Ada threw up her hands in amazement. "Why, it seems to me there is nothing here but attending to the poor from morning till night--cutting out work for the school, carrying broth to old women, lecturing little boys, visiting, reading--" "Ah! that is my mother’s doing more than mine." "My dear child, you do enough to constitute you a saint in any Romish calendar! If you have to repent of not doing more, what is to become of me who do nothing at all! Pray let us have some more tangible fault, if the microscope of your conscience is sufficiently strong to discover one in your conduct." "I am sometimes out of patience with the school children." "I should think so--though I never saw you impatient; but what can be so trying to the temper as teaching a batch of stupid rustics? You are only too good in having anything to say to the little dunces! Well, have you come to the end of your catalogue?" Flora waited for some moments before she added, with a little sigh, "Sometimes I wish for things which I ought not to wish for." "There’s no harm in wishing," said Ada quickly. "I wish for a thousand things every day: a harp, a diamond cross, a trip to Italy, a good horse--there is no end to my wishing, and it does nobody harm." "There sounds the bell for afternoon church," said Flora, rather relieved by the interruption. "I hope that you go in a very penitent frame!" cried Ada. The light words of the thoughtless girl did not grate on the ear of her companion as they ought to have done--as they would have done had Flora’s views been clearer, her knowledge greater, her self-examination more searching. Rather did they give a sensation of pleasure; for while Flora felt herself inferior to her cousin in knowledge of the world, and instinctively looked up to Ada in every matter of fashion, she was conscious of possessing a great superiority in whatever regarded the mind or the heart, and secretly compassionated the young London lady as worldly, frivolous, and ignorant of spiritual things. How far Ada deserved her cousin’s silent censure, I will not at present inquire; my subject is Flora herself--it is for such as Flora that my little book is written, for the thousands and tens of thousands who, in our peaceful, happy island, lead useful lives in the bosom of pious families, enjoying all the blessings of home. It is such whose patient consideration I would earnestly, affectionately entreat, as I endeavour to search a little deeper than the surface, which appears so fair, to see whether the ore which lies below is as precious as the landscape is lovely; whether--to change the metaphor--the seed of the Word has really fallen in honest and good ground, and is bringing forth a harvest of good works through the blessing shed on it from on high.