e background, and stimulating her to follow the example of a brother
who was so stedfastly bent on following his Lord.

As the time for the summer examinations at Mrs. Wilmot's drew near,
Lucy, bent on carrying off two or three of the prizes, redoubled her
application to her studies; but she allowed her desire to accomplish
her object to carry her too far. All her thoughts, all her time, were
so engrossed by it, that she had none to spare for anything else. She
would not join her cousins in any of their innocent recreations, and
became impatient and irritable when she met with claims upon her time
that could not be set aside. Even the Lord's day at last began to seem
an interruption to the work in which she was so eager. Her too intense
application began to affect her health: she was growing so nervous,
that Stella would sometimes declare that she was changing her
identity, and could not be the same Lucy Raymond as of old. Lucy could
indeed feel the change in herself, and this only increased the
irritation, instead of leading her to remove the cause, by moderating
the ambition which was leading her to a blameable excess in what would
otherwise have been praiseworthy diligence. But just at that time the
coveted prizes seemed to throw everything else into the shade, and she
had no watchful, judicious friend, to point out, in timely warning,
the snare into which she was falling.

Even little Amy, for the first time, occasionally found herself
impatiently put aside, and her requests to be read to met with, "Not
now, Amy; I haven't time. Don't tease me now, like a good child;" and
would steal away, with a surprised look in her soft eyes, wondering
how it could be that Cousin Lucy should not have time to read to her
about Jesus.

One of the prizes on which Lucy had most set her heart was that to be
given for History, one of her favourite studies. In ancient and
classical history she had been very thoroughly grounded by her father,
and had nothing to fear, most of the principal events being familiar
to her as household words. But her knowledge of modern history was not
so extensive, and she had a great deal of hard study before she could
feel at all at ease in competing with her classmates, some of whom
were considerably older than herself, and had given most of their
attention to modern history, the division in which the greater number
of questions were asked.

Lucy had studied with so much diligence, and her daily recita