Betty's Battles Part 14

"I am tuning the violin; can't you hear?"

"Tuning! Why, you make a more abominable noise every time you touch it.

What could have induced you to bring that wretched thing into the house?"

"That's it, abuse a thing you don't understand! It's a very good violin, only the strings are a bit worn. Of course, if I decide to have it, I shall get new ones."

"Worn--I should think they are! Look here, Bob, you don't mean to tell me that you're really going to buy that old thing?"

"I told you before, that is none of your business. If I choose to buy it, I shall, so don't give advice when it isn't wanted."

"But it _is_ my business!" cries Betty, now thoroughly roused. "Who is to pay for it, I should like to know? Haven't I to work for the money to live on?--am I not trying to work for it now? And instead of helping me, as you ought, you make my head whirl round with that horrid old fiddle!"

Bob jumps up in a fury, and flings the violin into its case. "So this is the way a fellow is treated when he comes home to practise! It'll be long enough before I trouble you again, my lady, I can tell you! I've plenty of friends who understand music rather better than you do, and they tell me that I ought to learn, and would soon play very well. You used to say you wanted me to learn yourself. Now I see just how much your words are worth!"

And he closes the case with a loud snap, and flings out of the room.

In a moment Betty realises what she has done. She flies after him.

"Bob--Bob--stay one minute--I----"

The street door closes with a bang. Bob has gone.

Betty stands there, her head in a whirl. How did the miserable quarrel arise? Just after she had been feeling so happy about her success with the girls, too. Oh, what a wretched, wretched ending to the day!

Tired though she is, Betty cannot go to bed until Bob comes home. At last she hears his step, and flies to the door.

"O Bob, I didn't mean----" she begins eagerly, directly she sees him.

But he pushes past her without a word, and, running upstairs, shuts himself in his own room.

Betty goes to her own room, too; but not to sleep. What can she do to make Bob understand how sorry she is for her hasty words, how much she wants to help him, how dearly she longs to win his confidence?

She goes over the brief scene between them, sentence by sentence, as nearly as she can remember it.

"Bob was certainly overbearing and unreasonable," she thinks, her anger reviving a little as she recalls his words. "Oh, but it was my place to help him to be better. I have promised to be the Lord's Soldier. I should have been wiser and stronger than he--and I wasn't, not one bit!

I lost my temper. I made no effort to check myself."

These are sad thoughts for poor Betty; but it is often through just such a sense of failure and shortcoming, through just such self-reproaches as hers to-night, that the Lord renews our strength. No spiritual blessing is so full of power as that which follows a time of humiliation. In distrusting ourselves we learn to put a more perfect trust in Him.

Bob still wears an air of deep injury at breakfast next morning. He answers all Betty's rather timid remarks with "Yes" or "No," and seems even to take trouble to show that all confidence between them is at an end.

Sick at heart, Betty starts out on her weary round of rent-collecting.

Her sorrow is heavy upon her, and she walks with drooping head and unheeding eyes.

"Bob is wrong to bear malice like this," she thinks. "If he won't listen to anything I have to say, how can I ever make things right between us again? Would it be right for me to go and ask his pardon? It is plain that unless I do something he means to have a grievance against me. Oh, dear, I just feel no heart for my work or anything while things are like this! Lord, do lift the burden, do show me what to do! Do help me to put a stop to the mischief my foolish words have caused."

"The Captain!"

Suddenly turning a corner, Betty's eyes fall upon a little group gathered round a doorstep not twenty yards away.

Three or four shabby little children and Captain Janet Scott. The Captain talking to them, with all that tenderness and loving sympathy that they have never had from their own mothers, poor mites, and for which their baby hearts are craving; the children looking up into her face with eager eyes.

The Captain! Just an accidental meeting in a dull and dirty street; but to Betty it is as though the Lord had sent one of His own bright angel-messengers straight from Heaven to help her!

She runs towards her eagerly; the Captain looks up, and turns to greet her young friend with a welcoming smile.

"Betty Langdale! My dear, I have been hoping every day to meet you."

"O Captain, I am so miserable! I've been so foolish, so wicked; I've made a dreadful mistake, and I don't know how to put it right. Do, _do_ tell me what I ought to do!"

Captain Scott takes the girl's trembling hand, and looks attentively at her pale face and the dark rings under her eyes. Then she kisses the shabby little children all round, promising to come again soon, and, turning again to Betty, slips her hand through the girl's arm, and begins to walk slowly up the street.

"Tell me your trouble, dear. Perhaps it is not so bad as you suppose,"

she says, gently.

"Oh, but it is!" and Betty pours out the sad little story of her quarrel and its consequences. She does not spare herself; as nearly as she can recollect she repeats her exact words.

"You have been to the Lord about this, Betty?" asks the Captain, gravely.

"Oh, yes, I've prayed and prayed, and sometimes it seems as though I ought to beg Bob's pardon; but then, you know, he should _not_ buy a violin just now, no matter how cheap it is--we can't afford _anything_, and he was wrong to worry me when I was doing the accounts, wasn't he?"

"Certainly he seems to have acted rather selfishly and unreasonably.

But, Betty, you must remember that he does not know this. If you really mean to help your brother, you will have to teach him to understand many things that are dark to him now. Then, too, dear, you must learn to put yourself in his place. He had evidently been dwelling a good deal on the thought that you would think it very clever of him to learn the violin. Boy-like, he had most likely forgotten the family troubles for the moment, and was trying to 'show off' before you. You had once said you wished him to learn, and no doubt he now thinks you very unkind and changeable because you discourage him."

"But, Captain, just think--father in the hospital, all the accounts and rent-collecting to do, no money scarcely----"

"Yes, yes, but Bob has not thought of all that. He has never heard the Lord's voice calling him. He lives in a world of his own. You must learn to get into his world, to read his thoughts, to make him feel that in you he has a real friend. Step by step, dear, you must lead him to his Saviour."

"But he won't listen. He'll hardly answer when I speak!"

"My dear, it is that very barrier between you which you must find a way to break down."

"Oh, Captain! how? How _can_ I make Bob understand that I want to help him?" asks Betty almost despairingly.

"Perhaps you could show some interest in his music. Do you play at all yourself?"

"The piano--just a little."

"And, evidently, you have a good ear. Couldn't you offer to show him how to get his violin in tune?"

Betty shakes her head. "I'm afraid he's much too vexed to let me try.

Oh, wait! I've thought of something. Couldn't I buy him a new violin-string? I believe one snapped just before we had that wretched quarrel. It would only cost a few pence, I should think."

"Well, my child, I must leave all that to you. Do what you can to make up for your share in the dispute; only be sure to show Bob that he must not act selfishly; that he certainly ought to deny himself any amus.e.m.e.nt, however good in itself it may be, that would take money which is needed at home.

"Speak quietly to him, dear. Remember the Lord's words: '_If thy brother shall trespa.s.s against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother._'

"Ah! Betty, this is your first real attempt to lead some one you love to think of higher things. G.o.d grant you may become a real soul-winner one day!