"Vexed I may be, but angry with you, never! Have I done anything to displease you?" "It is not so much what you do, Walter, as what I fear that you feel. It seems to me—I trust that I am wrong—but it seems to me that you almost hate Ned Goldie." "It is natural that I should—he is always insulting me!" "It is natural, Walter; but is it right? Father has so often told us that the adopted children of God must struggle against and overcome their evil nature, must try, with God's help, to gain a likeness to their Father—to be merciful as He is merciful, forgive as He forgives; if we do not try this, with faith and with prayer, we have no right to think ourselves God's children at all." "Can you prove that from the Bible?" said Walter. "I think that I can," replied Nelly, after a moment's thought. "It is written, 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.'" "That last verse has brought another into my mind, Nelly, which has often given me a feeling of uneasiness. It is from the same chapter, I believe. 'Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.'" "O Walter! You who know so well what is right, can you, in the face of such words, still nourish hatred!" "Nelly, I have no more power to love that boy than I have to move the cliffs into the sea!" exclaimed Walter. "Ask for power—ask in faith; remember the Lord's promise, 'By faith ye shall remove mountains,'—'All things are possible to him that believeth.' O Walter!" continued Nelly, speaking rapidly and earnestly, till the blood rose to her pallid cheek, "this is not a work to be set aside or delayed; remember that until you forgive you cannot be forgiven, that as long as you live in hate, you are living in danger, that your very prayer is turned against yourself when you say, 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us!'" Walter leaned his brow upon his hand, and remained for some moments buried in thought; then raising his head he said, "I believe that I might like Ned Goldie better if you and your father liked him less; but to see you welcome and speak kindly to one who does not even pretend to be religious, who is thoughtless, worldly, vain—" "O Walter! Only think how he has been brought up! How could you expect him to be otherwise!" "He is certainly likely to learn little good at home." "And would you have us drive him away when he comes in a spirit of kindliness to the house of a man like my father, whose words and example may, by little and little, draw him to better things."