The Farringdons | Page 3

you aren't."
"That is not so," said Miss Farringdon--and she believed she was
speaking the truth; "if you serve God and do your duty to your
neighbour, you will find plenty of people ready to love you; and
especially if you carry yourself well and never stoop." Like many
another elect lady, Cousin Maria regarded beauty of face as a vanity,
but beauty of figure as a virtue; and to this doctrine Elisabeth owed the
fact that her back always sloped in the opposite direction to the backs
of the majority of people.
But it would have surprised Miss Farringdon to learn how little real
effect her strict Methodist training had upon Elisabeth; fortunately,
however, few elder people ever do learn how little effect their training
has upon the young committed to their charge; if it were so, life would
be too hard for the generation that has passed the hill-top. Elisabeth's
was one of those happy, pantheistic natures that possess the gift of
finding God everywhere and in everything. She early caught the
Methodist habit of self-analysis and introspection, but in her it did not
develop--as it does in more naturally religious souls--into an almost
morbid conscientiousness and self-depreciation; she merely found an
artistic and intellectual pleasure in taking the machinery of her soul to
pieces and seeing how it worked.

In those days--and, in fact, in all succeeding ones--Elisabeth lived in a
world of imagination. There was not a nook in the garden of the
Willows which was not peopled by creatures of her fancy. At this
particular time she was greatly fascinated by the subject of heathen
mythology, as set forth in Mangnall's Questions, and had devoted
herself to the service of Pallas Athene, having learned that that goddess
was (like herself) not surpassingly beautiful, and was, moreover,
handicapped by the possession of gray eyes. Miss Farringdon would
have been horrified had she known that a portion of the wood was set
apart by Elisabeth as "Athene's Grove," and that the contents of the
waste-paper basket were daily begged from the servants by the devotee,
and offered up, by the aid of real matches, on the shrine of the goddess.
"Have you noticed, sister," Miss Anne remarked on one occasion, "how
much more thoughtful dear Elisabeth is growing?" Miss Anne's life
was one long advertisement of other people's virtues. "She used to be
somewhat careless in letting the fires go out, and so giving the servants
the trouble to relight them; but now she is always going round the
rooms to see if more coal is required, without my ever having to remind
her."
"It is so, and I rejoice. Carelessness in domestic matters is a grave fault
in a young girl, and I am pleased that Elisabeth has outgrown her habit
of wool-gathering, and of letting the fire go out under her very nose
without noticing it. It is a source of thanksgiving to me that the child is
so much more thoughtful and considerate in this matter than she used to
be."
Miss Farringdon's thanksgiving, however, would have been less fervent
had she known that, for the time being, her protégée had assumed the
rôle of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that winter
was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however, was
Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a duty
when she was really only taking part in a performance; which merely
meant that she possessed the artist's power of looking at duty through
the haze of idealism, and of seeing that, although it was good, it might
also be made picturesque. Elisabeth was well versed in The Pilgrim's

Progress and The Fairchild Family. The spiritual vicissitudes of Lucy,
Emily, and Henry Fairchild were to her a drama of never-failing
interest; while each besetment of the Crosbie household--which was as
carefully preserved for its particular owner as if sin were a species of
ground game--never failed to thrill her with enjoyable disgust. She
knew a great portion of the Methodist hymn-book by heart, and
pondered long over the interesting preface to that work, wondering
much what "doggerel" and "botches" could be--she inclined to the
supposition that the former were animals and the latter were diseases;
but even her vivid imagination failed to form a satisfactory
representation of such queer kittle-cattle as "feeble expletives." Every
Sunday she gloated over the frontispiece of John Wesley, in his gown
and bands and white ringlets, feeling that, though poor as a picture, it
was very superior to the letterpress; the worst illustrations being better
than the best poetry, as everybody under thirteen must know. But
Elisabeth's library was not confined to the volumes above mentioned;
she regularly perused with interest two little periodicals, called
respectively Early Days and The