“I often think,” she said, when we had hung it up and were looking at it, “that it is not in our Lord’s Cross and Passion that His patience comes most home to us.  To be patient before an unjust judge or brutal soldiers might be almost a part of self-respect; but patience with the daily disappointments of a life ‘too good for this world,’ as people say, patience with the follies, the unworthiness, the ingratitude of those one loves—­these things are our daily example.  For wounds in the house of our enemies pride may be prepared; wounds in the house of our friends take human nature by surprise, and GOD only can teach us to bear them.  And with all reverence I think that we may say that ours have an element of difficulty in which His were wanting.  They are mixed with blame on our own parts.”

“That is why you have put that text for me?” said I. My aunt nodded.

I was learning to illuminate, and I took much pride in my room.  I determined to make a text for myself, and to choose a very plain passage about ill-temper.  Mrs. Welment’s books supplied me with plenty.  I chose “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,” but I resolved to have the complete text as it stands in the Bible.  It seemed fair to allow myself to remember that anger is not always a sin, and I thought it useful to remind myself that if by obstinate ill-temper I got the victory in a quarrel, it was only because the devil had got the victory over me.  So the text ran full length:—­“Be ye angry, and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath:  neither give place to the devil.”  It made a very long scroll, and I put it up over my window, and fastened it with drawing-pins.

CHAPTER VI.

THEATRICAL PROPERTIES—­I PREPARE A PLAY—­PHILIP BEGINS TO PREPARE THE SCENERY—­A NEW FRIEND.

Philip was at school during the remainder of the year, but I tried to put my good resolves in practice with the children, and it made us a more peaceful household than usual.  When Philip came home for the Christmas holidays we were certainly in very pleasant moods—­for an ill-tempered family.

Our friends allow that some quickness of wits accompanies the quickness of our tempers.  From the days when we were very young our private theatricals have been famous in our own little neighbourhood.  I was paramount in nursery mummeries, and in the children’s charade parties of the district, for Philip was not very reliable when steady help was needed; but at school he became stage-manager of the theatricals there.

I do not know that he learned to act very much better than I, and I think Alice (who was only twelve) had twice the gift of either of us, but every half he came back more ingenious than before in matters for which we had neither the talent nor the tools.  He glued together yards of canvas or calico, and produced scenes and drop-curtains which were ambitious and effective, though I thought him a little reckless both