better, as mother says, keep your likes and dislikes to yourself. As
Captain Gates was saying, if a person feels in a foreign element, the
only cure is to adapt themselves to it. He is taking quite an interest
in you, Hilda; he told me you had a true ring about you. But it is
awfully funny to me, your standing out against all innocent pleasure.'

'I will talk to you about it another day, Nelly,' I said, trying to speak
gently; 'don't think me disobliging if I leave you now. I am so tired
that I feel I cannot walk another step. You don't mind getting the
flowers by yourself, do you?'

'Of course I don't. Go up to your room and have a nap; you will have a
quiet time till dinner.'

I left her, for I felt I must be alone; and when I reached my room I took
my Bible, and sitting down in the low window seat turned over its leaves
for comfort and guidance. My thoughts were perplexed ones. How I longed
to live at peace with every one! How easy it would be to slip along in
this pleasant family life, doing as others did around me; how
increasingly difficult I should find it, if I was continually setting
myself up in opposition to all their plans and wishes for me! And yet in
my heart I knew that unless I took a stand from the first, I should be
drawn into a whirl of gaiety, such as I felt would not be the right
position for a true Christian to be found in. Then I wondered what
claims my guardian had upon me, how far it would be right to obey him,
and where I must draw the line. 'If only I had some one to advise me!' I
murmured, and the next minute felt ashamed of the thought as these words
met my eye,--

'But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in
My name, He shall teach you all things.'

I bowed my head in prayer, and when a little later I turned again to my
Bible I was not long left in doubt. 'Be not conformed to this world,' I
read in Romans. I turned up the references: 'Not fashioning yourselves
according to the former lusts in your ignorance.' 'Love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world.' 'Wherefore come out from
among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.' As I sat there drinking
in these messages, and dwelling upon them each in turn, all doubt and
hesitation left me. I was quieted and refreshed, and when the thought of
my guardian's possible anger flitted across my mind, I was able to put it
aside--'He shall teach you all things.'

And that took me