“AS we seem to be giving in our types youngest by youngest, it is Dora’s turn now to tell us which she has chosen,” said Lucius.
“Ah! Dora will have found out the most interesting type of all, Dora is so clever!” cried Elsie, who had great faith in the intelligence of the brighter of the twins.
All eyes were turned towards Dora as she sat in the shadow, but Dora’s own eyes were bent on the hearthrug. She had been so much taken up on that Sunday, first with her embroidery, then with the conversation between her mother and Lucius, and the painful struggle in her own mind with an upbraiding conscience, that Dora had not even thought of looking out for a type in Scripture.
“What have you chosen, Dora?” asked Lucius.
“I have not chosen any type yet, I have not had time,” stammered out Dora, confused and mortified to find herself behind even little Elsie, who looked astonished at the words of her sister.
“Not time! why, you have had as much time as any of us,” said Agnes. “What were you doing all the afternoon while mamma was at church?”
“Nothing particular,” said Dora, with a little confusion. Again a pang shot through the heart of the conscious girl for she knew that she was again staining her lips with untruth.
“You don’t mean to say that you were sitting from two o’clock till five, with your hands before you, and thinking about nothing at all,” said Lucius.
“Perhaps Dora was reading that interesting book about the poor French Protestants,” suggested Amy.
Dora did not speak. She was too well pleased, alas! that her family should believe that she had been thus engaged, though she knew that she had not so much as opened the volume in question.
“It would have been better, my love, for you to have entered into the occupation which interests your brothers and sisters,” said Mrs. Temple, in a tone of gentle reproof. “Even reading a nice Sunday book like the one Amy mentioned may become a selfish amusement, if it keeps us from adding a little to the general pleasure.”
“I never knew Dora take such a reading fit before,” muttered Lucius; “she generally likes to use her fingers more than her head.”
The remark was a very commonplace one, yet it added to Dora’s confusion. Mrs. Temple, noticing her daughter’s look of annoyance, though she attributed it to a different cause than the true one, turned the conversation by asking Agnes whether she had thought of a Scriptural type.