: Timid Lucy by Baker Sarah S Sarah Schoonmaker - Christian life Juvenile fiction; Siblings Juvenile fiction; Sunday school literature; Fathers and daughters Juvenile fiction; Teasing Juvenile fiction; Physicians Family relationships Juvenile fiction; Timidi

@FreeBooksThu 08 Jun, 2023

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ard to the meeting with pleasure; but she filled her mind with wicked, envious thoughts.

Do my young friends ever think whether they have roused wrong feelings in their companions? Two children can hardly talk together for half an hour without having some influence over each other, for good or for evil. The wrong thought that you have planted in the heart of a child may strengthen, and lead her to do some very wicked thing when you have forgotten the conversation.

A traveller once took some seeds of a very valuable plant with him on a journey. From time to time he cast them in the fields as he passed, and when he was far away they sprang up and were a great blessing to the people who owned the fields. A wicked traveller might have scattered the seeds of poisonous plants, which would have grown up to bring sickness and death to all who partook of them. Our life is like a journey, and whenever we talk with the people around us, we cast some seeds in their hearts, those which may spring up to bless them, or those which may cause them sin and sorrow.

THE ARRIVAL.

"Your sister is to be here at ten o'clock, and you must be ready to receive her," said Mrs. Maxwell to Lucy, a few days after the occurrences related in the last chapter.

"Shall I put on my white frock?" asked Lucy.

"Nonsense! child," was the reply; "isn't your sister to see you every day, from morning to night, in whatever you happen to have on? Go, get a clean apron, and make your hair smooth, that is all the dressing that little girls need."

This idea did not suit Lucy, for she was very anxious that her sister should love her, and she thought if she were prettily dressed at first, she would be more likely to do so. As she looked in the glass while arranging her hair, she thought she never had seemed quite so ugly. The fact was, she was beginning to have a fretful expression, which was spoiling her face. Lucy had never heard that scowls must in time become wrinkles. She was not at all pleased with her simple appearance, but there seemed no way for her to wear any ornament, not even a hair ribbon, for her soft light curls were cut so closely, that they could only lie like her waxen doll's, in golden rings about her head.

Lucy was fond of dress, and she would have liked to wear jewellery to school, as many of the scholars did, but Mrs. Maxwell never allowed it. The little girl had a bracelet of her mother's hair, and this she, one morning, clasped on her arm under her apron, to be worn on the outside after she reached school, where Mrs. Maxwell could not see it. As she stopped on the road to change it, there came a sudden pang into her heart--she was deceiving, and with the gift of her dead mother; perhaps that dear mother could see her now, she thought; and hastily putting down her sleeve, she hurried to school.

Though the bracelet was not displayed, and no one around her knew that she wore it, she felt guilty and unhappy until it was restored to the box in which it was usually kept. The remembrance of that day checked her this morning, as she was about to place on her slender finger a ring which had been her mother's, and in her child-like dress, she went down to wait for her sister.

She found Harty at the front window, but by no means in a fit condition to give Rosa a welcome, for his face had not been washed since breakfast, and his dark curls were, as usual, in wild confusion.

"Here comes Miss Prim!" he shouted, as Lucy entered, "as neat as a new pin. For my part, I don't intend to dress up for Rosa; she'll have to see me this way, and she may as well get used to it at once. I do wish she'd come, I am tired of waiting; the clock struck ten five minutes ago. Hurrah! there's the carriage!" he cried, and was out of the room in an instant.

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