Part 1 (2/2)

The girls spoke with tenderness and enthusiasm, and their words reached the better feelings of their companions.

”Oh, yes,” said they; ”we will build a light-house, and not a fort.” And they did so.

Yes, it is much better to save than to destroy. Think of that, children, and let it go with you through life. Be more earnest to save your friends than to destroy your enemies. And yet, when a real enemy comes, and seeks to do evil, be brave to resist him.

THE TWO COUSINS; OR, HOW TO ACT WHEN ”THINGS GO WRONG.”

”There, mother, I knew it would be so. Lucy Wallace has just sent over to tell me she can't walk out in the woods with me. There's no use in my trying to please any body--there's no use in it. I'm an odd sort of a creature, it seems. n.o.body loves me. It always was so. Oh, dear! I wish I knew what I had done to make the girls hate me so!”

This not very good-natured speech was made by a little girl, whom I shall call Angeline Standish. She was some ten or twelve years old, as near as I can recollect. Perhaps my readers would like to know something about the occasion which called for this speech; but it is a long story, and hardly worth telling. The truth is, when little boys and girls get very angry, or peevish, or fretful, they sometimes blow out a great deal of ill-humor, something after the manner that an overcharged steam boiler lets off steam--with this difference, however, that the steam boiler gets cooler by the operation, while the boy or girl gets more heated. The throat is a poor safety-valve for ill-humor; and it is bad business, this setting the tongue agoing at such a rate, whenever the mercury in one's temper begins to rise toward the boiling point.

As is usual, in such cases, Angeline felt worse after these words had whistled through the escape pipe of her ill-nature, than she did before; and, for want of something else to do, she commenced crying. She was not angry--that is, not altogether so--though the spirit she showed was a pretty good imitation of anger, it must be confessed. She was peevish.

Matters had not gone right with her that day. She was crossed in this thing and that thing. Her new hat had not come home from the milliner's, as she expected; one of her frocks had just got badly torn; she had a hard lesson to learn; and I cannot repeat the whole catalogue of her miseries. So she fretted, and stormed, and cried, and felt just as badly as she chose.

Not long after the crying spell was over, and there was a little blue sky in sight, Jeannette Forrest, a cousin of Angeline's, came running into the room, her face all lighted up with smiles, and threw her arms around her cousin's neck, and kissed her. This was no uncommon thing with Jeannette.

She had a very happy and a very affectionate disposition. Every body loved her, and she loved every body.

One not acquainted with Angeline, might very naturally suppose that she would return her cousin's embrace. But she did no such thing. Her manner was quite cool and distant. Human nature is a strange compound, is it not?

”Why, cousin,” said the light-hearted Jeannette, ”what is the matter? You are not well, are you?”

”Yes, well enough,” the other replied, rather crustily. Take care, Angeline, there's a cloud coming over your cousin's face. Speak a kind word or two, now. Then the sun will beam out again, brightly as ever. Jeannette was silent for a moment, for she was astonished, and did not know what to make of her cousin's manner. It would have appeared uncivil and rude to most little girls. But the sweet spirit of Jeannette--loving, hoping, trusting--was differently affected. She saw only the brighter side of the picture. So the bee, as she flies merrily from flower to flower, finds a store of honey where others would find only poison.

”Dear Angeline,” said her cousin, at length, ”I'm sure something is the matter. Tell me what it is, won't you? Oh, I should love to make you happy, if I only knew how!”

Angeline seemed scarcely to hear these words of love. That is strange enough, I hear you say. So it is, perhaps, and it may be stranger still, that she read not the language of love and sympathy that was written so plainly in her cousin's countenance. It is true, though, for all that. She did not say much of any thing to this inquiry--she simply muttered, between her teeth,

”I don't believe any body loves me.”

Jeannette was no philosopher. She could not read essays nor preach sermons.

Her argument to convince her cousin that there was, at least, one who loved her, was drawn from the heart, rather than from the head. It was very brief, and very much to the point. She burst into tears, and sobbed,

”Don't say so, dear.”

Jeannette could not stay long. Her mother had sent her on an errand, and told her she must make haste back. Perhaps it was as well that she could not stay--and perhaps not. Human nature is a strange sort of compound, as I said before; and it may be that the ice which had covered over the streams leading from Angeline's heart would not have melted under the influence even of the warm sun that, for a moment or two, beamed upon them so kindly.

For one, however, I should like to know what would have come out of that conversation, if it had been allowed to go on. Jeannette went home, and Angeline was again left to her own reflections, which were any thing but pleasant. It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon; and, there being no school, she had hoped to be able to ramble in the woods with some of her little companions.

But here she was disappointed, too, and this increased her peevishness; though the reason why she could not go was, because she did not learn her lesson in season, and that was her own fault. Toward night, when Mrs Standish had leisure to sit down to her sewing, she called Angeline, and reminded her of the ill-natured spirit she had shown in the early part of the afternoon. The child was rather ashamed of what she had said, it is true; but she tried to excuse her conduct.

”Every thing went wrong to-day, mother,” she said; ”I couldn't help feeling so. Oh, dear! I don't see how any body can be good, when things go in this way--I mean any body but Jeannette. I wish I was like her. It is easy for her to be good.”

”Your cousin has, no doubt, a very different disposition from yours,” said the mother. ”But it is much easier for you to be always good-natured and happy than you suppose, Angeline.”

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