Philip Ogilvie and his pretty wife were quarrelling, as their custom
was, in the drawing-room of the great house in Belgrave Square, but
the Angel in the nursery upstairs knew nothing at all about that. She
was eight years old, and was, at that critical moment when her father
and mother were having words which might embitter all their lives, and
perhaps sever them for ever, unconsciously and happily decorating
herself before the nursery looking-glass.
The occasion was an important one, and the Angel's rosebud lips were
pursed up in her anxiety, and her dark, pretty brows were somewhat
raised, and her very blue eyes were fixed on her own charming little
reflection.
"Shall it be buttercups, or daisies, or both?" thought the Angel to
herself.
A box of wild flowers, which had come up from the country that day,
lay handy. There were violets and primroses, and quantities of
buttercups and daisies, amongst these treasures.
"Mother likes me when I am pretty, father likes me anyhow," she
thought, and then she stood and contemplated herself, and pensively
took up a bunch of daisies and held them against her small, slightly
flushed cheek, and then tried the effect of the buttercups in her
golden brown hair. By-and-by, she skipped away from the looking-glass,
and ran up to a tall, somewhat austere lady, who was seated at a round
table, writing busily.
"What do you want, Sibyl? Don't disturb me now," said this individual.
"It is only just for a moment," replied the Angel, knitting her brows,
and standing in such a position that she excluded all light from
falling on the severe-looking lady's writing-pad.
"Which is the prettiest, buttercups or daisies, or the two twisted up
together?" she said.
"Oh, don't worry me, child, I want to catch this post. My brother is
very ill, and he'll be so annoyed if he doesn't hear from me. Did you
say buttercups and daisies mixed? Yes, of course, mix them, that is
the old nursery rhyme."
The little Sibyl stamped a small foot encased in a red shoe with an
impatient movement, and turned once more to contemplate herself in
the glass. Miss Winstead, the governess, resumed her letter, and a
clock on the mantelpiece struck out seven silvery chimes.
"They'll be going in to dinner; I must be very quick indeed," thought
the child. She began to pull out the flowers, to arrange them in
little groups, and presently, by the aid of numerous pins, to deck her
small person.
"Mother likes me when I am pretty," she repeated softly under her
breath, "but father likes me anyhow." She thought over this somewhat
curious problem. Why should father like her anyhow? Why should mother
only kiss her and pet her when she was downright pretty?
"Do I look pretty?" she said at last, dancing back to the governess's
side.
Miss Winstead dropped her pen and looked up at the radiant little
figure. She had contrived to tie some of the wild flowers together,
and had encircled them round her white forehead, and mixed them in her
flowing locks, and here, there, and everywhere on her white dress were
bunches of buttercups and daisies, with a few violets thrown in.
"Do I look pretty?" repeated Sibyl Ogilvie.
"You are a very vain little girl," said Miss Winstead. "I won't tell
you whether you look pretty or not, you ought not to think of your
looks. God does not like people who think whether they are pretty or
not. He likes humble-minded little girls. Now don't interrupt me any
more."
"There's the gong, I'm off," cried Sibyl. She kissed her hand to Miss
Winstead, her face all alight with happiness.
"I know I am pretty, she always talks like that when I am," thought
the child, who had a very keen insight into character. "Mother will
kiss me to-night, I am so glad. I wonder if Jesus Christ thinks me
pretty, too."
Sibyl Ogilvie, aged eight, had a theology of her own. It was extremely
simple, and had no perplexing elements about it. There were three
persons who were absolutely perfect. Jesus Christ Who lived in heaven,
but Who saw everything that took place on earth, and her own father
and mother. No one else was absolutely without sin, but these three
were. It was a most comfortable doctrine, and it sustained her little
heart through some perplexing passages in her small life. She used to
shut her eyes when her mother frowned, and say softly under her
breath--
"It's not wrong, 'cos it's mother. Mother couldn't do nothing wrong,
no more than Jesus could"; and she used to stop her ears when her
mother's voice, sharp and passionate, rang across the room. Something
was trying mother dreadfully, but mother had a right to be angry; she
was not sinful, like nurse, when she got into her tantrums. As to
father, he was never cross. He did look tired and disturbed sometimes.
It must be because he was sorry for the rest of the world. Yes, father
and mother were perfection. It was a great support to know this. It
was a very great honor to have been born their little girl. Every
morning when Sibyl knelt to pray, and every evening when she offered
up her nightly petitions, she thanked God most earnestly for having
given her as parents those two perfect people known to the world as
Philip Ogilvie and his wife.
"It was so awfully kind of you, Jesus," Sibyl would say, "and I must
try to grow up as nearly good as I can, because of You and father and
mother. I must try not to be cross, and I must try not to be vain, and
I must try to love my lessons. I don't think I am really vain, Jesus.
It is just because my mother likes me best when I am pretty that I
want to be pretty. It's for no other reason, really and truly; but I
don't like lessons, particularly spelling lessons. I cannot pretend I
do. Can I?"
Jesus never made any audible response to the child's query, but she
often felt a little tug at her heart which caused her to fly to her
spelling-book and learn one or two difficult words with frantic zeal.
As she ran downstairs now, she reflected over the problem of her
mother's kisses being softest and her mother's eyes kindest when her
own eyes were bright and her little figure radiant; and she also
thought of the other problem, of her grave-eyed father always loving
her, no matter whether her frock was torn, her hair untidy, or her
little face smudged.
Because of her cherubic face, Sibyl had been called the Angel when
quite a baby, and somehow the name stuck to her, particularly on the
lips of her father. It is true she had a sparkling face and soft
features and blue eyes; but she was, when all is said and done, a
somewhat worldly little angel, and had, both in the opinions of Miss
Winstead and nurse, as many faults as could well be packed into the
breast of one small child. Both admitted that Sibyl had a very loving
heart, but she was fearless, headstrong, at times even defiant, and
was very naughty and idle over her lessons.
Miss Winstead was fond of taking complaints of Sibyl to Mrs. Ogilvie,
and she was fond, also, of hoping against hope that these complaints
would lead to satisfactory results; but, as a matter of fact, Mrs.
Ogilvie never troubled herself about them. She was the sort of woman
who took the lives of others with absolute unconcern; her own life
absorbed every thought and every feeling. Anything that added to her
own comfort was esteemed; anything that worried her was shut as much
as possible out of sight. She was fond of Sibyl in her careless way.
There were moments when she was proud of the pretty and attractive
child, but she had not the slightest idea of attempting to mould her
character, nor of becoming her instructress. One of Mrs. Ogilvie's
favorite theories was that mothers should not educate their children.
"The child should go to the mother for love and petting," she would
say. "Miss Winstead may complain of the darling as much as she
pleases, but need not suppose that I shall scold her."
It was Sibyl's father, after all, who now and then spoke to her about
her unworthy conduct.
"You are called the Angel, and you must try to act up to your name,"
he said on one of these occasions, fixing his own dark-grey eyes on
the little girl.
"Oh, yes, father," answered the Angel, "but, you see, I wasn't born
that way, same as you was. It seems a pity, doesn't it? You're perfect
and I am not. I can't help the way I was born, can I, father?"
"No; no one is perfect, darling," replied the father.
"You are," answered the Angel, and she gave her head a defiant toss.
"You and my mother and my beautiful Lord Jesus up in heaven. But I'll
try to please you, father, so don't knit up your forehead."
Sibyl as she spoke laid her soft hand on her father's brow and tried
to smooth out some wrinkles.
"Same as if you was an old man," she said: "but you're perfect,
perfect, and I love you, I love you," and she encircled his neck with
her soft arms and pressed many kisses on his face.
On these occasions Philip Ogilvie felt uncomfortable, for he was a man
with many passions and beset with infirmities, and at the time when
Sibyl praised him most, when she uttered her charming, confident
words, and raised her eyes full of absolute faith to his, he was
thinking with a strange acute pain at his heart of a transaction which
he might undertake and of a temptation which he knew well was soon to
be presented to him.
"I should not like the child to know about it," was his reflection;
"but all the same, if I do it, if I fall, it will be for her sake, for
hers alone."