“Making fudge,” June answered her, rather brazenly, considering her usual Sunday piety. “We didn’t like the dessert we had for dinner anyway, and we wanted something sweet.”
Mother Grace surveyed them with the stony look of displeasure in her eyes which the girls detested. “You can stop making that candy right now and go upstairs to your room.” And with that she sailed away, leaving a faint odor of lavender and violets behind her.
Adele and June looked at each other blankly. Whenever things went smoothly in the house they were inclined to quarrel. But whenever Mother Grace leagued herself against them on the side of Mr. Henreddy they immediately were drawn together.
As soon as she left the room, they took as much of the soft candy as they could carry on a plate and went upstairs.
The grate fire was burning downstairs, and it was warm and cozy there. The bedroom was cold and there was nothing to read but the Bible. The soft candy would have been good and comforting if Mother Grace had allowed them to finish it. June’s writing materials were in the room, however, and her diary in which she had continued to write all winter.
Curling up in her bathrobe by the window, she began her letter to Henrietta. Adele took the Bible and the plate of fudge and crouched against the pillows on the bed.
“We went to the amusement park Friday after school,” the letter began, “and Adele and I went on every ride. We each had fifty cents and it was with regret that I saw the money go. It seemed a shameless waste, but then I realized that there was more for God’s children and it will come to them when they need it. ‘Be careful for nothing.’ ‘Take no thought for the morrow.’ So I just spent it with the others and enjoyed myself very much. Today Dan gave me fifty cents to go downtown with. I shall go to the library and the secondhand bookstore, some day next week after school.
“Yesterday afternoon I rode home on the lake boat from downtown and afterwards had to take the baby to the park. Glubb was sweet and good and the sky was dark, deep blue, all flecked with purplish clouds. The trees were rustling and the sun flickered on my book. I was happy, but not in the right way. I did not have the spiritual happiness that I crave, only a wicked thrilly feeling at my heart …
“But I couldn’t give way to my sinful thoughts because Glubb yelled for candy, soda, sandwich, and to see the animals and my thoughts were taken away from myself. It’s a good thing. Such a foolish unhappiness and such foolish pining. I forgot all about ‘Bog’s silent messengers, the winged thoughts of love,’ and just wanted to think of my troubles. How weak I am! My pride forbids me to write this and to put it down on paper makes me blush, but all the old love comes back to me. It is a lust of the flesh and I know that unless I forsake all sin, I will not gain the kingdom of heaven.”
(June had confessed her summer passion to her friend and was the recipient of similar confidences.)
“Adele and I have been following an exciting serial in the movies and father usually lets us go on Sunday afternoon, but not any other time during the week. My ideas have changed about Sunday. I have learned that it is rather hypocritical to be so strict on the Sabbath and not on every other day. Every day belongs to God and every day we are to serve him, doing his pleasure. And as ‘every good thing is prepared for them that love God’ and my moving pictures are a good thing, if you stop to think of the educational advantages of them, therefore I can see no wrong in going to the show and pleasing Adele (for she cannot go alone) and incidentally myself.
“This afternoon it took two hours to do the dishes and now that they’re done I suppose I’ll have to take the baby for a long walk in the park. How I love the park in winter! So solitary and awful in the truest meaning of the word. God is there. Of course He is everywhere, but under the trees and looking over the wide expanse of lake, He communicates himself to me and fills me with a deep quiet peace. I need those hours alone in the afternoon with Glubb, and I feel as though the troubles of life are lifted until I return to the house and it comes back to me.
“Maybe if I stayed out more and kept away from the books I am reading this restlessness would pass. Last night I sat up late over Dostoevsky and today my soul is like lead. During the last few weeks I’ve read all of Ibsen but he doesn’t make me sad. His plays are less depressing and the unhappiness that comes afterward is nothing more than a pleasant melancholy.
“I am sitting in my bedroom in my comfortable chair by the window. The wind is cold and seeps in through the glass so that I have to wrap my bathrobe about me while I write. I should be reading my Bible because it is Sunday afternoon, but I don’t want to. I’d rather write. I’m still in Acts. I never went over it so thoroughly before and now I find much more in it. Isn’t it queer how the same verse will strike you at different times? ‘We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.’ How true that is! Only after a hard, bitter struggle with sin and only after we have overcome it, do we experience blessed joy and
