And now, after years of schooling and training, Aunt Faith and her
children were all together at home in the old stone house by the
lake-shore, to spend a summer of freedom away from books and rules.
Hugh was to leave her in the autumn to enter upon business life with a
cousin in New York city, and Sibyl had been invited to spend the
winter in Washington with a distant relative; Grace was to enter
boarding-school in December, and Tom,--well, no one knew exactly what
was to be done with Tom, but that something must be done, and that
speedily, every one was persuaded. There remained only Bessie, "and
she is more wilful than all the rest," thought Aunt Faith; "she seems
to be without a guiding principle; she is like a mariner at sea
without a compass, sailing wherever the wind carries her. She is
good-hearted and unselfish; but when I have said that I have said all.
Careless and almost reckless, gay and almost wild, thoughtless and
almost frivolous, she seems to grow out of my control day by day and
hour by hour. I have tried hard to influence her. I believe she loves
me; but there must be something wrong in my system, for now, at the
end of ten years, I begin to fear that she is no better, if indeed,
she is as good as she was when she first came to me, a child of six
years. I must be greatly to blame; I must have erred in my duty. And
yet, I have labored so earnestly!" Another tear stole down Aunt
Faith's cheek as she thought of the heavy responsibility resting upon
her life. "Shall I be able to answer to my brothers and sisters for
all these little souls?" she mused. "There is Hugh also. Can I dare to
think he is a true Christian? He is not an acknowledged soldier of the
Cross; and, in spite of all the care and instruction that have been
lavished upon him, what more can I truthfully say than that he is
generous and brave? Can I disguise from myself his faults, his
tendencies towards free-thinking, his gay idea of life,--ideas, which,
in a great city, will surely lead him astray? No; I cannot! And yet he