“Well, I don’t see what business it is of yours, anyhow.  If young ladies hain’t nothin’ better to do than meddle with other folks’ children, they’d better let that be!”

“What an impertinent woman!” said Stella, quite loud enough for her to hear.  “Lucy, can’t you come away and let her alone?”

But Lucy, though a good deal discomposed by her reception, was determined not to be easily moved from her object; and having by this time remembered her conciliatory resolve, she said, as quietly as she could: 

“Mrs. Connor, my father is Mr. Raymond, the clergyman.  I came to see if you would let Nelly come to our house every day to learn to read.  It’s a great pity she shouldn’t know how.”

“I don’t care who your father is,” retorted the woman in the same insolent tone.  “I don’t see what you’ve got to do with it, whether it’s a pity or not.  The child’s lazy enough already, without havin’ them idees put into her head; and better people than her do without book-learning.”

“Lucy, do come away!  I shan’t stop to listen to her impudence,” exclaimed Stella as she turned and walked away with a haughty air.  Mrs. Connor’s quick eye followed her, and she half muttered to herself, “A city gal!” Then, taking up the pail which Nelly had set down, she went into the house without vouchsafing another look at Lucy, who, seeing the uselessness of pressing her point, hastened to join her cousin.

“Now you see, Lucy, you only get yourself insulted trying to do any good to such people,” said Stella triumphantly.  “I remember one of Sophy’s friends once wanted her to go visiting poor people with her, and papa said he wouldn’t have her go on any account; it was all nonsense running all sorts of risks to do good to people who didn’t want it.”

“But it wasn’t Mrs. Connor, but Nelly, that I wanted to do good to, and she can’t help what her odious stepmother does.  Only think what it must be to live with her!”

“I’d run away!  But you see Nelly herself didn’t seem to care about learning to read.”

“Because she didn’t know the good of it,” replied Lucy.  “But what should you or I have done if we hadn’t been made to learn, whether we liked it or not?”

“That’s quite different.  This girl will always have to work, I suppose, and would get on well enough without learning to read.  I know mamma was always complaining that our servants were reading trashy novels, that filled their heads with nonsense and made them discontented.”

“But you could have given them something better to read,” suggested Lucy.

Stella said nothing in reply to this; nor did she enlighten Lucy as to the fact that in reading “trashy novels” the servants were only following their young mistresses’ example.  Lucy in the meantime was thinking what up-hill work doing good was, and how hard it was to know how to do it.  Suddenly she remembered her motto; she had been forgetting that the difficulties of the way were to be met in a strength not her own.  Perhaps it was because she had not first asked for that strength, that she had met with so little success; and she regretted having so soon departed from her resolution of “looking to Jesus” in everything.