Henry Handel Richardson

“ I will love Thee and serve Thee, all the days of my life, till death us do . . . I mean, only let me pass my examinations, Lord, and there is nothing I will not do for Thee in return. Oh, dear Lord Jesus, Son of Mary, hear my prayer, and I will worship Thee and adore Thee, and never forget Thee, and that Thou hast died to save me! Grant me this my prayer, Lord, for Christ’s sake, Amen.”
It came to this: Laura made a kind of pact with God, in which His aid at the present juncture guaranteed her continued, unswerving allegiance. ”

“ Laura, her thoughts turned heavenwards, did not look low enough to detect the distaste in her comrades’ eyes. The farther she spun herself into her intimacy with the Deity, the more indifferent did she grow to the people and things of this world. ”

“ All her schooling would, in Mother’s eyes, have been for naught. For Mother was one of those people who laid tremendous weight on prizes and examinations, as offering a tangible proof that your time had not been wasted or misspent. Besides this, she could not afford in the event of a failure, to pay the school-fees for another year. The money which, by hook and by crook, had been scraped together and hoarded up for Laura’s education was now coming to an end; as it was, the next six months would mean a terrible pinching and screwing. The other children, too, were growing day by day more costly ”

“ Here, however, Laura rose and declared that, under these circumstances, some explanation was due to Monsieur Boehmer, the music-master, to-day’s lesson being in fact a rehearsal for the annual concert.
Dr Pughson raised his red-rimmed eyes from his desk and looked very fierce.
“Tch, tch, tch!” he snapped, in the genial Irish fashion that made him dreaded and adored. “How like a woman that is! Playing at concerts when she can’t add two and two together!—Your arithmetic paper’s fit for PUNCH, Miss Rambotham.” ”

“ Sometimes they even came to blows.
“I’ll fetch your ma to you—that I will!” threatened Sarah, called by the noise of the scuffle. “Great girls like you—fightin’ like bandicoots! You ought to be downright ashamed o’ yourselves.”
“I don’t know what’s come over you two, I’m sure,” scolded Mother, when the combatants had been parted and brought before her in the kitchen, where she was rolling pastry. “You never used to go on like this.—Pin, stop that noise. Do you want to deafen me?”
“She hit me first,” sobbed Pin. “It’s always Laura who begins.” ”

“ In fact, the more she pondered over it, the more inclined she grew to think that it had been a kind of snare on the part of God, to trap her afresh into sin, and thus to prolong her dependence on Him after her crying need was past. But, if this were true, if He had done this, then He must LIKE people to remain miserable sinners, so that He might have them always crawling to His feet. And from this view of the case her ingenuous young mind shrank appalled. She could not go on loving and worshipping a God who was capable of double dealing ”