“MOTHER, isn’t Harry very provoking? He promised to take me strawberrying with him, and now he’s gone and left me,” cried Bessie, winking back her tears.
“Our Harry broken his promise!” Her mother looked as if she could hardly believe it.
“Why, no, Mother; I suppose not exactly. You see he said I might go if I would be ready at two o’clock, and I was just going to put on my things, when he started off as hard as he could run. There he is now, away down the other side of the common,” she added with a little sob.
“And it is a quarter past two. Why did you not get ready in time?”
“I didn’t think it was so late. Besides, I was going as soon as I had finished Dolly’s apron. But Harry said the rest were waiting, and he could not stay another minute.”
“And you don’t blame him, Bessie? He had no right to keep the other children waiting. I am sorry you have lost your afternoon’s pleasure just because you were behind time; but you can do nothing now but make the best of it, and learn that while you are just going to, your chance may be just gone.”
Bessie drew a deep sigh and at last sat down to her book. By and bye her mother put down her work-basket and went out of the room, saying: “Bessie, dear, look after the baby, and don’t let him go out of your sight.”
“Yes, Mother, I’ll watch him. Here, Birdie, come and see what Bessie has got.”
Baby took the doll she gave him, took off its head, pounded the floor with it, shook it as a cat would a mouse, and then crept off on an, exploring expedition. Presently Bessie heard a crash and a cry that made her heart stand still. She rushed into the next room, and there sat baby Dick covered with bits of broken glass and a little stream of blood running down his forehead. He had pulled over and broken a vase on his own head.
His screams soon brought their mother, and while she was bathing his wound, Bessie stood by, saying, “I had missed him, and was just going after him when I heard him cry. Poor little Dick!”
“If you had only gone, my daughter, instead of meaning to go,” was the quiet answer; “he would have been saved this sad wound.”
When Bessie’s mother went up to bed with her that night, she asked: “Has this been a pleasant day to my little girl?”
“No, Mother, it has been the worst kind of day. First I was late at school, then I couldn’t go with Harry, and worst of all, poor baby got hurt.”
“And every misfortune has happened because you were just going to do, instead of doing.”
Bessie unlaced her shoes silently. At last she said, “But I never mean to be late.”
“Of course you don’t. But the mischief is, my dear child, that you feel as if it were well enough as long as you are just going to do your duty. Do it. Don’t stop to mean to do it.”
She spoke so earnestly that Bessie looked up into her face, and said, “Why, Mother, what makes you care so much about it? Do you think I am so very bad?”
Her mother took her in her arms, and answered, “I am sick at heart, Bessie, because I am afraid ‘just going to’ will spoil your whole life. It cheats you of your pleasure and hinders you from your duties.”
And how true this is, dear children, of many, in regard to their soul’s salvation. They intend to be saved some time, though they keep putting it off; but their opportunity may go by, and when, too late and in torment, they may say, I was just going to. May it not be so with our dear little readers. Dear children, decide NOW for Christ, accept Him NOW as your own Saviour, believe in Him as the One who died for you, and bore your sins and your punishment on the cross; and then there will be no judgment for you.
ML 10/28/1900