Chapter XIV: Work

ALMOST every inmate of Cedar Lodge was up very early on Monday morning, Agnes being the only member of the family who did not rise till her usual hour. The first crow of the cock, strutting about in the yard behind the house, roused little Elsie from sleep. The child was restless and impatient in her white-curtained cot, until she was suffered to rise, dress, and set about her Turkey-red work for the model. Amy was bending over her strip of white linen almost before there was sufficient light for her to see how to thread her fine needle, for the morning was dark and rainy; indeed the sun never showed his face during the whole of that cheerless day.

Drip, drip! fell the rain, but none of the children regretted that they were not likely to go out of the house. “I don’t mind the rain one bit!” cried Elsie. “I’m glad that it rains; we’ll get on so famously with our work!”

Drip, drip! fell the rain; clink, clink! fell the hammer of Lucius; and blithe sounded his whistle, as he labored in the midst of his squares of pasteboard, strips of wood, and lengths of wire. The schoolboy set to his work with a will; and how pleasant is work when we have strength and spirit to do it, and feel that we have a worthy object before us!

No one was up earlier than Dora. She sprang from her bed before twilight had given place to day-light, so impatient was she to get to her embroidery pattern again. The noise of Dora’s rising awoke Agnes, who had not passed so good a night as her more vigorous twin had done, the sickly girl having been several times disturbed by her cough.

“What are you about, Dora?” murmured Agnes, in a drowsy and rather complaining tone; “I’m sure that it can’t be nearly time to get up.”

“Oh, I like to set about my new work quickly, and get a good piece of it done before breakfast,” was Dora’s reply.

“There will be plenty of time for work between this and Christmas; I wish that you would keep quiet and let me rest,” yawned Agnes.

“You can rest if you wish it; I won’t make a noise,” replied Dora. “But for my part I like to be up and doing. You know that:

‘Early to bed, and early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.’”

Agnes said nothing in contradiction of the old proverb which her sister had quoted, but turned round on her pillow, and with a weary yawn composed herself again to sleep. She thought that it would be time enough to get up when Susan should call her at a quarter to seven, and she only wished that Dora had thought so also, for it fidgeted Agnes to hear her moving about in the room. But Dora had cared as little about disturbing the sleep of a sickly sister as she had about letting her mother go out in the rain. Dora admired her own energy, and looked upon Agnes almost with scorn, as being lazy, cold, and dull, with not a bit of enthusiasm in her nature.

“We should not have had a model worth looking at had the embroidery been left to her,” said Dora to herself, not without a feeling of self-complacence, as she glanced at her twin who had again sunk into slumber.

It will be remembered that Dora had resolved to unpick all the work that she had sewn upon the preceding Sunday. As soon as the little girl had hastily finished her toilet, so hastily that she forgot to button her sleeves or put on her collar, she opened her workbox, took out her work, and seated herself as close to the window as possible, in order to catch as much as she could of the dim light of dawn. It might have been expected that Dora would also have forgotten to say her prayers, but such was not the case. She remembered to kneel down by her bedside and hurry through a mere form of words, without paying the slightest attention to their meaning, thinking of her embroidery all the time. It was a satisfaction to the conscience of Dora that she had repeated a prayer, and she never stopped to ask herself whether that prayer were not in itself a sin.

Dora with needle and scissors set first to her work of unpicking. But every one who has tried such an occupation must know it to be one of the most tedious and disagreeable of tasks. It was doubly so to Dora, because she greatly admired the embroidery work which she was thus beginning to spoil.

“It is a great pity to undo this,” Dora said to herself before she had been for two minutes plying the scissors. “I won’t go on with this foolish unpicking. After all, my undoing every stitch of my pretty work would not undo the fault of my having put it in on Sunday.”

This was indeed true. A fault once committed, no human being has power to undo; but while looking to the Lord alone for forgiveness, we are bound to prove the sincerity of our regret for a fault by making what amends lie in our power. Dora took the easier, but far more dangerous way, of trying to forget the fault altogether, or to make up for it by what she considered to be her zeal in charity work. She certainly sewed very diligently on that dull morning, scarcely lifting her eyes from the pattern which she had neatly traced on the linen. She was filling up the pencilled outlines with chain-stitch, satin-stitch, and other stitches, in bright-colored silks and a brilliant thread of gold.

“Oh, look!—just look how famously Dora has been getting on with her work!” exclaimed the admiring Elsie, when, summoned by the bell at half-past eight, the children had assembled in the breakfast-room, awaiting their mother’s coming down to prayers.

“Why, you don’t mean to say that you have worked all that this morning?” said Lucius to Dora.

The question was rather an awkward one for Dora to answer—it took the girl by surprise. Dora replied to it by an evasion, which was another act of deceit. “I couldn’t begin my embroidery on Saturday night,” she said, actually congratulating herself that she had this time spoken _the exact truth_, as if it were not the very essence of falsehood to _deceive_, even though the lips may utter no lie. As Dora had not sewn on Saturday, she knew that Lucius would take it for granted that she had been so clever and industrious as to do all the work which he saw on the Monday morning, for he would certainly never suspect her of having put in one stitch upon Sunday.

“Don’t you admire Dora’s curtain, is it not lovely?” said Amy to Agnes, who was examining the work of her twin.

“Rather,” was the reply, uttered in a hesitating tone.

Agnes could not truthfully have expressed warmer admiration, for she did not think that the figures of the cherubim were at all gracefully drawn, nor did she consider that the colors were perfectly blended, there being too little scarlet in proportion to the purple and blue. But the cold praise of the twin was not unnaturally set down by her family as coming from a mean, unworthy motive.

“She is as jealous as a cat!” exclaimed Lucius; “Agnes can’t forgive poor Dora for having been trusted with the most difficult part of the work.”

The irritable temper of Agnes fired up in a moment at an observation which she felt to be unjust as well as unkind. But Agnes on that Monday morning had not merely said her prayers, she had really prayed for grace to conquer besetting sin, and now, though she could not help her cheeks flushing scarlet at the taunt of her brother, she pressed her lips closely together, and kept down the passionate reply which it was so hard, so very hard, not to utter.

“How much of your work have you done this morning, Agnes?” asked Elsie, rather proudly, showing her own three inches of seam in the Turkey-red cloth.

“I have cut out my mohair curtains,” said Agnes, who had also, though she did not choose to say so, been mending her gloves, in obedience to the known wish of her mother.

“Cut out—only cut out?” laughed Lucius, who had been doing great things in the nailing and hammering line; “if you take the matter so easily, Agnes, every one will _cut you out_, though you may not be made into curtains!”

Agnes was provoked at the joke, and all the more so because Dora and Elsie laughed, and Amy could not help smiling. Few persons like to be laughed at, and the peevish-tempered Agnes was certainly not one of the few. But the girl had made a resolve, not in vain trust in her own power of carrying it out, but in a spirit of humble prayer, to set a watch before her lips; and if she could not speak kindly, not to utter a single word. Agnes could not, indeed, yet manage to take a disagreeable joke with smiling good humor, but she bore it in resolute silence, she did not utter any retort.

No one admired Agnes Temple, no one praised her self-command: she was thought lazy because she had not eagerly rushed into an occupation in which she took no particular pleasure, and for which she knew that she would find plenty of time without neglecting more homely duties; she was thought jealous because she had simply spoken the truth; and yet on that day Agnes had begun a nobler work than that of embroidering in purple and gold, and her offering was a far more acceptable one than that of which Dora was proud.