Free A Daily Rate by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

she was your aunt, you wouldn’t speak of her in that way. I think you ought to be a little grateful for the way she took care of you last week when you were so sick, and me with the baby sick, too. If she hadn’t been here I should have had my hands more than full. I don’t know what I should have done. Johnnie, make that baby stop crying! Lillie, pick that doll up off the floor! I keep walking over something of yours all the time. I s’pose Celia’s got into some trouble and aunt Hannah’s worried about her. I expected as much. That girl hadn’t experience enough of the world to go off to the city alone. Somebody ought to have taken her home to live. If one of the boys had been married she could have gone with them, but the boys are so selfish they never think of other people. If you had any sense of the fitness of things you’d have done it yourself”
    They talked on in a wrangling way until supper was ready, but it was not until they had nearly finished the evening meal that the hall door opened and aunt Hannah walked in.
     

Chapter 8
    AUNT Hannah had lighted her lamp a few minutes after the light of the day went out, to get a little comfort from her Bible before going downstairs to face her trials, for it must be confessed that aunt Hannah had not had a cross so heavy to bear in many a year, as it was for her to go downstairs that night and face Hiram and Nettie calmly after the words she had heard her niece speak. She had tried to think of all the comfort in the Bible as she sat in the twilight. She had a great store of the precious words to draw from, for her Bible had ever been her chief delight. She knew just where to turn in her memory for the right help and it came trooping forth.
    “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. . . When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned . . . God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it . . . Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. . . For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us . . . All things work together for good to them that love God . . . To be conformed to the image of his Son . . . If God be for us, who can be against us?. . . Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”
    Then she lighted the lamp to search out another promise, for it seemed to her as if just to look upon the words would somehow help her. It was at that moment Johnnie brought up Celia’s letter. She opened it quickly, the anticipation of another trouble arising in her mind, for what might not have happened to Celia so far away in that great city alone, since the last letter she wrote?
    It was a thick letter and she read it slowly through, taking no thought of time because the matter it contained absorbed her mind completely, and when Johnnie came up the second time, she had something new to think about which demanded immediate attention and had claims prior to any downstairs. The letter read thus:

    Dear Aunt Hannah:
    Do you remember the words on the little bookmark you sent me for my birthday? I know you do, for you have a way of hiding all such words away in that wonderful memory of yours. You know the heading was about an allowance, from the king, a continual allowance. When I read it I knew just what you meant by sending it to me. You wanted to remind me that my King had plenty of extra strength to give me, and that he had promised to furnish me with enough for every day