Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: ARCHIE AND CLAUDE ANNOUNCE A HOLIDAY.]
THE LITTLE HAZEL SERIES
"THY KINGDOM COME."
A Tale for Boys and Girls.
By the Author of
"Little Snowdrop and Her Golden Casket," "The Guiding Pillar,"
&c. &c.
[Illustration]
London:
T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.
EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.
1886.
Contents.
Chap.
I. A FIRST SORROW
II. FATHER AND DAUGHTER
III. A BAPTISM
IV. LA BELLE GABRIELLE
V. HELPING ON THE KINGDOM
VI. THE LOST CHILD
VII. THE TURNING-POINT
VIII. A DARK CLOUD
IX. OUT IN THE WORLD
X. THE SEARCH
XI. HOME WORK
XII. AT THE GOLD DIGGINGS
XIII. THE SECRET DISCLOSED
XIV. THE CHRISTMAS TREE
XV. NEWS FROM A FAR COUNTRY
XVI. "AS A LITTLE CHILD"
XVII. BRIDE AND BRIDEGROOM
XVIII. HOME AT LAST
XIX. OLD FRIENDS
"THY KINGDOM COME."
CHAPTER I.
A FIRST SORROW.
"I see a spirit by thy side,
Purple-winged and eagle-eyed,
Looking like a heavenly guide."
"If he bid thee bow before
Crowned mind and nothing more,
The great idol men adore—
Though his words seem true and wise,
Soul, I say to thee, Arise!
He is a demon in disguise."
"PRISCILLA! Priscilla!" The name was repeated again and again, and
yet no response was given; indeed the person so addressed seemed not
to hear the speaker, if one could judge by the far-away, absorbed
look of her eyes, as she stood at an open window with her arm round a
curly-headed boy of some three or four years old.
The name seemed as if it ought to have belonged to some grown-up lady,
and was suggestive of a Puritan maiden. And so, when at last the one
thus addressed was roused to attention, and turned round saying, "Yes,
Miss Vernon; what is it?" One did feel surprised to see that the owner
of the name was a young girl of only some fifteen years. She was
dressed, as was also the child by her side, in deep mourning; and a
close observer would have seen that her large, thoughtful, gray eyes
were filled with tears, which she was striving to keep from falling.
Her brown hair—the sort of brown which seems always to catch and
glisten between every ray of sunshine—was brushed off a finely-formed
brow, and hung in natural curls round her neck. She stood now waiting
to hear what the speaker required of her. The answer to her question
was given in a somewhat querulous tone—
"What is it, indeed? One would think you should know that without
asking. Shut the window, of course, and don't keep little Claude
standing at it until he catches his death of cold. You must really try,
Priscilla, to exercise your wits a little; I can't be everywhere at
once, and there is no one else to manage anything now."
The girl made no reply, but turned and shut the window, and her own
eyes for a moment also, as if she would have gladly shut out the spring
sunshine and everything else in the world just then; for her young
heart was aching, oh! so sorely, and she seemed to have but one wish—to
be lying in the quiet grave where her loved mother had been laid to
rest just three days before.
"No one to superintend anything now but Miss Vernon."
Oh! She knew that well. No one to care much what she did; no one ever
to take her into loving arms, stroke back the sunny hair, and call
her "Sissy, darling Sissy." No; from henceforth she would have to
live without a mother's loving caresses, and learn to answer to the
stiff-sounding name of Priscilla. Even her brothers—she had four of
them, all younger than herself—only called her Prissy; and her father
always addressed her as Priscilla. "Sissy" had been the mother's pet
name for her.
As she left the room, the tramp, tramp of boyish feet met her ear,
and up the stairs bounded three handsome boys—Lewis, the oldest,
nearly fourteen; Austin, about one year younger; and Archie, a
delicate-looking child of seven. They all clustered round their sister,
their faces bright as if no tears had so lately stained them, fresh
from the open air, and their youthful spirits rising, as the spirits of
the young, thank God, will rise even after days of deep sorrow.
"Prissy!" they said in one breath, "do come out; it is delightful in
the garden. And there are violets in the grove by the river-side; do
come and gather them."
But Prissy turned away. What cared she for violets now when the one
for whom she loved to gather them was no longer here to receive them?
No, there was nothing in the world for her to care for—no one to whom
she could give pleasure; and unheeding the pleading looks of her young
brothers, she went to her own room. Ah, Prissy! There were hearts as
loving as yours waiting for a look of sympathy, a word of kindness;
they, too, miss a mother's welcome, a mother's interest in their simple
pursuits, and turn away disappointed.
"Prissy might have come," muttered Archie.
"Oh! She does not care," said Lewis.
Only the grave-eyed Austin said kindly, "Poor Pris! I daresay she
misses mother more than any of us. She didn't mean to be unkind, I am
sure."
In the meantime Prissy had sought the quiet of her own room, and drawn
down the blind to shut out the sunshine, which seemed to mock her
grief. Perhaps her conscience reproached her; it may be a still small
voice whispered she had done wrong, had been selfish; but if so, she
did not listen to it long, only bent her head on the table and cried
bitterly.
Her Bible lay near, but she did not open it. She had not yet fully
learned the comfort God's Word can give in sorrow. Prissy had been
taught to reverence the Holy Scriptures as her father and mother
did; to recognize God as the Creator and Upholder of the world, as
an Almighty King, the Disposer of all events and the Ruler of the
universe. But she rested there; not yet had she learned to know Jesus
as a personal Saviour, nor God as a Father who cared for her and
counted the very hairs of her head.
Only shortly before her death had even the amiable mother of the family
learned to love the person of Christ. But that love once experienced,
she had spoken words about Jesus to her children which had sunk deep
into the hearts of some of them, and would one day bring forth fruit.
On one of her last evenings on earth, she had spoken to the three
oldest on the words "Thy kingdom come," expressing the earnest hope
that they might each of them help on its coming.
It was Prissy who, with flashing eyes, said she would like to do so,
adding it would be such a glorious work to be the means of elevating
and bettering the world around her. In after days Priscilla remembered
the unsatisfied look that crossed her mother's face as she spoke these
words, and how she laid her hand caressingly on her shoulder, and was
beginning to speak, when the door opened, and her father entering, the
conversation dropped, and was not again resumed.
Professor Warner, one of the greatest mathematicians of his day, was a
highly respected and in one sense a God-fearing man; but though fully
recognizing the wonderful work of redemption, he had overlooked the
need of love to the One who had redeemed him.
In family life, the doctor (for the honour of LL.D. had long been his)
was reserved and deeply absorbed in his books. Domestic cares had
entirely devolved on his wife, to whom he was fondly attached, though
as a rule, he considered the whole female sex infinitely inferior to
man.
And when the birth of his first child was announced to him, the
expressive words, said with a sigh of disappointment, "Only a girl,"
was the sole remark he uttered.
"Only a girl!" repeated the incensed nurse. "As if a daughter in a
house was not the best of blessings, better a hundred times than your
great noisy boys. One would think the master was a heathen to speak
like that, as if it was not through a woman that the greatest of all
blessings descended to earth."
Despite nurse's indignation, the words "only a girl" became a sort of
sobriquet to the little one; and when four boys followed in succession,
and were warmly welcomed by their proud father, who prophesied great
things of each one, whilst he might be said almost to overlook his
first-born, friends and relations declared that, save to her loving
mother, Priscilla Warner was indeed "only a girl."
A strangely quiet life she led, shut out as she was from all
companionship with girls of her own age. Inheriting in no common degree
her father's talents, Prissy, while still a child, became absorbed
in studies, the nature of which even her mother was unaware of. For
Mrs. Warner, busied with her children, husband, and household matters,
superintending also many lesser details of her daughter's education,
never knew that her spare hours were spent in the study of mathematics,
for which she had a perfect passion.
The only member of the family who knew her secret was Austin; and boy
though he was, he had been her first instructor in the rudiments of the
science in which he as well as his brother Lewis were daily instructed
by their father.
"Why not let me tell father you like these sort of things, Prissy?" he
said one day.
But she implored him not to do so, having often heard her father
express contempt for women bungling away at matters they could never
properly understand.
"No, no," he said; "let a woman be a good housekeeper, and if she can
read intelligibly, write plainly, keep a few accounts correctly, make
shirts properly, and, if she likes, play on the piano or the guitar,
and sing, that is all that can be expected of her. A woman has not
brains for higher things."
At such a speech, child though she was, Prissy would flush up with
indignation, and determine that one day she would prove to her father
what a woman could do. To become famous, to do some grand work on
earth, this was the girl's ambition, this the only secret she had kept
from her loving mother. The day would come when she would constrain the
father (whose praise she esteemed more than aught on earth, and for
whose love she yearned) to own that she was something more than "only a
girl."
But since the death of her mother, all ambitious thoughts had left the
girl's head. She was stunned, and had scarcely even gone to the nursery
to look at the little infant sleeping in the pretty cot prepared for
her by the hands of the mother who had lived but to clasp her to her
heart and give her a dying blessing. A sudden low cry from the room
next hers now aroused Prissy, and lifting her head she listened. It was
the baby, and she remembered with a pang of reproach, that that day she
had never even asked after the child.
Ere doing so, she opened the Bible, her mother's last gift to her on
her fifteenth birthday, just one fortnight ago. She turned to the
page on which her name was written, and read below it the words, "Thy
kingdom come," and these other words, "To every man his work."
"Yes," she said, and raised her head confidently as she spoke, "I have
a work to do; and I will do it, and make my father proud of me yet. And
how about the kingdom of God?"
She hesitated, then said, "Well, of course, if I study earnestly, I
will be able to teach others, and thus elevate the thoughts of many,
and so, by bettering the world, hasten on the coming of God's kingdom.
Yes; that would be one way of doing it, I think so, surely. But I
wonder what Austin would say? Mamma's words about the kingdom seemed
to impress him so much, although he said little. I am sure that some
way or other Austin will help on the kingdom of God; and so, I am
determined, shall I. One thing is plain—I must no longer waste my time."
And forgetting her determination of going into the nursery, she went to
the window, pulled up the blind, and taking down her slate and books
was soon deep in solving some, to her, new and interesting mathematical
problems.
She worked on, unheeding all around her, till darkness began to steal
over the sky. And just as she was going to stop, a knock came to the
door, and a servant said:
"Miss Warner, your father wishes to see you in his study as soon as
possible."