Beth Woodburn | Page 8

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, and I don't believe there is a good home where she isn't loved. But it may not be your place to be just like 'Pansy.'"
"No; I want to be like George Eliot."
A graver look crossed his face.
"That is right to a certain extent. George Eliot certainly had a grand intellect, but if she had only been a consecrated Christian woman how infinitely greater she might have been. With such talent as hers undoubtedly was, she could have touched earth with the very tints of heaven. Beth, don't you see what grand possibilities are yours, with your natural gifts and the education and culture that you will have?"
"Ah, yes. Arthur, but then--I am drifting somehow. Life is bearing me another way. I feel it within me. By-and-by I hope to be famous, and perhaps wealthy, too, but I am drifting with the years."
"But it is not the part of noble men and women to drift like that, Beth. You will be leaving home this fall, and life is opening up to you. Do you not see there are two paths before you? Which will you