CHAPTER III.

A Service of Obedience.

"I TOLD you he'd come, I told ye, mistress!" exclaimed Michael Garth, in a tone of triumph, as he glanced in through the open cottage door at his wife, who was darning her good man's stockings.

Up started old Martha at the words, the threaded needle dropped from her fingers, and the stockings from her knee.

"Maybe he's only taking a turn down the road," she began, as she hurried to the door.

But, before the sentence was finished, Harry Maude was striding up the narrow garden path which led up to the cottage, and, the next moment, he was heartily shaking the brown, hard hand of old Michael.

"So glad to see you both! Shall I come in?" asked Harry.

And, as Martha's smiles and curtseys gave the reply, the officer bent his tall head, and entered through the low doorway into the cottage.

Martha, in a flurry of pleasure, dusted with her apron the arm-chair which she had already twice dusted that morning; but Harry was too gallant to deprive the old dame of her accustomed seat, and took possession instead of a rush-bottomed chair. Michael stirred the wood-fire to a blaze, such being perhaps his idea of a warm welcome, and stood with his cap in his hand, pleasure written in every line of his wrinkled, but still rosy face.

"How well I remember this cottage!" cried Harry. "And what pleasant visits I used to pay here when I wanted my fishing-rod mended, or my kite put to rights, or advice about my sick rabbits! There is my old friend the owl with his staring glass eyes, the sampler framed on the wall, with the flowering tree worked on each side, and the text down the middle; the little crockery cow on the mantelpiece, the old prints of George III., Wellington, and Nelson, the kettle on the hob, the big log on the hearth, just as I used to see them all here ten years ago!"

"I wonders as how you han't forgotten such like things, Master Harry," said Mrs. Garth, with a smile of gratification, "such a power of fine sights as you must have come across in your travels."

"I have seen a good deal," observed Maude, "for I have been in all the four quarters of the globe since I last crossed this threshold. But of all the fine sights which have met my eyes, there was not one that pleased me like that of the faces of kind old friends."

"Ye'll not be leaving home in a hurry again, I take it, master," said old Michael Garth.

"I hope only for a very short time, but I must go up to London to-morrow."

"Go up to Lunnon!" repeated both the Garths in surprise; and Martha added, "Why, sir, ye only came from it yesterday."

"I must return thither to-morrow for all that, but only to remain there one night."

"It must be a mighty business to keep you tossing to and fro like a football, a hundred and fifty miles each way, as if Lunnon weren't farther off than yon church," said Garth. The honest labourer had never made one such journey in the course of all his long life.

"I should ha' thought as how ye'd ha' needed a little rest," observed Martha.

"I do need rest, for I've been much knocked about," replied the young sailor, "and I'd fever in the Channel, and have not yet picked up my strength. But for all that, sick or well, I'm bound for London to-morrow."

"Maybe you've a lot of money to get there," said old Michael Garth.

"Not a farthing; not even will my travelling expenses be paid," replied Harry.

"But sure and sartain, sir, ye can't go to-morrow, it's Miss Lily's wedding-day!" exclaimed Martha. "Don't you wish to be at the marriage?"

"I do wish it much," said Harry Maude. "It is a disappointment to me not to be present, but I am obliged to give up the wedding, for the train starts for London at eleven."

"Well—to be sure!" murmured Martha Garth, lifting up her hands in surprise.

Michael's curiosity was fairly aroused. "What, going all the way to Lunnon, and just for one night, and the wedding given up, too," he muttered. "Might I be bold enough to ask, Master Harry, what is hurrying ye hither and thither like this?"

"Simply an invitation to dinner," replied Harry, smiling at the looks of astonishment exchanged between Garth and his wife.

"Why, sir, ye can ha' dinners and to spare here—every house open to ye within ten miles round!" exclaimed Michael. "Sure and sartain, if I was you, I'd not go a-travellin' three hundred miles for one dinner!"

"Perhaps if you had received such an invitation as I have," replied the young naval officer, "you would hold a different opinion."

And, leaning back in his chair, Harry drew from his breast-pocket a large envelope with a red seal bearing the royal arms, which enclosed a card which he took out, and handed across the deal table to Martha Garth.

The old lady began fumbling for her spectacles, but her husband, whose sight was better, was at her side stooping to look over the card, before Martha had fixed her glasses on her nose.

"Her Majesty's commands! Well—if ever!" exclaimed the labourer.

"Dearie heart! To dine with the Queen! What an honour!" cried Martha, involuntarily half-rising from her seat.

"I don't wonder ye couldn't put aside such an invitation as that, sir," said Michael, "let what might come in the way!"

"My Sovereign's invitation is a command," replied the loyal young officer. "At whatever inconvenience or cost, loss of time or of pleasure, I am bound to obey it."

"And you'll be proud to obey it, I'll answer for that," said Michael Garth; "you'd go to the Queen's table, if you'd to travel all the three hundred miles a-foot, with shoes, or without 'em."

"Would you do so?" inquired Harry, turning a quick searching eye upon the old man.

"The Queen's not like to ask such as me," replied Michael, with a short laugh, and he looked down on his fustian jacket and hob-nailed boots.

"But if our Sovereign were to do so, if that card of invitation had come to you in your cottage with your and your wife's names upon it, so that there could be no room for mistake; would you have thrown it aside, and let the day pass without so much as taking any notice of the gracious message from your Queen?"

"No, surely," replied both of the Garths in a breath.

"Though," Martha added, "neither of us be fit at all to appear before Her Majesty. We should feel strange enough, I take it, amongst all the lords and ladies; we'd be no fit company for them."

"But ye see, wife," observed old Michael, "if the Queen invited poor folk like we, she'd not expect much from us, she'd put up with our country ways; but, if we disobeyed her, and flouted her kindness, the Queen, mind ye, might be angered."

"And with just cause," observed Harry Maude. "Now, will you forgive me," he continued, leaning his arms on the table, and bending forward in the earnestness of his speaking, "will you forgive me if I remind you that you both have received—not merely once—but very many times, a most gracious invitation, which is also a command, from your Heavenly Sovereign, the King of kings? He bids you appear before Him at His table to partake of His Holy Supper; you know better than I can know, how you have received the gracious invitation."

Both the cottagers were taken aback by this sudden turn which the conversation had taken.

Mrs. Garth uneasily twisted about in her fingers the card which she still retained.

Michael was silent for some moments before he replied, "Ye see, sir, there's such a difference!"

"A difference indeed," said the naval officer; "we are a thousand times more bound to obey a Heavenly than an earthly monarch, and the honour and privilege of being bidden to God's table are a thousand times greater than those of appearing at the Queen's."

"I don't gainsay that, sir, I don't gainsay it," replied Garth; "but there be some difficulties, you see—"

Harry waited for the labourer to finish his sentence, but as he either could not, or would not, the officer spoke again.

"I suppose that there are few duties, Michael, which we might not find some excuse for neglecting. For instance," he held out his hand for the card which was returned to him by Martha, "I might find plenty of excuses for not obeying my Queen by going up to London to-morrow. I might plead that I had just returned to my home after a very long absence, that my family were unwilling to part with me, that I was weary of travelling, that I was expected to attend at a wedding, and was very anxious to do so. I might make such excuses, and others besides, and even persuade myself that they were good ones; but in truth not one of them, nor all of them put together, would really be sufficient to acquit me of disloyal, undutiful neglect of my Queen. Now, my friends, suffer me to entreat you to ask yourselves honestly, as in the sight of the Lord, will your excuses for never attending His Holy Supper be such as you will venture to plead when you stand at the last great Day in the immediate presence of your King?"

"I never had it put to me afore like that," said Garth, looking fixedly into the fire.

"There are various lights in which we may regard the Lord's Supper," continued Harry, "the first and most simple, perhaps, is this; it is a feast to which His faithful subjects are specially called by the great King, whose invitations are commands. Turn to the parable which the Lord himself has given to us. * Observe the gracious invitation, 'Come, for all things are now ready.' Notice the excuses made by those who should have been joyful guests, the ground bought, the oxen to be proved, the wife that had lately been married. Were these excuses accepted?"

* Luke xiv.

Martha looked troubled and uneasy. "I al'ays say as how we should go up to the Table one of these days," she said, "but somehow or other, the time seems never to come."

"I fear that you are not sufficiently in earnest on the subject," observed Harry. "Were a message to be brought to you from our Queen, your mind would be fixed upon it, you would scarcely think of anything else."

"You see, sir," said Michael Garth, "if we neglected the Queen's invitation, we should never be likely to get a second; but there's not a month as passes but we have an opportunity of staying to Communion, and so, it may be wrong, I don't deny it, but one's more inclined to put off."

"Ah! You wait for the convenient season," observed Harry, gravely, "forgetting that present neglect may be sin, and that by future obedience, if we be permitted to live to show it, we cannot make up for the past. Opportunities lost are blessings thrown away, we cannot recall them again. Let us not forget, in regard to taking the Sacrament, that the same voice which bade us watch and pray and keep the commandments, said also, 'This do in remembrance of Me.'* And had we no other reason for partaking of the Holy Communion, no special benefits to hope for, it should suffice to make us do the bidding of our King that this is A SERVICE OF OBEDIENCE."

* Luke xxii. 19.