Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/28

 the grandmother's not having been present; and though the consciousness of a far higher presence was strong in our hearts, we experienced also somewhat of that feeling which made King David say, 'Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, and let us not fall into the hand of man.'

In our childish fashion we began to speculate as to how we should behave if we always believed and remembered that the Great God was observing us; and then, as I suppose, most children have done at some time or other, we suddenly formed a resolution, that from that day forward we would behave quite differently; that we would reform all our faults, never be idle over our lessons; nor play at improper tunes, nor conceal any mischief that we might have done; nor tease the little ones, nor hide ourselves in the shrubberies when we knew the nurse was looking for us to call us in to bed.

In short, we passed in review all our childish faults as far as we knew them, and made a set of rules for future good behavior.

We had a fashion at the school where I was for writing sets of rules; one would have thought the rule under which we lived was stringent and inflexible enough; but no, we copied Madame's favorite phrase, 'I shall make a rule, Mes Demoiselles,' and we made more rules than even our rulers.

We often spent part of one half holiday in writing rules for the spending of the next—elaborate rules, as to how long we would play with our dolls, how long've would spend over our home letters, how long in. reading our story-books, how long in feeding our birds; Rh