"
The good woman was not of the same religious persuasion with her
husband; but this small matter never interrupted the most cordial
interchange of religious sympathy between them; and now his eyes filled
with tears, and he felt as he had often done before, that "the Spirit"
moved Sarah to give this testimony.
"Margaret," said he, turning to his daughter, "thee can learn a great
deal from that child, though she is much younger than thyself."
Margaret felt the slight pettishness which always attended a reference
to her age, and was about to ask her father how he knew her to be much
older than Emma Lindsay; but a more rational feeling had been roused in
her heart, and for once it predominated over this folly.
Margaret was not like her sister in the matter of romance and
abstraction from every-day scenes and pursuits, though she loved to
regard Susan as something wonderful, and show off her literary
productions. Margaret's foible, on the contrary, was too great a love
for the present world. Unfortunately, she had fixed her heart upon what
is too evanescent for the love of an immortal. Youth, beauty, and the
graces of fashion were the shadows at whose shrine she worshiped,
though the substance was gone. Thus precious time was spent in seeking
to repair its own breaches, and she saw not that they widened day by
day--saw not how the cunning device by which she sought to hide the
footprint of years, only left that foot-print more visible.
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