Part 18 (2/2)
”So solemnly?” said the lady, laughing. ”Is it your mother you have promised?”
”No, ma'am.”
”Not your mother? You have a mother?”
”Oh yes, ma'am.”
”Would she have any objection?”
”No, ma'am--I believe not.”
”Then whom have you made your promise to? Is it a religious scruple that some one has taught you?”
”I have promised to do all I could for helping temperance work,”
Matilda said at last.
She was answered with a little ringing laugh, not unkindly but amused; and then her friend said gravely--
”Your taking a gla.s.s of cordial in this house would not affect anything or anybody, little one. It would do _me_ no harm. I drink a gla.s.s of wine every day with my dinner. I shall go on doing it just the same. It will not make a bit of difference to me, whether you take your cordial or not.”
But Matilda looked at the lady, and did not look at her gla.s.s.
”Do you think it will?” said the lady, laughing.
”No, ma'am.”
”Then your promise to help temperance work does not touch the cordial.”
”No ma'am, but----”
”But?--what 'but'?”
”It touches me.”
”Does it?” said the lady. ”That is odd. You think a promise is a promise. Here is your sister taking her cordial; she has not made the same promise, I suppose?”
Maria and Matilda glanced at each other.
”She has?” cried the lady. ”Yet you see she does not think as you do about it.”
The sisters did not look into each other's eyes again. Their friend watched them both.
”I should like to know whom you have made such a promise to,” she said coaxingly to Matilda. ”Somebody that you love well enough to make you keep it. Won't you tell me? It is not your mother, you said. To whom did you make that promise, dear?”
Matilda hesitated and looked up into the lady's face again.
”I promised--the Lord Jesus,” she said.
<script>