Taken or Left by O.F. Walton

I WAS very happy in my new life at Grassbourne. If it had not been for the parting from Salome, I do not think I could have been happier.

I had a very busy life, for there was plenty to do both indoors and out-of-doors; but I am sure we are always happier when our time is filled up with useful work. Idle folks are always in bad spirits.

Every one was so kind to me, that I should indeed have been ungrateful if I had not loved them and tried to please them. Bagot and his wife were father and mother to me. Their cottage was a merry, cheerful place to live in, and it was a great help to me to be with such good Christian people.

Ever since the night of Salome's fifth birthday, when I had brought my sins to Jesus, I had taken Him for my Master, and had longed and tried to live as He would like me to live. And every one and everything at Grassbourne seemed to help me forward in this wish and in this effort.

The one thought with which all their hearts seemed to be filled was this: that Jesus, their Lord, might come at any day, and at any hour, and that they must be ready at once to go and meet Him. The "Rules for To-day" were no dead letters to them; they brought them into daily use in their daily life.

Often have I seen Bagot stop suddenly in the midst of something he was saying, and glance up at the chimney-piece, and sometimes he would say aloud to himself:

"Ah, Bagot, you wouldn't like to be saying that when He comes, you wouldn't."

Or when the clock told that the hour he allowed himself for dinner was over, he would rise, and, pointing to Rule No. 1, he would read it aloud:

"Do nothing that you would not like to be doing when Jesus comes."

"Ah, Jem Bagot," he would say, "you hadn't need be caught a-wasting of your time when your Master comes."

His wife seldom spoke of the rules, but she kept them for all that. I never heard her but once speak an ill-natured word of any one, and then she looked up at the chimney-piece, and I saw tears come in her eyes, as she felt she had broken the third rule on the list.

As for my mistress, I think she lived every day as if it might be the last day before her Lord came. Her life was one long act of loving obedience to the Master; she always seemed to try to please Him in everything she did. The poor people in the cottages round, the sick folks in the little town near, the children playing by the roadside, all knew the sound of Bessie's hoofs on the road, and all of them welcomed the sight of her; for they were sure to get a pleasant word, or a kind visit, or a bright smile from their dear Mrs. Tremayne.

"The Master may come any day," I heard her say once, when some one was urging her not to go out in the rain to see a dying woman; "there is no time to lose."

Over the dining-room chimney-piece there was this verse, which my mistress had illuminated herself:

"The time is short-how short we cannot tell, / Or clearly understand; / But those who read the King's directions well, / Think it is close at hand! / Lord, is it so? Then grant that we / May lose no time, but work for Thee."

And the same thought which stirred my mistress up to work, was also her great comfort in her sorrow. There was a beautiful picture of her husband hanging in her room, and underneath it, on a white scroll, I read these words:

"O comfort ye your hearts; / If ye could only know / How few the days / Ere that glad day arrives, / Ye could but praise! / Then wipe your weeping eyes, and joyful say, / 'It may be that the King will come to-day."

My chief pleasure and delight was in drawing Master Reggie out in his little carriage. Each morning we went together to feed his children, and he soon became almost as dear to me as my little Salome.

Nearly every day he would ask me the same question:

"Peter," he would say, "do you think Jesus will come to-day?"