Janets Love and Service | Page 5

read a bit out o' a letter the ither night to Miss Graeme and me."
"Janet," said her friend, "say the truth at once. The minister is bent on
this fule's errand, and you're encouraging in it."
"Na, na! He needs na encouragement from the like o' me. I would gie
muckle, that hasna muckle to spare, gin he were content to bide where
he is, though it's easy seen he'll hae ill enough bringing up a family
here, and these laddies needing more ilka year that goes o'er their heads.
And they say yon's a grand country, and fine eddication to be got in it
for next to nothing. I'm no sure but the best thing he can do is to take
them there. I ken the mistress was weel pleased with the thought," and
Janet tried with all her might, to look hopeful; but her truth-telling
countenance betrayed her. Her friend shook her head gravely.
"It might have done, with her to guide them; but it's very different now,

as you ken yourself, far better than I can tell you. It would be little else
than a temptin' o' Providence to expose these helpless bairns, first to the
perils o' the sea, and then to those o' a strange country. He'll never do it.
He's restless now; and unsettled; but when time, that cures most
troubles, goes by, he'll think better of it, and bide where he is."
Janet made no reply, but in her heart she took no such comfort. She
knew it was no feeling of restlessness, no longing to be away from the
scene of his sorrow that had decided the minister to emigrate, and that
he had decided she very well knew. These might have hastened his
plans, she thought, but he went for the sake of his children. They might
make their own way in the world, and he thought he could better do
this in the New World than in the Old. The decision of one whom she
had always reverenced for his goodness and wisdom must be right, she
thought; yet she had misgivings, many and sad, as to the future of the
children she had come to love so well. It was to have her faint hope
confirmed, and her strong fears chased away, that she had spoken that
afternoon to her friend; and it was with a feeling of utter
disconsolateness that, she turned to her work again, when, at last, she
was left alone.
For Janet had a deeper cause for care than she had told, a vague feeling
that the worldly wisdom of her friend could not help her here, keeping
her silent about it to her. That very morning, her heart had leaped to her
lips, when her master in his grave, brief way, had asked,--
"Janet, will you go with us, and help me to take care of her bairns?"
And she had vowed to God, and to him, that she would never leave
them while they needed the help that a faithful servant could give. But
the after thought had come. She had other ties, and cares, and duties,
apart from these that clustered so closely round the minister and his
motherless children.
A mile or two down the glen stood the little cottage that had for a long
time been the home of her widowed mother, and her son. More than
half required for their maintenance Janet provided. Could she forsake
them? Could any duty she owed to her master and his children make it

right for her to forsake those whose blood flowed in her veins? True,
her mother was by no means an aged woman yet, and her son was a
well-doing helpful lad, who would soon be able to take care of himself.
Her mother had another daughter too, but Janet knew that her sister
could never supply her place to her mother. Though kind and
well-intentioned, she was easy minded, not to say thriftless, and the
mother of many bairns besides, and there could neither be room nor
comfort for her mother at her fireside, should its shelter come to be
needed.
Day after day Janet wearied herself going over the matter in her mind.
"If it were not so far," she thought, or "if her mother could go with her."
But this she knew, for many reasons, could never be, even if her mother
could be brought to consent to such a plan. And Janet asked herself,
"What would my mother do if Sandy were to die? And what would
Sandy do if my mother were to die? And what would both do if
sickness were to overtake them, and me far-away?" till she quite hated
herself for ever thinking of putting the wide sea, between them and her.
There