"Every hour that fleets so slowly
Has its task to do or bear;
Luminous the crown and holy,
If thou set each gem with care."
ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.
ONE afternoon Mrs. Eden had been unusually silent, as they sat watching the flickering of the flames.
It had been a dull day. The darkness had closed in so early that it seemed to Lilla as if they had sat there for an hour or more, and she was getting terribly impatient. She had special reasons for wishing to be at work. Having received an invitation to spend the following evening with Clara and Nellie St. Ives, she was anxious to get double work done beforehand.
It was hard to be forced to doze away the hours to no purpose, and it is hardly to be wondered at if a spirit of rebellion was rising in her heart.
"Grandmother knows I want to study," she said to herself, "and she might be more considerate than to make me waste my time in this way."
Several times she was on the point of suggesting that she should light the lamp. But each time she looked up, the old lady's eyes were closed, and affection checked the words on her lips.
"She is old, and needs rest," it said.
So Lilla waited on, inwardly wondering how long.
At last Mrs. Eden's eyes opened, and she glanced at Lilla with a half-suppressed sigh.
Lilla looked up brightly, hoping that this was the signal to move.
"You have had a nice sleep, grandmother," she said, cheerfully.
"I have not been asleep," Mrs. Eden replied, "only resting. I am getting old now, and I did not sleep well last night."
"How was that?" inquired Lilla, anxiously. "Perhaps you overtired yourself yesterday, turning over those drawers."
"I did not hurry particularly," replied the old lady; "for I kept coming across so many relics of the past, and I could not help lingering over them. They will be yours soon, Lilla."
"I shall always treasure them, grandmother," replied the young girl, affectionately.
"Perhaps it was thinking about them that made me dream so much," continued the old lady, after a pause. "I thought I was back again among the hills where I lived when your grandfather and I were first married. There was the farmhouse, just as it stood on the side of the clough, and the spring at the bottom of the valley, and the stones where we so often sat together when your mother was a baby, watching the shadows creeping up. All just as it used to be when I was young."
"And you saw it all so plainly—"
"Ay! So plainly that it made me long to go back once more. But I shall never do that—nor see such hills again, until I stand upon the everlasting hills 'from whence cometh my help.'"
Lilla was silent. Her grandmother's words had awakened a new train of thought in her mind, and she forgot all about her lessons, until Margie came to know if she should bring tea.
She told Miss St. Ives about it next day, when they were alone together. They had had tea early, so as to make the evening as long as possible, and the twilight had scarcely yet taken the place of clear day.
"This is the time I usually waste," she said.
"How is that?" Miss St. Ives asked.
"Grandmother likes to sit still in the twilight," Lilla explained, "and I am compelled to wait, with my hands in my lap, whilst the sand runs out of my hour-glass."
"That gives you a little rest," said Miss St. Ives. "You must not go all on, all on."
"Oh! But indeed, I would rather be going on," pleaded Lilla. "I nearly get cross over it sometimes; you cannot think what a trouble it is to me."
"Cannot I?" said Miss St. Ives, stroking her hair fondly. "Do you know, I heard of somebody once, who used to 'waste' an hour every afternoon in a similar way, and sit up in the cold after every one was in bed to make amends."
(She did not say that it was herself of whom she was speaking; for "love vaunteth not itself.")
"But you must not think of doing that," she added. "'She' was fitting herself to earn her living. 'You' are only trying to make the most of your time."
"But half-an-hour a day is three hours a week," said Lilla. "Twelve hours a month. Twelve whole working days in the year. Too much to waste!"
"Are you quite sure it is 'waste'? What are you trying to learn?"
Lilla looked surprised. "French and German, and drawing and music," she answered.
"Is that all?"
"English, of course," said Lilla, "and everything that a lady ought to know. That is why I am so anxious not to lose time. I want to begin Italian by-and-by, if you will teach me. I want to be great."
"What is being great?" asked her friend.
Lilla did not reply directly; then she answered slowly: "I don't exactly know."
Miss St. Ives was silent for several minutes, too, before she spoke. Then she said: "Two things about it I can tell you. Mere 'learning' can never produce true greatness, and 'there is no royal rto it.'"
Lilla looked puzzled, and a thoughtful expression came over her face.
"These 'wasted hours,'" continued her friend, "have been teaching you more than all your —except 'one'—could teach you. You have been learning how to be patient and give up your own way in order to minister to another. Do you see that tree at the bottom of the garden?"
Miss St. Ives pointed to a tall wych-elm in the hedge that bounded their little garden. The autumnal blast had not left a single leaf upon its graceful boughs, but a strong plant of ivy had twined its arms around the trunk, casting a thick mantle of green around its desolate old age.
"I often think that we young people are like the ivy," she said. "There is so little enjoyment in the lives of the aged and infirm, unless we cling to them and spread our young green leaves around them. But we have to learn to do it. And it is often far more difficult than French or German because it involves self-forgetfulness and patience. But it comes far nearer leading us to true greatness."
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