CHAPTER I.

A FIRST SORROW.

"I see a spirit by thy side, Purple-winged and eagle-eyed, Looking like a heavenly guide."

"If he bid thee bow before Crowned mind and nothing more, The great idol men adore— Though his words seem true and wise, Soul, I say to thee, Arise! He is a demon in disguise."

"PRISCILLA! Priscilla!" The name was repeated again and again, and yet no response was given; indeed the person so addressed seemed not to hear the speaker, if one could judge by the far-away, absorbed look of her eyes, as she stood at an open window with her arm round a curly-headed boy of some three or four years old.

The name seemed as if it ought to have belonged to some grown-up lady, and was suggestive of a Puritan maiden. And so, when at last the one thus addressed was roused to attention, and turned round saying, "Yes, Miss Vernon; what is it?" One did feel surprised to see that the owner of the name was a young girl of only some fifteen years. She was dressed, as was also the child by her side, in deep mourning; and a close observer would have seen that her large, thoughtful, gray eyes were filled with tears, which she was striving to keep from falling.

Her brown hair—the sort of brown which seems always to catch and glisten between every ray of sunshine—was brushed off a finely-formed brow, and hung in natural curls round her neck. She stood now waiting to hear what the speaker required of her. The answer to her question was given in a somewhat querulous tone—

"What is it, indeed? One would think you should know that without asking. Shut the window, of course, and don't keep little Claude standing at it until he catches his death of cold. You must really try, Priscilla, to exercise your wits a little; I can't be everywhere at once, and there is no one else to manage anything now."

The girl made no reply, but turned and shut the window, and her own eyes for a moment also, as if she would have gladly shut out the spring sunshine and everything else in the world just then; for her young heart was aching, oh! so sorely, and she seemed to have but one wish—to be lying in the quiet grave where her loved mother had been laid to rest just three days before.

"No one to superintend anything now but Miss Vernon."

Oh! She knew that well. No one to care much what she did; no one ever to take her into loving arms, stroke back the sunny hair, and call her "Sissy, darling Sissy." No; from henceforth she would have to live without a mother's loving caresses, and learn to answer to the stiff-sounding name of Priscilla. Even her brothers—she had four of them, all younger than herself—only called her Prissy; and her father always addressed her as Priscilla. "Sissy" had been the mother's pet name for her.

As she left the room, the tramp, tramp of boyish feet met her ear, and up the stairs bounded three handsome boys—Lewis, the oldest, nearly fourteen; Austin, about one year younger; and Archie, a delicate-looking child of seven. They all clustered round their sister, their faces bright as if no tears had so lately stained them, fresh from the open air, and their youthful spirits rising, as the spirits of the young, thank God, will rise even after days of deep sorrow.

"Prissy!" they said in one breath, "do come out; it is delightful in the garden. And there are violets in the grove by the river-side; do come and gather them."

But Prissy turned away. What cared she for violets now when the one for whom she loved to gather them was no longer here to receive them? No, there was nothing in the world for her to care for—no one to whom she could give pleasure; and unheeding the pleading looks of her young brothers, she went to her own room. Ah, Prissy! There were hearts as loving as yours waiting for a look of sympathy, a word of kindness; they, too, miss a mother's welcome, a mother's interest in their simple pursuits, and turn away disappointed.

"Prissy might have come," muttered Archie.

"Oh! She does not care," said Lewis.

Only the grave-eyed Austin said kindly, "Poor Pris! I daresay she misses mother more than any of us. She didn't mean to be unkind, I am sure."

In the meantime Prissy had sought the quiet of her own room, and drawn down the blind to shut out the sunshine, which seemed to mock her grief. Perhaps her conscience reproached her; it may be a still small voice whispered she had done wrong, had been selfish; but if so, she did not listen to it long, only bent her head on the table and cried bitterly.

Her Bible lay near, but she did not open it. She had not yet fully learned the comfort God's Word can give in sorrow. Prissy had been taught to reverence the Holy Scriptures as her father and mother did; to recognize God as the Creator and Upholder of the world, as an Almighty King, the Disposer of all events and the Ruler of the universe. But she rested there; not yet had she learned to know Jesus as a personal Saviour, nor God as a Father who cared for her and counted the very hairs of her head.

Only shortly before her death had even the amiable mother of the family learned to love the person of Christ. But that love once experienced, she had spoken words about Jesus to her children which had sunk deep into the hearts of some of them, and would one day bring forth fruit. On one of her last evenings on earth, she had spoken to the three oldest on the words "Thy kingdom come," expressing the earnest hope that they might each of them help on its coming.

It was Prissy who, with flashing eyes, said she would like to do so, adding it would be such a glorious work to be the means of elevating and bettering the world around her. In after days Priscilla remembered the unsatisfied look that crossed her mother's face as she spoke these words, and how she laid her hand caressingly on her shoulder, and was beginning to speak, when the door opened, and her father entering, the conversation dropped, and was not again resumed.

Professor Warner, one of the greatest mathematicians of his day, was a highly respected and in one sense a God-fearing man; but though fully recognizing the wonderful work of redemption, he had overlooked the need of love to the One who had redeemed him.

In family life, the doctor (for the honour of LL.D. had long been his) was reserved and deeply absorbed in his books. Domestic cares had entirely devolved on his wife, to whom he was fondly attached, though as a rule, he considered the whole female sex infinitely inferior to man.

And when the birth of his first child was announced to him, the expressive words, said with a sigh of disappointment, "Only a girl," was the sole remark he uttered.

"Only a girl!" repeated the incensed nurse. "As if a daughter in a house was not the best of blessings, better a hundred times than your great noisy boys. One would think the master was a heathen to speak like that, as if it was not through a woman that the greatest of all blessings descended to earth."

Despite nurse's indignation, the words "only a girl" became a sort of sobriquet to the little one; and when four boys followed in succession, and were warmly welcomed by their proud father, who prophesied great things of each one, whilst he might be said almost to overlook his first-born, friends and relations declared that, save to her loving mother, Priscilla Warner was indeed "only a girl."

A strangely quiet life she led, shut out as she was from all companionship with girls of her own age. Inheriting in no common degree her father's talents, Prissy, while still a child, became absorbed in studies, the nature of which even her mother was unaware of. For Mrs. Warner, busied with her children, husband, and household matters, superintending also many lesser details of her daughter's education, never knew that her spare hours were spent in the study of mathematics, for which she had a perfect passion.

The only member of the family who knew her secret was Austin; and boy though he was, he had been her first instructor in the rudiments of the science in which he as well as his brother Lewis were daily instructed by their father.

"Why not let me tell father you like these sort of things, Prissy?" he said one day.

But she implored him not to do so, having often heard her father express contempt for women bungling away at matters they could never properly understand.

"No, no," he said; "let a woman be a good housekeeper, and if she can read intelligibly, write plainly, keep a few accounts correctly, make shirts properly, and, if she likes, play on the piano or the guitar, and sing, that is all that can be expected of her. A woman has not brains for higher things."

At such a speech, child though she was, Prissy would flush up with indignation, and determine that one day she would prove to her father what a woman could do. To become famous, to do some grand work on earth, this was the girl's ambition, this the only secret she had kept from her loving mother. The day would come when she would constrain the father (whose praise she esteemed more than aught on earth, and for whose love she yearned) to own that she was something more than "only a girl."

But since the death of her mother, all ambitious thoughts had left the girl's head. She was stunned, and had scarcely even gone to the nursery to look at the little infant sleeping in the pretty cot prepared for her by the hands of the mother who had lived but to clasp her to her heart and give her a dying blessing. A sudden low cry from the room next hers now aroused Prissy, and lifting her head she listened. It was the baby, and she remembered with a pang of reproach, that that day she had never even asked after the child.

Ere doing so, she opened the Bible, her mother's last gift to her on her fifteenth birthday, just one fortnight ago. She turned to the page on which her name was written, and read below it the words, "Thy kingdom come," and these other words, "To every man his work."

"Yes," she said, and raised her head confidently as she spoke, "I have a work to do; and I will do it, and make my father proud of me yet. And how about the kingdom of God?"

She hesitated, then said, "Well, of course, if I study earnestly, I will be able to teach others, and thus elevate the thoughts of many, and so, by bettering the world, hasten on the coming of God's kingdom. Yes; that would be one way of doing it, I think so, surely. But I wonder what Austin would say? Mamma's words about the kingdom seemed to impress him so much, although he said little. I am sure that some way or other Austin will help on the kingdom of God; and so, I am determined, shall I. One thing is plain—I must no longer waste my time."

And forgetting her determination of going into the nursery, she went to the window, pulled up the blind, and taking down her slate and books was soon deep in solving some, to her, new and interesting mathematical problems.

She worked on, unheeding all around her, till darkness began to steal over the sky. And just as she was going to stop, a knock came to the door, and a servant said:

"Miss Warner, your father wishes to see you in his study as soon as possible."