happen."
"I don't believe we should ever find out anything that father did not wish us to know, however much we wanted to do so," answered Sybil. "But isn't it splendid?—all but one thing, and that is having to leave everybody, and my best friend Lily Keith. I shan't like doing that at all."
"And I shall miss my friends too, of course," said Leonard; "but then I expect we shall make some new ones; and I thought you were so fond of writing letters. Why, you could write splendid ones from China, and tell Lily what we see, and perhaps mother would draw you some pictures for them, for she can draw anything, you know."
Sybil was comforted, for she was very fond of writing letters, and her friend, she knew, would be very glad to have some from China.
Directly after the six o'clock dinner was the children's hour with father, who, being a very busy man, had to regulate all his time; but this one hour a day belonged entirely to his family, and unless anything unforeseen happened, they had and claimed every moment of it.
Sybil came down-stairs first, and going up to her father, who was sitting by a large bow window, gazing out of it, with a very serious look on his face, she said with surprise as she kissed him: "You look sad, dear father. Aren't you glad to go to China?"
He drew her on to his knee.
"Very glad, my darling," was the answer; "but I was just picturing to myself some farewells that will have to be taken. I shall be very sorry, too, to say 'Good-bye' here, where our lives have been so blessed and our prayers so abundantly answered. We cannot help feeling sorry to leave our old friends, can we?"
"But you don't look, father," she continued, "as if that were all that you had been thinking."
"I dare say it was also about the work in which I am so soon to engage, for that, Sybil, is full of grave responsibility; but now I think it is my turn to ask what your thoughts are," he went on, for at that moment Sybil was looking quite as grave as, just before, her father could have looked.
"I was remembering two verses of a piece of poetry that I learnt last term at school, which I think must have been written for missionaries," she replied.
Her father then asking her to repeat them to him, Sybil said:—
"Sow ye beside all waters,
Where the dew of heaven may fall;
Ye shall reap, if ye be not weary,
For the Spirit breathes o'er all.
Sow, though the thorns may wound thee;
One wore the thorns for thee;
And, though the cold world scorn thee,
Patient and hopeful be.
Sow ye beside all waters,
With a blessing and a prayer,
Name Him whose hand upholds thee,
And sow thou everywhere.
"Work! in the wild waste places,
Though none thy love may own;
God guides the down of the thistle
The wandering wind hath sown.
Will Jesus chide thy weakness,
Or call thy labour vain?
The Word that for Him thou bearest
Shall return to Him again.
On!—with thine heart in heaven,
Thy strength—thy Master's might,
Till the wild waste places blossom
In the warmth of a Saviour's light."
"Thank you, Sybil," said her father. "I am sure you will make a capital little missionary's daughter some day."
"To what part of China are we going, father?" she then asked; "to the same place where you were before?"
"No; quite in another direction. You know when I was last in China I was at Peking, in the north, and now I am to be in Hong-Kong, an island in the south; but we shall not go there direct, as I wish to take you to see several places before finally landing."
"Wait a minute, please, father," Sybil then exclaimed, "while I just fetch my map to look them out as you tell them to me." And as she spoke she ran off, to return the next minute with an atlas, in which she found these places as her father mentioned them: Shanghai, Amoy, the Island of Formosa, Swatow, Hong-Kong, Macao, and Canton.
"I wish, father, you would tell us some day all you can remember about Peking," then said Leonard, as he ran in and joined his father and sister, having till now been very busy, first coaxing his good friend the gardener to help him cut and put up some roosts in the fowl-house, and then showing his handiwork to his mother. "You know what I mean: something like what you used to tell us."
"I will try to arouse up my memory, and tell you what I can on board ship, when we shall have, I suppose, seven or eight weeks with very little to do, and when you will, no doubt, be glad of some true stories to while away the time."
"I wish we were going to start to-morrow," rejoined Leonard, who was, I am afraid, a boy without a particle of that virtue which we call "patience." He wanted his mother now to go into the poultry-yard with him to see the roosts he had, and as she liked to enter into all his pleasures and useful occupations, she was very pleased to go.
Before either of them came in again, Sybil had heard "the rest" from her father; that she and Leonard were, after a six months' long holiday in China, to return to England to continue their education. It was a terrible blow to her, to whom a long separation from her parents seemed almost like an impossibility. Her bright eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, father!" she said; "and leave you and mother?"
"It must be for a time, my darling, till your education is completed, as your mother and I both wish you to remain at the school where you are, but when school-days are over, about four years hence, I hope to be able to have you out with us. It will be longer for poor old Leonard, won't it?"
"I don't think I care to go to China now, father," Sybil then said.
"Oh yes you do, Sybil," was the answer; "you like your father to be a missionary very much, you know, do you not?" Her mother had repeated this saying. "And, my child," he continued, "you know that it must be a dreadful trial for so very good and loving a mother as yours to part from her children; but now that a call has come to me to do my Master's work in a foreign land, and she is helping me to obey it, you would not make her trial greater, would you, by letting her see you sad? Oh no! I know you would not; but you would help us to do our duty more bravely. Is it not so, my child?"
Sybil buried her face on her father's shoulder, and sobbed, but on seeing her mother coming up the garden towards them, she quickly wiped her tears away, and tried to look cheerful. Her father had gone wisely to work in giving her such a reason for trying to overcome her sorrow, and he knew that now she would set herself bravely to work to help, and not to hinder, her parents' undertaking.
And they were not to be parted for nearly another year, she said to herself, and meanwhile they were to have all sorts of enjoyments with their parents.
Mrs. Graham brought a message from Leonard for Sybil to go and see his roosts, which she at once obeyed, affectionately kissing her mother as she passed her. That was to say that she knew, and a great deal more.
Another piece of news Sybil now conveyed to Leonard, and as she told it, even he could not tell that it made her very unhappy. I wonder if he believed at once this time!