"Well," said Maggie, as Meredith paused, "I should think somebody ought
to go to those people!"
"Hopeless work," said Flora, stitching away at her worsted.
"No, it is not hopeless work," answered her brother. "As you would soon
see, if all the Churches had the matter at heart like Pastor Harms and
his Hermannsburg."
"Everybody cannot give himself up to such business," said Flora glancing
at him.
"Everybody ought."
"O Ditto!" cried Maggie, "do you think _everybody_ ought to go to
Africa?"
"Yes," said Flora; "that is just about what he thinks."
"No, Maggie," said Meredith, "neither to Africa nor to other heathen
parts; not everybody. But everybody can give himself up to the work of
the kingdom, even if he stays at home. Most people must stay at home."
"I don't understand," said Maggie with a shrug of her shoulders.
"Don't you remember--'Seek ye _first_ the kingdom of God;'--that's all I
mean."
"'First!'" Flora echoed.
"_How_ 'first,' Ditto?"
"Before everything else. The words mean that, if they mean anything."
"How before everything else?"
"See, Maggie. Suppose you and I have"----
"Now, Ditto, stop!" said his sister. "I do not want to hear any of that
stuff. What is it to Maggie? And Essie and I do not care about it."
"And there comes Fenton," added Esther, springing up to go and meet him.
For Fenton it was, bounding up the bank at their left.
Fenton was grown a good deal since our last sight of him; otherwise not
much changed. A handsome boy, with a good figure and a bright eye, and
also the old, somewhat supercilious upper lip. But he was glad to get
home, and greeted the party cordially enough; then, however, began to
criticise.
"What are you all doing loafing here?" He had sat down on the bank with
the rest, and looked from one to another.
"We do not use your elegant expression," said Flora; "partly perhaps
because we are not wont to indulge ourselves in that particular
amusement."
"What _are_ you doing?"
"You do not see anything to engage our attention in what at present
offers itself to yours," Meredith remarked.
"Nothing offers itself to my attention," replied Fenton. "I don't see
anything except our old cart. Anything to eat in it?"
"There is no pie left," said Esther, "for I gave the last of it to
Fairbairn; and Flora drank up all the cream. There's some sugar in the
sugar-bowl."
Fenton went to get some lumps of sugar, and then stood looking down at
the party.
"Aren't you going home to dinner?" said he. "I tell you, I'm raging."
"Four o'clock," said Meredith, looking at his watch. "Just the pretty
time of day coming now."
"It'll be dinner-time by the time you get the cart home and the girls
get dressed. What did you come out here so far for? I haven't had a
respectable dinner for six months. I am going to have some wine to-day,
if the governor _is_ away."
"Governor!" cried Esther. "What a vulgar expression for Fenton Candlish
to use!"
"Wine!" exclaimed Maggie. "You can't have any wine, Fenton; we don't
drink wine any more in _this_ house."
"What's the matter!"
"The matter is, papa has emptied his wine-cellar," said Esther in a
rather aggrieved tone.
"Drunk it all up?"
"No, no; sent it off and sold it."
"What was the matter with it!"
"Why, I tell you," said Esther, "it is thought improper for good people
to drink wine."
Fenton's face was rather funny to see, there was such a blank dismay in
it.
"And did mamma give in to that?"
"I don't know what mamma thought," said Esther; "but papa sold the wine;
and our dinner-table does not have its pretty coloured glasses any
more."
Fenton uttered a smothered exclamation which I am afraid would have
shocked his sisters.
"I don't see what _you_ want with wine, Fenton," said Maggie; "papa
never let you have it."
"Mamma did though," said Fenton. "That's the good of having two parents.
If one is crochety perhaps the other will be straight. Well, _I'm_ not
going to live if I can't live like a gentleman. I shall send to Forbes
to send me some wine."
His sisters burst out into horrified exclamations and expostulations.
"Papa'll see it in the bill," said Esther, "and he'll be very angry."
"Uncle Eden is coming," said Maggie, "and it will be no use. He'd throw
it into the river."
"Uncle Eden coming?"
The girls nodded.
"If I had known that _I_ wouldn't have come!" said Fenton looking very
dark.
"I'd think better of it if I were you," remarked Meredith quietly.
"There goes more to the making of a gentleman than the drinking of
wine."
"What do you mean?"
"Just that. As for instance--self-control, noble thoughts, care for
others above himself, indifference to low pleasures."
"Low pleasures!" repeated Fenton. "Do you call wine a low pleasure?"
"Well, it brings people into the gutter."
"Pshaw! not gentlemen."
"I grant you they are not gentlemen after they get there."
"What do you know about it?" said the boy not very politely. "Did you
ever drink it yourself?"
"I never will again. A gentleman should be a free man; and wine makes
men slaves. I don't choose to be in bondage. And if it would not enslave
me, it does other people; and I would not give it the help of my
example."
Fenton dropped the subject, but renewed his proposal that they should
return home. So shawls and worsted work were stored in the cart, and the
little book in Meredith's pocket; and the line of march was taken up. It
was indeed coming now to the lovely time of the day. Shadows long,
lights glowing in warm level reflections, all objects getting a sunny
side and a shady side, and standing forth in new beauty in consequence;
the day gathering in its train, as it were, to prepare for a stately
leave-taking by and by. Meredith and Maggie, loath to go, lingered the
last of the party; indeed he had the cart to draw, which was heavy, and
needed careful guiding in places over and between the rocks; and he
could not run on with the heads of the party. And Maggie walked beside
him, and put her little hand upon the handle of the cart which she could
not help to draw. How sweet it was! The light every moment growing
softer, not cooler; the colours more contrasted, as the shadows
lengthened; the bugle notes coming over the water now and then. Meredith
looked, and drew deep breaths of the delicious air; but Maggie walked
along pondering.
"Ditto," she began, "do you think _everybody_ ought to do mission work?"
"The dear Lord did not give the charge to _some_ of His people, did He?"
"But how can they do it? Everybody cannot go to the heathen?"
"He said, 'in all the world'--so that means at home as well as abroad,
doesn't it?"
"Preach the gospel in all the world?"
"Yes."
"How can _I_, Ditto?"
"You and I, let us say. Well, Maggie, suppose we ask Mr. Murray? But one
thing is certain; those who stay at home must furnish the money for
those that go."
"Does it take a great deal?"
"Not to send a few. But how long would a _few_ people be about telling
the gospel to all the world? Suppose one man had as much as the whole
State of New York for his parish?"
"He'd never get through."
"Exactly. And so it is nearly nineteen hundred years since the Lord gave
the command; and the heathen world is the heathen world still--pretty
much."
"But, then, Ditto--to send a great many people, it would want a great
deal of money."
"It does. What then?"
"Maybe people cannot afford it."
"Let us ask Mr. Murray about that."
"But, Ditto, what do _you_ think? I know you think something."
"Maggie, I think we should seek _first_ the kingdom."
They were turning into the shrubbery grounds near the house, and Maggie
left the discussion. They were all ready for dinner, as far as appetite
went, and in a little while the five young people sat down at the board.
"This is jolly," said Fenton, who took the head of the table.
"Roast-beef, to wit?" said Meredith.
"Roast-beef is a good thing if you are hungry, as I am; but I did not
mean that. It is uncommonly jolly to be out of the way of the
governors."
Maggie looked up astonished.
"'Rulers are not a terror to good works,'" said Meredith.
"They're a nuisance, though."
"Only to one portion of society. I hope you do not class yourself with
them."
"Do you mean," said Maggie, making big eyes, "do you mean, Fenton, that
you are glad papa and mamma are in California?"
"No. Only one of 'em. Mamma never interferes with me."
"She leaves it to papa to do," said Maggie, with dignity and sageness.
"I am glad she does. Shows her wisdom. I can tell what is good for me as
well as anybody else."
"Always do it, I suppose?"
"That's just my affair," said Fenton. "There is no use in putting chains
round a fellow--all the good of it is, he must just break the chains."
"Do you call papa's commands, _chains_?" said Maggie.
"Don't stare, Maggie; nothing is so vulgar."
"I am glad Uncle Eden is coming, to make you behave yourself."
"If he tries it on, I shall bolt," said Fenton. "I am out for some fun;
and if I can't get it at home I'll get it somewhere else."
Meredith succeeded in turning the conversation to a pleasanter subject;
nevertheless Fenton's deliverances shocked his little sister several
times in the course of the dinner. Among other things, Fenton would go
down to the wine-cellar, to see if a bottle or two might not by chance
have been left; and though the key was not to be had and he came back
discomfited, Maggie could not get over the audacity of his proposition.
She was further and exceedingly shocked after dinner when Fenton
proposed to Meredith to have a cigar. Meredith declining, Fenton went
out to enjoy his cigar alone.
"Fenton is grown very wild," said Maggie.
"Boys can't be like girls," said Esther.
"I don't see why they can't be as respectable as girls," said Maggie.
"They never are, my dear," said Flora. "Comfort yourself. They will run
into what they don't like just to have their own way; because what they
do like is ordered or advised by some kind friend."
"Not true without exception, Maggie," said Meredith; "but there is some
truth in it. Don't worry about Fenton. I don't believe he means quite as
bad as he says."
"But smoking is so disgraceful--in a boy," said Maggie.
"It is not disgraceful in a man," said Esther.
"Well, it isn't nice," returned Maggie. "I always hate to come near that
Professor Wilkins, who always talks to me when he is here. He is kind,
but his breath is dreadful."
Fenton was not so fond of the company of his cigar but that he soon
forsook it. And then his company indoors was hardly an acquisition. He
talked big of doings at the school where he was now placed, horrified
Maggie by showing that he was quite as lawless as in old times, and put
an effectual bar to any reading, or talk either, except of the sort that
suited himself.
"What's up?" he asked at last. "What shall we do to make the time go?"
"Time does not need any whip with us," said Meredith. "He goes fast
enough."
"Oh, we are going out in the woods to dinner," said Maggie.
"You were there to-day."
"Well, we are going to-morrow--and every day. We have a bonfire, and a
nice lunch, and the girls work, and Ditto reads to us."
"Jolly slow!" said Fenton. "I can't stand much of that. I shall go
a-fishing."
"Very well," said Esther. "And come to us for lunch?"
"Same place? It's too far off."
"Then we'll go into the pine wood," said Maggie. "The pine wood is
nice--and the pine needles make a beautiful carpet--and we want to go to
a different place every day."
So it was arranged.