Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/29

 in short, we had scarcely one half hour which we could call our own that we did not hamper with rules containing as many additions and subtractions as a long division sum. I had imparted this fashion to Lucy, and we had already made, and altered, and broken several sets of these rules, but, on that delightful Sunday evening, while the sun was sinking into the distant sea, and reddening the sky, the water, the walls, our white frocks, and the fluttering leaves of our Bibles, we made one set more. The particulars of them I have forgotten, but the intention formed, in all childish simplicity, was to help us to keep the presence of God always in our recollection.

There was a little picture in one of my books which represented Hagar in the parched wilderness sitting apart from the fainting Ishmael; underneath it were the words, 'Thou, God, seest me.' This, we said, we would hang on the wall opposite to our two stools, where every afternoon we sat learning our lessons for the next day, or doing our playwork, as we called it.

How little, for all the sympathy of love, a child is known to his elders! How little during the ensuing week our childish troubles, our wavering endeavors to do right, our surprise at our own failures, were suspected in that orderly household! The days, however, went and came, and our rules it appeared must have had some real influence over us, for I well remember that the nurse and housekeeper commended us to 'sister' as 'excellent good children, as toward, friend, as thee would wish to see.' The restrictions which we had laid upon ourselves were not light ones for children to observe, and, though they only bound us to Rh