her to be more like Himself. Then with a new, strange happiness in her
heart, that was at once the result of her self-conquest and the answer
to her prayer, she ran down cheerfully to do her work, singing in a
low tone the first verse of her hymn:

"I long to be like Jesus,
Meek, loving, lowly, mild;
I long to be like Jesus,
The Father's holy child."

Jenny and Jack came running in to help her--small assistants, whom it
required a good deal of patience to manage, neither allowing them to
hurt themselves or anything else, nor driving them into a fit of
screaming by despotically thwarting their good intentions; and
Bessie's patience was not always equal to the ordeal. But on this
occasion Mrs. Ford was left to pursue her dairy avocations in peace,
without being called by Jack's screams to settle some fierce dispute
between him and his sister, whose interference was not always very
judiciously applied.

The tea was soon ready,--not, however, before Mr. Ford and his two
eldest boys had come in, accompanied by Bessie's younger brother Sam,
next in age to herself, who ought to have been at Sunday school, but
had managed to escape going, as he often did. His mother being on
Sundays, as on other days, "cumbered with much serving," and his
sister generally remaining with some of her friends in the village
during the interval between the morning service and Sunday school, it
was comparatively easy for Master Sam to play truant, as indeed he
sometimes did from the day school, where his chances of punishment
were much greater, Mr. Ford being far more alive to the advantages of