Mamie's Watchword

"Anybody else want a little tossing about?" asked Tom. "Maggie?" fixing his laughing eyes on her face, quite sure what her answer would be.

"No – I – thank – you," said Maggie, with long-drawn emphasis on each word. "Tom, it's very plain that you don't know what sea-sickness is. Oo – o – o!"

"Poor Maggie! she shuddered at the very thought," said Tom.

"Papa, I'd like to go; could I?" asked Belle; and her father put her beside Bessie.

"Lily?" said Mr. Powers, holding out his hand towards her as he saw how wistful she looked.

But Lily shook her head.

"Mamma has forbidden me to go in the boat when it is on the sea, sir," she said.

"I think your mamma would not object here, dear, and with Mr. Bradford in the boat," said Mr. Powers.

"But she might, sir, and I think I'd better not," said obedient Lily. "She told me so very spressly not to go; and she only gave me leave to row this afternoon because Tom was going on the river."

"You are a dear, good child," said Mr Powers. "Mamie, are you for the boat?"

Mamie had, until this minute, been standing farther back than the other children, not actually on the breakwater, but as near to the forbidden ground as she could possibly be. She had never been so near to it before; and I am afraid that if her playmates had not known of her mother's command, she would have disregarded it altogether. She had no further thought for it when she heard Mr. Powers invitation, but started forward.

"Mamie," said Tom, "did not your mother forbid you to come upon the breakwater?"

"I can't go in the boat if I don't," pouted Mamie, stopping short where she was.

"Go back!" said Tom decidedly; "you cannot come in till you go down to the river. Stay with Lily and Maggie."

Mamie began to cry, but did not go back.

"Hi, there, you Mamie! come off the breakwater!" said Walter the next moment, dashing past her with a pair of oars; and Ned, following with another, said, "O you disobedient thing! if you're not headstrong. See if I don't tell mamma of you."

Mamie drew back, but feeling more than ever discontented and rebellious.

"It's too bad!" she said passionately, as she saw Mabel placed beside Belle and Bessie in the boat. "Everybody else can do every thing they want to, and I never can, and just for such stupid nonsense. There! I have been on the breakwater, and never had a bit of harm happen to me."

"Then you should be thankful for your mercies, and that your sins were not visited upon you," said Maggie solemnly.

"Yes," said Lily; "and the way you talk about your mother is just too much, Mamie."

"My dear children," said Mr. Powers, "do not spoil your afternoon's pleasure by fretfulness and quarrelling. If Mamie has, for a moment, forgotten her mother's orders, we will hope that she will be more careful another time. Come, we must walk on, or the boat will be at the river before we are."

But no; Mamie had not forgotten her mother's orders; she had only hoped that others had done so, and had herself wilfully disregarded them; and she was to find the truth of the old proverb, that "it is only the first step that counts." Her "watchword," as she called it, was quite forgotten or put aside now; it was no longer a check upon her; and she had made up her mind that she would disobey her mother and go again upon the breakwater at the first opportunity. The disappointment about the boat was more than her wilful little heart could or would bear; and she was indignant to think that the other children should have any pleasure of which she was deprived. She forgot that Lily had been obliged to give up the same; but that she had done so in a cheerful, docile spirit, which would not even run the chance of doing that which her mother would not approve.

So now Lily was gay, light-hearted, and full of spirits, chattering away merrily with Maggie and Mr. Powers as they crossed the beach on their way to the river where they were to meet the boat; while she, Mamie, came moodily and discontentedly behind, finding the sand heavy, the sun hot, the way "so long," and contriving to pick up half a dozen troubles in the course of the walk.

Things were no better after she was in the boat. It was "no fun on that stupid river;" the boat was "too crowded," although Mr. Bradford had left it now; one "pushed" her, and another "shoved" her; although if you had asked the other children, they would probably have said that it was she herself who did the pushing and shoving; and, in short, she made herself so disagreeable that Maggie afterwards privately confided to Bessie that she found Mamie "very much re-dis-improved, and like the Mamie of old days."

Her brothers were very much vexed with her, and even threatened to set her upon the river-bank, and leave her there by herself till they were ready to land; a threat which was, at last, carried out after she had become quite unbearable, and destroyed the pleasure of the whole party.

However, it was not much more agreeable to have her shrieking upon the river-bank than it was to have her grumbling in the boat; and she was taken in again on promise of better behavior.

This promise she fulfilled by sitting sullenly in her own corner of the boat without opening her lips; but the sounds which had come from them before were not so sweet as to make her companions regret her silence.

And for such a trifle Mamie was making herself and all about her uncomfortable; for the sake of this one forbidden pleasure set against so many comforts and enjoyments, she had forgotten, or wilfully put out of sight, all her good resolutions, and the remembrance of that Eye which watched every thought and feeling of her heart.

And yet, perhaps it was the consciousness of this, the guilty, uneasy conscience, which helped to make her so fretful and irritable, so hard to please, and captious to all about her. She was more ready, as we have seen, to test the conduct of others by her "watchword" than she was her own, now that the first novelty of it had worn off; but she could not quite put away the reproachful echo in her own heart.

VIII.

DISOBEDIENCE

LILY lay upon her back on the grass, her hands beneath her head, her eyes looking up into the sky. She had been lying thus some time, perfectly quiet, though Belle and Mamie sat beside her, playing with Lulu.

"Lily," said Belle at last, "what are you doing?"

"Thinking," answered Lily.

"Oh!" said Belle, surprised, perhaps, at this unusual process; for Lily generally had too many other things on hand to devote much time to thought; "you look as if you were thinking sober too."

"Well, yes," said Lily, without bringing her eyes down from the sky; "it was rather pious thinking I was doing."

"Would you mind telling us about it?" asked Belle, interested in the novelty.

"Oh, no, not at all," answered Lily. "I was thinking about conscience, and what a dreadful bother it is; but how it improves us, and how awful we'd be without it. It's a great mercy it was given to us, – to me, at least; or I should be all the time doing bad things. I think we might call conscience a bother blessing, because, though it is best for us to have it, it is a great inconvenience."

"Is it an inconvenience to you now?" asked Belle.

"No, not particular," said Lily, rolling over on her side, and plucking a head of thistle-down which grew close at hand. "Here, Lulu, blow this;" and she held it up that the little one might blow off the feathery seed-vessels; "not particular just now; but it was a great inconvenience before dinner. You see, Belle, – once more, Lulu; there they go! – you see I wanted to do a thing very much, but I did not feel sure mamma would let me, and she had gone to make a call, so I could not ask her; and I made up my mind I'd just do it; and do you know, I really believe I felt quite glad mamma was not there, so she couldn't forbid me; but then my conscience, – I suppose it was my conscience, – puff away, Lulu, – began to feel badly about it, and so I put it off till mamma came, and sure enough, she did forbid it. So, you see, there's a sign that conscience is a bother and a blessing too."

"Yes," said Belle approvingly.

"And then," proceeded Lily, thinking she might as well continue to give her companions the benefit of her moral reflections, "and then I was wondering what conscience was. We're so queer inside of us; our thoughts and our consciences and our remorses, and all that, you know."

"Yes," said Belle again. "Lily, I suppose conscience is a kind of 'Thou God seest me' feeling; don't you?"

"Why, yes," answered Lily, looking admiringly at Belle. "I never thought about it that way, but I believe it is; and that was a very clever idea of yours, Belle. Mamie, what do you think about it? You seem to have thought a good deal lately about God seeing you all the time."

"I don'no," muttered Mamie. The conversation was not pleasant to her, and she did not choose to take any part in it.

"I s'pose heathen can't have consciences as long as they don't know about God," said Belle thoughtfully.

"No, I'm quite sure they do not," said Lily confidently.

"Hafed, Mr. Stanton's servant boy, used to be a heathen," said Belle.

"Yes, but he's turned now, and a Christian," said Lily. "Belle, I know three turned heathen," with an air of great satisfaction in the extensiveness of her acquaintance with converted idolaters. "There's Hafed, and there's that Chinese pedler that mamma buys matches of, and there's that old black man on your papa's plantation who used to be a king in his own country. Belle, when that old black man gets to heaven, won't he make a queer, awfully ugly old angel?"

"He won't be black then," said Belle; "at least, I b'lieve he won't. But he's very good if he is so ugly; papa says so."