“Don’t think me humble-minded, Aunt Isobel, for I’m not.  Sometimes I feel inclined to think that ill-tempered people have more sense of justice and of the strict rights and wrongs of things—­at least if they are not very bad,” I interpolated, thinking of Mr. Rampant—­“than people who can smile and look pleasant at everything and everybody like Lucy Lambent, who goes on calling me darling when I know I’m scowling like a horned-owl.  Nurse says she’s the ’sweetest tempered young lady she ever did know!’ Aunt Isobel, what a muddle life is!”

“After some years of it,” said my aunt, pulling her lashes hard, “I generally say, What a muddle my head is!  Life is too much for it.”

“I am quite willing to put it that way,” sighed I, laying my muddle-head on the table, for I was tired.  “It comes to much the same thing.  Now—­there is my great difficulty!  I give in about the other one, but you can’t cure this, and the truth is, I am not fit to go to a confirmation-class, much less to the Holy Communion.”

“Isobel,” said my aunt, folding her hands on her lap, and bending her very thick brows on the fire, “I want you to clearly understand that I speak with great hesitation, and without any authority.  I can do nothing for you but tell you what I have found myself in my struggles.”

“Thank you a thousand times,” said I, “that’s what I want.  You know I hear two sermons every Sunday, and I have a lot of good books.  Mrs. Welment sends me a little book about ill-temper every Christmas.  The last one was about saying a little hymn before you let yourself speak whenever you feel angry.  Philip got hold of it, and made fun of it.  He said it was like the recipe for catching a sparrow by putting salt on its tail, because if you were cool enough to say a hymn, there would then be no need for saying it.  What do you think, Aunt Isobel?”

“My dear, I have long ago given up the idea that everybody’s weak points can all be strengthened by one plaster.  The hymn might be very useful in some cases, though I confess that it would not be in mine.  But prayer is; and I find a form of prayer necessary.  At the same time I have such an irritable taste, that there are very few forms of devotion that give me much help but the Prayer-Book collects and Jeremy Taylor.  I do not know if you may find it useful to hear that in this struggle I sometimes find prayers more useful, if they are not too much to the sore point.  A prayer about ill-temper might tend to make me cross, when the effort to join my spirit with the temptation-tried souls of all ages in a solemn prayer for the Church Universal would lift me out of the petty sphere of personal vexations, better than going into my grievances even piously.  I speak merely of myself, mind.”

“Thank you,” I said.  “But about what I said about hating.  Aunt Isobel, did you ever change your feelings by force?  Do you suppose anybody ever did?”

“I believe it is a great mistake to trouble one’s self with the spiritual experiences of other people when one cannot fully know their circumstances, so I won’t suppose at all.  As to what I am sure of, Isobel, you know I speak the truth.”