'No, no, you need not, my dear,' said Lady Merton; 'it would be grievous and sinful indeed to say any such things of baptized Christians, trained up by the Church. The more you love them, and the more you hope for them, the better. You will learn how to hope and how to fear as you grow older.' 'But I have had as much experience as Lizzie,' said Anne; 'I am but a month younger, and school has been my Sunday delight ever since I can remember; Mamma, I think the Abbeychurch people must be very bad--you see they keep shop on Sunday; but then you spoke of our own people. It must have been my own careless levity that has prevented me from feeling like Lizzie; but I cannot believe--' 'You have not been the director of the school for the last few years, as Lizzie has,' said Lady Merton; 'the girls under your own protection are younger, their trial is hardly begun.' 'I am afraid I shall be disheartened whenever I think of them,' said Anne; 'I wish you had not said all this--and yet--perhaps--if disappointment is really to come, I had better be prepared for it.' 'Yes, you may find this conversation useful, Anne,' said Lady Merton; 'if it is only to shew you why I have always tried to teach you self-control in your love of the school.' 'I know I want self-control when I let myself be so engrossed in it as to neglect other things,' said Anne; 'and I hope I do manage now not to shew more favour to the girls I like best, than to the others; but in what other way do you mean, Mamma?' 'I mean that you must learn not to set your heart upon individual girls, or plans which seem satisfactory at first,' said Lady Merton; 'disappointment will surely be sent in some form or other, to try your faith and love; and if you do not learn to fear now that your hopes are high, you will hardly have spirit enough left to persevere cheerfully when failure has taught you to mistrust yourself.' 'I know that I must be disappointed if I build upon schemes or exertions of my own,' said Anne; 'but I should be very conceited--very presumptuous, I mean--to do so, and I hope I never shall.' 'I cannot think how you, or anybody who thinks like you, can ever undertake to keep school,' said Helen; 'I never saw how awful a thing it is, before; not merely hearing lessons, and punishing naughty children, I am sure I dread it now; I would have nothing to do with it if Papa did not wish it, and so make it my duty.' 'Nobody would teach the children at all if they thought like you, Helen,' said Anne; 'and then what would become of them?' 'People who are not fit often do teach them, and is not that worse than nothing?' said Helen; 'I should think irreverence and false doctrine worse than ignorance.' 'Certainly,' said Lady Merton; 'and happy it is, that, as in your case, Helen, the duty of obedience, or some other equally plain, teaches us when to take responsibility upon ourselves and when to shrink from it.'