Chapter XXIII: "forbid Them Not."

To the Morgan family the long golden summer months moved slowly. The first actual break in the household had come to them; none of the family had realized how hard it would be until it was met. I suppose it is a fact, many times proved by experience, that trial either softens or hardens the human heart. Certainly Mrs. Morgan's heart was not undergoing the softening process; she brooded over her first great anxiety until at times it seemed to her that no sorrow was like unto her sorrow, and she chafed under it as a cruel thing.

Farmer Morgan, though saying little, had aged under the trouble, and seemed at times like a broken-down man; yet he steadily resisted any effort at comfort, and sternly forbade any attempts to make search for the missing boy. "He has chosen to cut himself off from us," he would say coldly; "let him get the full benefit of it." Yet there were times when he hinted, in the presence of the mother, that had the home atmosphere been less hard and cold John might have been kept; and she more than hinted, in the coldest of voices, that if his father had not treated John like a little boy, and made him work like a slave, there need have been no trouble: so of course these two could not help each other, and only grew further apart in their common sorrow. Taken altogether, the summer was one full of bitterness to the new bud that had been grafted on to the gnarled old tree.

There were times when Louise's brave heart sunk within her, and she cried in tears to the Lord for relief. It was not that she was not willing to bear the heat and burden of the day, but the poor heart so longed for fruitage. Was her Christian effort in vain she questioned. Then her thoughts went away from the old farmhouse, back to her own lovely home and her lovely sister Estelle; how long she had prayed for her! How earnestly she had striven to bring her as a trophy to the Master! Yet the bright, winsome girl was fast blushing into womanhood, her life still uncrowned by this consecration. Thinking of her and of John, and of the steadily aging father and the hard mother in this new home, could Louise be other than sad sometimes? "If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed." Yes, I know; it was true, her faith was weak. But whose is strong?

There were bright spots. It was strange that with the illustration ever before her she should so often forget it.

Dorothy moved steadily on her upward way. She had given herself entirely to the Master's service, and he was daily showing her that he accepted the gift. Occasionally Louise found heart for admiration over the rapid strides that Dorothy had taken and the avenues for work opening on every hand. There had been, during the summer months, a Sabbath school organized in the little brown school-house just above them. No one quite remembered how it started into growth, save Louise, who knew it was born of Dorothy's sudden, startled, "What a pity that those children are not being taught anything!" as she watched half-a-dozen playing together in an uproarious manner one Sunday afternoon. Now the school had been in progress three months, and was flourishing. Lewis was superintendent, much to his own astonishment; and Louise, and Dorothy, and Carey Martyn, and the young lady whose father employed him, were the teachers. Louise had organized a Bible class composed of some of the mothers, and was working faithfully among them, yet not seeing the fruit that she longed for. Mr. Butler had of late fallen into the habit of walking out on Sabbath afternoon and talking a few minutes to the children. Once he overheard a remark of Dorothy's not by any means intended for his ears.

"Mr. Butler's talk to the children was really good, wasn't it?" Carey Martyn said to her; and she had answered heartily—

"Yes, it was; when he talks without having it put on paper, it sounds as though he meant it. I wonder why it makes such a difference to read things off?"

And the minister, just at their elbow, intending to join them for a little talk, turned away with heightened colour, and went home to ponder the question. Perhaps that had somewhat to do with the fact that two Sundays thereafter he talked to the people who gathered in the dreary little church. I do not know that they discussed the sermon much during the week, but I know that one and another said to himself: "I must try to get to prayer-meeting on Wednesday evening; I declare it is a shame to have so small an attendance. We ought to go, if for nothing else than to sustain the minister; he seems really in earnest." Yet he had not preached about the prayer-meeting. Still its evident growth the next Wednesday evening encouraged his heart, and had to do with certain earnest thoughts that he worked up in his next morning's sermon, which was simply "talked" again, not read. Perhaps he would have been discouraged had he known that this wise people, not used to the work of making sermons, did not call these efforts of his, over which he had toiled as he never had over written work, sermons at all. They imagined him to have been belated in his preparations, and simply to have opened his mouth and let the words flow out.

"We haven't had a sermon for two weeks now," said one wise head to another.

And surely the minister who had sat late nearly every night, thinking out and trying to get accustomed to what he meant to try and say, would have been discouraged had he heard it; especially if he had not heard the answer—

"No; but the fact is, I like these talks better than the real sermons. I get better hold of them; and they seem, somehow, to do me more good. I don't care how many times he leaves out the sermon, I'm sure!"

Now this was one of the most thoughtful minds belonging to the little company which gathered once a week in the old church. On the whole, might not the minister have felt somewhat encouraged had he known it all?

But I commenced this chapter with the special intention of telling you about little Nellie Morgan. She has been kept very much in the background of the story; and she was a quiet, old-fashioned sort of a child, who kept herself much out of hearing, at least, though she listened well.

On this particular autumn afternoon of which I write the world was in gloom. The glory which had had possession of the country for the few weeks past seemed to have departed in a night, leaving in its place clouds and wind, and dull, withered leaves flying about, and presently a chill, depressing rain. The Morgan household felt the depression. Mrs. Morgan, senior, knew, when first she opened her eyes on the dreariness, that it was one of her black days—John's birthday. She was sorry that she thought of it; she struggled all day with the memories of the past. She saw John's curly head nestled in her arms; she saw him trotting, a beautiful two-year-old bit of mischief, always at her side; she saw his little shoes—though they were laid away in the bottom of her old trunk in the attic, yet they seemed to stare at her all day, haunting her with the dreams that she had had and that had faded. Every hour in the day her heart grew heavier, and her outward demeanour grew harder. Why could not those about her have realized that she bitterly suffered? Whether the knowledge had helped her or not, it would have made the day easier to them.

Nellie, soon after the early dinner, took refuge in her new sister's room; and drawing the small rocker close to the cheery fire, turned over, for the hundredth time, a volume brightened with many pictures, and maintained silence, leaving Louise to the sadness of her thoughts. They were sad; the atmosphere of the house was growing at times almost too much for her. She did not seem to be gaining on her mother-in-law. Yet she felt that, on Dorothy's account, she would not be elsewhere. Presently Nellie's soft voice broke the silence.

"Sister Louise, what do you think He said to them, when he took them in his arms?"

She was bending her fair head over a familiar picture, which she seemed to love to study—Jesus, with a fair, sweet-faced child in his arms and many others clustering around him.

Louise tried to call in her thoughts enough to answer—"Why, you know, dear, he blessed them."

"Yes, I know; but just what do you think he said—the exactly words? I wish I could have heard him."

There was intense pathos in the voice, but Louise's preoccupied heart did not notice.

"I don't know, Nellie, just the words; only I suppose he prayed for them, that his Father would take care of them and make them his own children."

Silence again in the room. Louise went on with her broken thread of thought, and the child's eyes were still riveted on the picture. Suddenly she spoke again, and this time the voice was so eager, so intense, that it called her sister back keenly and entirely from all wandering.

"If I could only have been there."

It was the echo of more than a passing fancy of a child; and Louise, looking at her, saw that her fair blue eyes were brimming with tears, and the large drops were staining the page before her.

"Why, my darling little sister, what is the trouble?" Her voice was full of sympathy now, and she dropped the work she had been listlessly sewing, and, drawing the little rocker toward her, put loving arms around Nellie.

"What makes the tears come, little darling sister?"

"O Louise, I don't know quite; but I think and I think about it, and wish I could see him and hear him speak. If he would only say, 'Nellie, come here,' I would run so fast; and I can't make it seem as though he cared now for me. My teacher in the Sunday school says I must give my heart to him; but I don't know how. If I could see him and ask him about it, as they had a chance to do, I think it would be so nice; and then I can't help crying."

"Jesus said, 'Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me.' But his disciples rebuked them."

"Is it possible," thought Louise, "that I have been one of those faithless disciples, rebuking, or at least ignoring, the presence of one of his little ones, while I reached out after fruit that I dared to think was of more importance!"

I cannot explain to you with what a chill her heart took in this thought, and she gathered Nellie to her, and her voice was tenderness itself.

"You poor little lonely lammie. Would no one show you the way to the Shepherd? It is just as easy, darling, as it was when he was on earth, and he calls you just as surely. You don't know how to give your heart to him? I shouldn't wonder if you had done it without knowing how. Do you think you love the dear Saviour, Nellie, and want to try to please him?"

"I'm sure I do," said Nellie, brushing back the tears and looking with earnest eyes into her questioner's face. "I do want to, but I keep forgetting and doing naughty things, and then am sorry, and I think I won't ever again, and then I do; and, oh dear! I don't know what to do."

The old sad cry of the awakened human heart: "That which I do, I allow not; for what I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I." And the sad little heart had not learned the triumphant chorus, "'Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.'"

"Poor darling!" said Louise, and she held her close. "I know all about it. But see here: if you love him, then you have given him your heart—whoever you love has a piece of your heart—and if you love him very much, so that you are determined to please him just as well as you can, then you belong to him, and he has blessed you. Nellie dear, I know what you have been thinking about: you would have liked if you had been there so that he could pray for you."

"Yes, I would!" said Nellie, the emphasis of a strong desire in her voice.

"Well, now, let me tell you. I felt just so when I was a little girl, and a lady found for me a verse in the Bible which showed me that he prayed for me while he was here on the earth. Then I was glad. Listen:—Once when Jesus was praying, and had asked his Father to take care of his disciples, and keep them from sin, he said: 'And, Father, I do not pray only for these; I pray for every one who shall ever believe on me, because my disciples have told them about me.'"

"That means me," said Nellie, with a flash of intelligence in her bright eyes. "O Louise, that does mean me!"

"Of course it does, my darling little sister. Now, let me tell you what I said when I was a little girl, not much older than you. I determined that I would belong to Jesus all my life, and that I would try in everything to please him; and my papa taught me a little prayer to speak to him, telling him what I meant to do. This was the prayer: 'Here, Lord, I give myself away; 'tis all that I can do.' Do you want to give yourself to Jesus, Nellie,—to belong to him for ever?"

"Yes," said the child, with grave face and earnest eyes, from which the tears had passed, leaving only solemn resolve, "I do."

And they two knelt down beside the little rocker, and the rain pattered from the eaves outside, and the fire crackled in the stove inside, and aside from these sounds, and the low murmured words of prayer from young lips, a solemn silence filled the room, and the deed of another human soul was "signed, sealed, and delivered" to its rightful owner.

It was a radiant face that was raised to Louise a few moments thereafter, and the child's voice had a note of triumph in it.

"He took me," she said, simply. "I belong to him now. I did not understand it before; but it is very easy. He took me."

Could any elaboration make the story of the mysterious change simpler?

How do you think that older disciple felt about the matter of fruitage? Here had she been looking right and left of her for sheaves to take to the Master, and behold, just at her feet, a bud had grown and swelled and burst into bloom before she had even discovered signs of life! It taught her a lesson that she put often into practice among the lambs thereafter. It led her to remember that possibly his disciples of to-day often occupy unwittingly the position of rebukers, even while the Master's voice is calling, "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not."

Two hours thereafter they were down in the kitchen, Louise and Nellie; Louise had been called down by a message from a neighbour, and Nellie had followed. The errand despatched, the daughter-in-law lingered in the kitchen, her hungry heart looking for a bit of cheer.

Changes in the kitchen arrangements had involved the clearing out and reordering of a certain corner cupboard that day, and Dorothy, perched on a chair, was settling the upper shelves. Her mother, with a face that every hour in the day had grown harder, because of the conflict within which she was determined nobody should suspect, was sorting over boxes of spices, bags of dried seeds, papers of treasures. Dorothy found a niche which she believed would just receive one of the treasures, a large, old-fashioned, covered dish of china, dating back in its pattern for nearly a hundred years, and valued in the household, as such pieces generally are, for a dozen times their worth. She glanced about her. Louise had moved to the distant window, and was looking out upon the dull sky and earth. Her mother was absorbed and forbidding-looking. Little Nellie was standing very near the treasured dish, and her quick eye saw what was wanted, and her quick and eager fingers grasped the treasure.

"I'll hand it to you, Dorrie; you needn't get down."

"Oh no!" said Dorothy aghast, but not quickly enough. The small hands that were so anxious to help had seized it, and were safely bearing it forward, when the metallic voice of the mother came startlingly upon her.

"Nellie Morgan, put that dish down on the table this instant!"

Poor, startled Nellie, eager to obey, anxious to show her mother and Dorothy, and, above all, Louise, that she meant to do right, turned to obey; but, alas her nervous little hand measured falsely the height of the table, and she hit the rare blue dish against its edge, the treacherous cover toppled over, and—well, how did it happen? Who ever knows just how dire accidents happen? Such a second of time in which they do it all! What Nellie and the rest of the startled spectators knew was that the family heirloom lay in a dozen pieces on the yellow kitchen floor!