that is just what I mean to do. I mean to spend it, somehow."

"What for?"

"That's just what I don't know. There are so many things I want; and I do not know what I want most. I have a good mind to buy a writing-desk, for one thing."

"Why, you have got one already."

"I mean a handsome one--a real beauty, large, you know, and with everything in it. That lock of mine isn't good. Anybody could open it."

"But there is n.o.body to do that," said Matilda. "n.o.body comes here but you and me."

"That don't make any difference!" said Maria, impatiently. "Don't be so stupid. I would like to have a nice thing, anyhow. Then sometimes I think I would rather have a gold chain--like Clarissa's."

"You could not get that for twenty-five dollars," said Matilda.

"How do you know?"

"Hers cost three or four times as much as that."

"Did it?--Well, then I guess I will have the desk, or a whole lot of handsome summer dresses. I guess I will have that."

"Maria," said her little sister, facing round upon her, "how much are you going to give to the Missionary Fund?"

"The Missionary Fund?" said Maria.

"Yes. You promised to help that, you know."

"Not with my twenty-five dollars!" said Maria, energetically. "I think you are crazy, Matilda."