Beth Woodburn | Page 8

said Beth, "Marie de Vere, pretty, too. I
wonder what she will be like."
"I hope you will like her, Beth. She makes her home in Toronto, and it
would be nice if you became friends. You will be a stranger in Toronto,
you know, next winter. How nice it will be to have you there while I
am there, Beth. I can see you quite often then. Only I hate to have you
study so hard."
"Oh, but then it won't hurt my brain, you know. Thoughts of you will
interrupt my studies so often" she said, with a coquettish smile.
Clarence told her some amusing anecdotes of 'Varsity life, then went

away early, as he was going to leave the village for a day or two.
Beth hurried off to the kitchen to help Aunt Prudence. It was unusual
for her to give any attention to housework, but a new interest in
domestic affairs seemed to have aroused within her to-day.
The next day was Sunday, and somehow it seemed unusually sacred to
Beth. The Woodburn household was at church quite early, and Beth sat
gazing out of the window at the parsonage across the road. It was so
home-like--a great square old brick, with a group of hollyhocks beside
the study window.
The services that day seemed unusually sweet, particularly the
Sunday-school hour. Beth's attention wandered from the lesson once or
twice, and she noticed Arthur in the opposite corner teaching a class of
little girls--little tots in white dresses. He looked so pleased and
self-forgetful. Beth had never seen him look like that before; and the
children were open-eyed. She saw him again at the close of the
Sunday-school, a little light-haired creature in his arms.
"Why, Arthur, I didn't think you were so fond of children."
"Oh, yes, I'm quite a grandfather, only minus the grey hair."
It was beautiful walking home that afternoon in the light June breeze.
She wondered what Clarence was doing just then. Home looked so
sweet and pleasant, too, as she opened the gate, and she thought how
sorry she should be to leave it to go to college in the fall.
Beth stayed in her room a little while, and then came down stairs.
Arthur was alone in the parlor, sitting by the north window, and Beth
sat down near. The wind had ceased, the sun was slowly sinking in the
west, a flock of sheep were resting in the shadow of the elms on the
distant hill-slope, and the white clouds paused in the blue as if moored
by unseen hands. Who has not been moved by the peace and beauty of
the closing hours of a summer Sabbath? Arthur and Beth were slow to
begin conversation, for silence seemed more pleasing.

"Arthur, when are you going out as a missionary?" asked Beth, at last.
"Not for three or four years yet."
"Where are you going, do you know?"
"To the Jews, at Jerusalem."
"Are you sure you will be sent just where you want to go?"
"Yes, for I am going to pay my own expenses. A bachelor uncle of
mine died, leaving me an annuity."
"Don't you dread going, though?"
"Dread it! No, I rejoice in it!" he said, with a radiant smile. "One has so
many opportunities of doing good in a work like that."
"Do you always think of what you can do for others?"
"That is the best way to live," he answered, a sweet smile in the depths
of his dark eyes.
"But don't you dread the loneliness?"
"I will never leave thee nor forsake thee."
"Oh, Arthur!"--she buried her face for a moment in the cushions, and
then looked up at him with those searching grey eyes of hers--"you are
brave; you are good; I wish I were, too."
He looked down upon her tenderly for a moment.
"But, Beth, isn't your life a consecrated one--one of service?"
"It is all consecrated but one thing, and I can't consecrate that."
"You will never be happy till you do. Beth, I am afraid you are not
perfectly happy," he said, after a pause. "You do not look to be."

"Oh, yes, I am quite happy, very happy, and I shall be happier still by
and by," she said, thinking of Clarence. "But, Arthur, there is one thing
I can't consecrate. I am a Christian, and I do mean to be good, only I
can't consecrate my literary hopes and work."
"Oh, why not, Beth? That is the very thing you should consecrate.
That's the widest field you have for work. But why not surrender that,
too, Beth?"
"Oh, I don't know. I couldn't write like 'Pansy' does, it isn't natural to
me."
"You don't need to write like 'Pansy.' She has done splendid work,
though,