Chapter 21 - Page 2

ant. Now the new thought had come into her mind that her daughter would
be saved; not in her way, nor by her means, but in a way that would at
the same time be a rebuke to her spiritual pride, her impatience and
bitterness of spirit, and zeal not according to knowledge. Not she, but
this young girl, herself so ignorant of spiritual things a short time
ago, would be the chosen instrument. She remembered how the girl had
taken to her from the first, but had not taken to her daughter; how in
spite of this distance between them, and of her infidelity, her daughter
had continued to love the girl--to Mrs. Churton it was plain that she
loved her--and to hunger for her love in return. It was all providential
and ordered by One

Who moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.

"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength,"
she murmured, praising God who had put this gladness in her heart, the
Christian's and the mother's love filling her eyes with tears. Up till
now it had been her secret aim to keep the girls as much apart as
possible out of school hours; now it seemed best to let them come
together; and on this August afternoon, as we have seen, she went so far
as to encourage a greater intimacy between them. Poor woman!

After they had entered the wood Fan began straying at short intervals
from the path to gather flowers and grasses, or to look more closely at a
butterfly at rest and sunning its open brightly-patterned wings.

"I think I shall sit down on the grass here to read," said Constance at
length. "You can ramble about and gather flowers if you like, and you'll
know where to find me."

They had now reached a spot to which Constance was in the habit of
resorting almost daily, where the ground was free from underwood, and
thickly carpeted with grass not yet wholly dry, and where an oak-tree
shaded a wide space with its low horizontal branches.

Fan thanked her, and dropping her book rambled off by herself, happy in
her flower-hunting, and forgetting all about the magnificent things she
had been reading. Two or three times she returned to the spot where
Constance sat reading, with her hands full of flowers and grasses, and
after depositing them on the turf went away to gather more. Finally she
sat down on the grass, took off her hat and gloves, and set to work
arranging her spoils. This took her a long time, and after making them up
two or three times in various ways she still seemed dissatisfied. At
length she tried a fresh plan, and discarding all the red, yellow, and
purple flowers, she made a loose bunch of the blue and white only, using
only those fine open grass-spears with hair-like stems and minute flowers
that