MABEL'S "INASMUCH."

NURSE HAMMOND was in a fidgety state of mind; it was an hour past the time when Miss Mabel should have returned from taking her music lesson. As it was a rare thing for Mabel to be otherwise than prompt, her old nurse was growing uneasy. Nurse Hammond had been in the Taylor family ever since Mabel, who was now a young lady of sixteen, was born. All through the years of babyhood and childhood the good woman had watched over her young charge, and now, when she had grown almost to womanhood, she still exercised the same tender, loving watchfulness.

Mabel Taylor's mother died before the child had learned to speak the sweet name of mother. And in all the years that followed, Mabel had only Nurse Hammond to go to for love and petting. Mr. Taylor was a kind father, but he was always at the office, and Mabel saw little of him. And besides, the loss of his wife had cast a shadow over his life which he had never been able to throw off.

At length the anxious woman could endure the anxiety no longer, and putting on her bonnet, and the soft white shawl which Mabel's own fingers had knitted for her, she started out to "see what had become of the child."

The Taylor home was set down in the edge of a lovely piece of woodland; a park, a more pretentious man would have called it. That which was only a village when Mr. Taylor's father built the house, had grown into a city, and had stretched itself out to the boundary of the Taylor place, where it was forced to stop; for Mr. Taylor would not yield an inch of the homestead, nor suffer the woodland to be cleared. By a path through the woods Mabel was accustomed to make a short cut to the house of the music professor whose pupil she was, and Nurse Hammond hoped by taking this path to meet her charge. Sure enough, she came upon her suddenly. The young girl had thrown herself upon the ground beside an old, half-decayed log, and was quietly weeping. The woman who stood watching her for a moment knew that there had been a storm of tears, and that this quiet had come only after the violence of the grief was spent. Hat and music-roll lay upon the ground, and the attitude of the girl was one of dejection.

"What is the matter with my darling child?" asked the kind-hearted woman.

"O, Nursie!" exclaimed Mabel. "It is perfectly dreadful," and she burst into another flood of tears.

"What is it? What is the matter?"

"Oh! I have been down to papa's office, and he told me about it, and I can't stand it—I don't want her!"

"Can't stand what? Don't want who?" and Nurse Hammond sat down beside Mabel and tenderly stroked the fluffy brown hair. "Do tell me about it!"

"You'll say just as papa did, that I am very silly, and very selfish, but I can't help it. Papa got the letter this morning, and he will tell you about it to-night. Maybe he would think I ought not to speak of it until he tells you himself; but perhaps he won't mind, and oh! Maybe you will want to go away to your daughter's when she comes. Dear, dear! I wish she wasn't coming."

Nurse was distressed. What was the child talking about? Could it be—a suspicion flashed through her mind—could it be that Mr. Taylor was going to bring home a new wife? No; she could not think that, yet what did it mean? She waited, and presently Mabel sat up, saying:

"There! I'm done with fretting; but I don't like it at all. Oh! I haven't told you yet," and then she laughed hysterically. "Well, papa had a letter, this morning, from his brother, my uncle John, and he is coming next week to bring cousin Emma here to stay a long time, maybe always. He is going abroad for a business house in Chicago, and maybe he will remain abroad as the agent, and then she'll have to stay with us. Uncle John says he cannot bear to think of leaving her with strangers, and papa telegraphed a reply, and told him to bring her to us."

"Of course, Childie, what would he do?" asked Nurse Hammond.

"He might send her to a boarding school, I should think," replied Mabel.

Nurse tried to reason with Mabel, though her own heart sank at the prospect of having their quiet times spoiled by the coming of a stranger, and her own cares increased, but she gave no sign of this disturbed state of feeling. She tried to comfort the girl, telling her how pleasant it would be to have a companion, and how sad it was for a girl, motherless, like herself, to be separated from her father; and suggesting that it might not be so bad, after all. But Mabel could not see any bright side to the picture.

However, by the time her cousin arrived she had schooled herself into receiving her with composure, and even something like cordiality. Emma was a brown little thing, with sad eyes and stooping figure, several years younger than Mabel. She certainly was not an attractive child, and Mabel said to herself a dozen times a day,—"I cannot love her! I shall never be reconciled to having her here."

One day nurse said,—

"She follows one with those great hungry eyes, and it seems as though she was just hungering for love."

Quickly there flashed through Mabel's mind the words,—

"For I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat; I was a stranger and ye took me not in;" and then she remembered the "inasmuch" which concludes this passage.

Now Mabel was a young Christian, and she had much to learn. It had not before occurred to her that she could make the disagreeable duty of loving and cherishing her cousin into something done "for His sake." But now with this motive she could rise above the unpleasantness, and she soon became not only tolerant of her presence, but quite fond of the forlorn child, who, under the softening influences of home love, became herself quite lovable.