Chapter IV

“Annette,” said Mrs. Harcourt one morning early, “I want you to stir your stumps to-day; I am going to have company this evening and I want you to help me to get everything in apple pie order.”

“Who is coming, grandma?”

“Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Lasette.”

“Mrs. Lasette!” Annette’s eyes brightened.  “I hope she will come; she is just as sweet as a peach and I do love her ever so much; and who else?”

“Brother Lomax, the minister who preached last Sunday and gave us such a good sermon.”

“Is he coming, too?” Annette opened her eyes with pleased surprise.  “Oh, I hope he will come, he’s so nice.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Why, grandmother, I understood everything that he said, and I felt that I wanted to be good just like he told us, and I went and asked aunt ’Liza how people got religion.  She had been to camp-meeting and seen people getting religion, and I wanted her to tell me all about it for I wanted to get it too.”

“What did she tell you?”

“She told me that people went down to the mourner’s bench and prayed and then they would get up and shout and say they had religion, and that was all she knew about it.”

“You went to the wrong one when you went to your aunt ’Liza.  And what did you do after she told you?”

“Why, I went down in the garden and prayed and I got up and shouted, but I didn’t get any religion.  I guess I didn’t try right.”

“I guess you didn’t if I judge by your actions.  When you get older you will know more about it.”

“But, grandma, Aunt ’Liza is older than I am, why don’t she know?”

“Because she don’t try; she’s got her head too full of dress and dancing and nonsense.”

Grandmother Harcourt did not have very much faith in what she called children’s religion, and here was a human soul crying out in the darkness; but she did not understand the cry, nor look for the “perfecting of praise out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” not discerning the emotions of that young spirit, she let the opportunity slip for rightly impressing that young soul.  She depended too much on the church and too little on the training of the home.  For while the church can teach and the school instruct, the home is the place to train innocent and impressible childhood for useful citizenship on earth and a hope of holy companionship in heaven; and every Christian should strive to have “her one of the provinces of God’s kingdom,” where she can plant her strongest batteries against the ramparts of folly, sin and vice.

“Who else is coming, grandma?”

“Why, of course I must invite Mrs. Larkins; it would never do to leave her out.”

Annette shrugged her shoulders, a scowl came over her face and she said: 

“I hope she won’t come.”