It was the reverse of the picture to that over which Salome had been brooding,--her cousins' gaieties; Ada's happiness amongst flowers, and music, and sunshine; the lives of her old neighbours at Maplestone--the De Brettes, and the Fergusons, and many others--riding, dancing, and enjoying themselves. Stevens's words were of use. The old message seemed to be whispered to her soul: "Let patience have her perfect work." "Trust in the Lord, and be doing good ... verily thou shalt be fed."
It is not the perfect work of patience when trials are fretted at, and, as it were, _resented_; not the perfect work of patience when we tell ourselves we have borne a great deal, and are wonderfully brave, and that no one half appreciates us or all we do and endure. Ah no! The stuff of which the hidden saints of God are made is different to this. Theirs is the patience of Christ's faithful ones who can smile under the smart, and be tender and gentle to others even while the sword is piercing their own souls.
The child of whom I write was very young, and no wonder that she failed at times. The burden laid on her was heavy; and I cannot be surprised that Mrs. Atherton's misapprehension was hard to bear, and that the honest and pure desire to save her mother and her brother should be the cause of her kind friend thinking less highly of her than before made it doubly bitter. Then the story, on which she had built so many hopes, copied so carefully, kept free from blot or stain,--it was hard to see it again, the familiar words looking up at her as she scanned them with tear-dimmed eyes; the headings to the chapters, the little bits of verse or hymn, so carefully chosen. All in vain all her trouble, all her pains. And if no one took her story, and paid her for it, how should she be able to satisfy Philip Percival at Christmas?
The tangle of her life looked more bewildering than ever, and the child-heart within her was sick and sore with disappointment--a form of trial which the young find harder to meet than the old, because they have not the experience of past disappointments to guide them, and do not know how the sting is often taken away, as we live to say and to feel, "It was far better as it was, though I could not see it at the time."