Page:Orange Grove.djvu/38

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

the view of Mr. Claremont. He remonstrated with Rosalind and tried to persuade her not to go there, but his reasons were unsatisfactory. There was no intention of mischief, and it could not hurt her in any possible way to sit on her steps, and she was sure that, living such a lonely life, she ought to be very grateful to them for singing her a song occasionally. If it made her cross, it was her fault, not theirs. Thus she argued.

Her father was not a man to be trifled with. He forbade her going, which at first overawed her, but when she joined her companions, who, as soon as school was over urged her to go with them again, she held a council in her own mind, and decided that it was very arbitrary in him to deprive her of enjoyments which were not denied to others, and she accompanied them, not, however, with a very keen sense of pleasure.

At dinner, in answer to her father's inquiry if she had obeyed him, she replied, no, but she had not done any thing wrong or out of the way, she thought, and was very sorry he should think otherwise, but she could not help it. That little will had gained ascendency much faster than he thought, but he did not forget that he had been a child, or that grown people are as unwilling to submit to what seems to them, oftentimes, the arbitrary demands of their Heavenly Father, and he maintained his self-control.

With a child's quick instinct she perceived the sacrifice of feeling it cost him to enforce her obedience, which' was another proof of his tender love,—a love that could suffer as well as enjoy,—and her