Growing Up: A Story of the Girlhood of Judith MackenzieConklin, Nathaniel, Mrs.
General
Growing Up: A Story of the Girlhood of Judith Mackenzie
Conklin, Nathaniel, Mrs.
Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction; Girls -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Sitting down on the foot of the bed opposite the bureau, she leaned
over the red rail that formed the foot-board and watched and waited.
Of course the fire was out. Yes—no—yes, there it was again—the curl
of smoke; the water had done no good; the fire was too deep in for
water to get through the crack; the spark had fallen away down _in_.
In despair she burst into tears; but the tears kept her eyes from
watching the smoke; she brushed her eyes clear and looked; it was
there, and it grew and grew, not dense, not black, but real smoke,
and it kept coming and coming.
“O Father in Heaven,” she cried aloud, “_please stop it; please stop
it_. I don’t know what to do.”
Still the smoke was there. Did God see it? Didn’t he care? Would he
not answer because she had been so disobedient and because she had
hated Aunt Rody?
“I will be good after this,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to be hateful.
I will give up my will to Aunt Rody _when she is right_.” It _was_
fainter; no, there it was again. Would the fire never go out?
Aunt Rody knew best. Perhaps Aunt Rody knew best about other things.
Perhaps she _was_ a Christian, a real disciple, only a very queer one.
Now it was so faint, so faint she could not see it at all. It was not
because the tears were in her eyes; it was gone. It _was_ gone. She
felt all along the crack with her finger. It was not hot. And the
smoke _was_ gone. The fire was out; it was all burned out inside that
crack.
And Aunt Rody need never know. And she would never, never, never
disobey Aunt Rody again. Her mother had always told her she loved her
own will too much; she would never love it so much again; she would
say—what would she say? She knelt on the strip of rag-carpet where
she had seen the girl kneel in her “picture” and repeated softly,
through fast falling tears: “Our Father, who art in Heaven; Hallowed
be thy name; Thy Kingdom come: _Thy will be done_; that was it; _Thy
will be done_, Thy will be done,” she repeated joyfully over and
over. “Make me love Thy will best. Make my will a good will, a sweet
will, _an obedient will_.”
She did not know then that it was her turning point. The next day she
_loved_ to obey Aunt Rody. Aunt Rody did not ask her to do one
disagreeable thing; and it was the queerest thing, Aunt Rody said,
when she asked if she might sweep the sitting-room, “That’s a good
girl.”
She did not tell any one about her fright over the match excepting
John Kenney, Miss Marion’s brother, and Jean Draper. He had come to
the parsonage for vacation. He was a big, handsome boy, as manly as
the minister himself, and as gentle as a girl; one afternoon, when
she and Jean Draper went off on a long stroll with him, and they
began to tell stories of adventure of what they had read, or of what
happened to them, she told her story about how the smoke got in a
crack.
She only said she liked Aunt Rody better after that. She could not
tell about her prayer. But John would have understood, she was sure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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