Two little girls, in the early morning of an October day, were dressing in a sleepy fashion, or rather one of them was dressing, and the other sat on the side of the bed looking at her.
“There,” said Bess, impatiently, “now that mean old shoe-string must go and break, and I know that bell’s just going to ring. Turn over the leaf, Gussie, so we can be learning the text while we do our hair.”
Gussie got up on the bed, and turned over the leaf on a roll of texts which hung on the wall, and then stood a minute, reading it to herself.
“Why don’t you hurry?” said Bess, looking up at her, “you’ll be awful late. My senses me! What a text to pick out for folks! ’A false balance is abomination unto the Lord.’ ‘Pears to me if I were a Sabbath-school committee, or whoever does pick out these verses, I’d find some that has some sense in ’em.”
“Why, Bessie Maynard, that’s in the Bible, and I sh’d think you would n’t dare to talk so,” said Gussie, with horrified eyes.
“Well, I don’t mean just that way, of course. I mean sense for everybody. You know yourself there is a difference. There’s verses about wives, and husbands, and ministers, and—and grandmothers, and they don’t fit everybody. I should think that verse was meant for grocery-men that don’t weigh things right, and I just wish they had to learn it.”
“It’s easy to learn anyhow,” said Gussie, “only I like to think about my verse. Some of them seem just a purpose for me, like dill-gent in business,’ and `whatsoever thy hand.”‘
“Yes,” said Bess, complacently, “you are so slow, Gussie, and such a put-offer; but there is n’t a thing in this verse to think about.”
There was a little silence, for Bessie was brushing her thick, curly locks, and it took all her patience to struggle through the tangles.
“That’s because you did not brush it out last night,” said Gussie.
“I s pose so; but it is such a bother. Dear me! I’m just going to braid it this way; I can’t stop.”
“0 Bessie you know mamma won’t like it; and it spoils your hair,” said Gussie.
“It ‘il do for once,” said Bess; “it looks all right, anyhow.”
“I wonder,”—began Gussie, and then suddenly stopped. “What ? ” inquired Bess.
“I don’t know—I thought maybe that might be what the text meant,” said Gussie, slowly; ” sort of half doing things; not quite giving so much as you pretend to”—
Gussie stopped, afraid of offending her sister, of whose superior gifts she stood greatly in awe; but Bess only laughed as, she answered, “You do think of the queerest things, Gussie.”
That was what they all said of Gussie, but she kept on thinking.
It was her day to dust the parlor.
“I’ll help you,” said Bess; “and then you’ll get through, so we can go for chestnuts.”
“But you don’t do the corners, Bessie, and you haven’t moved any of the books,” said Gussie, as she watched her sister’s rapid whisks of the duster.
“What’s the difference?” said Bess. “It looks all right; you s’pose anybody’s going to peek around after a speck of dust? There, now, that’s done.”
But Gussie, with the thought of that false balance in her queer little head, kept on until the work was thoroughly done, saying to herself, “If I pretend to give mamma a pound of work, and only give her half a pound, I’m sure that’s deceitful balance.”
The next thing in order was to pick over the grapes for jelly, and even patient Gussie sighed over the big basket, but as usual, Bessie’s part was completed long before hers.
“I wish you would learn to be a little more nimble with your fingers, Gussie,” said her mother, and Bessie added in an undertone, “It’s ’cause you fuss so; s’posin a bad grape does go in now and then, who’s going to know it when they’re all mashed up?”
“I don’t care,” said Gussie, feeling a little touched by her mother’s criticism. “I sha’n’t have any false balance ’bout my work, ’cause the Lord can tell a bad grape if it is mashed up; it’s putting it in.”
Only one thing more stood between the little girls and the holiday excursion for the chestnuts. The history lesson must be learned for Monday, and then they would be as free as the birds. “How I hate it,” said Gussie, “stupid, dry stuff about ad-min-is-ter-a-tions. I don’t see any use in knowing it anyhow.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Bess, “let’s begin about the middle, because the first of it never does come to us.”
“And then,” said Gussie, “Miss Marcy will s’pose of course we know the beginning.”
“Yes,” nodded Bess, beginning to gabble over the words. “I’m going to finish in half an hour— ‘On account of these things it was plainly impossible’ “—
“But we don’t know what things,” said Gussie.
“No, and I don’t care.”
“And if, Miss Marcy s’poses we know and gives us a credit, it’ll be a deceitful balance, ’cause we make her think we know a pound when we only know a half a pound.”
Bessie’s face flushed a little. “I just wish, Gussie Maynard, you would n’t talk any more about that grocery-man’s text. It’s just nonsense trying to make it fit us.”
But after all Bessie did not feel quite comfortable, and she went back and learned the beginning of her lesson.
“There,” she said, “that’s good, full weight, and I don’t intend to be a bomination any more.” —Christian Observer.
The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald July 8, 1884