EYE SERVICE AND LOVE SERVICE.

When we serve those with whom we happen to be in a careless kind of way, and only because we are looked after, it is called eye service: but when we do so willingly and from a motive to please, it is then termed a service of love and affection.

I will tell you a story about the two sorts of service, and then you shall say which it is you ought to practise.

Two little girls, who had been carefully brought up by wise but poor parents, were one day left, in the time of harvest, to take care of a cottage, and to tend their little baby brother, who slept in the cradle. The mother was gone out to glean. She gave them their food and set them their tasks for the day, and carrying her own and her husband’s dinner in a basin, she bade them good-bye. The children were pleased with the new idea of being mistresses of the little cottage for so many hours. And as they were really good girls, it never entered their heads to do in their mother’s absence what they would have feared to do in her presence. Meggie therefore cleaned the door-step, as she had been told, and washed some socks for the baby; and Bessie, who was older and

stronger, carried out the basket of butter to several houses which their mother supplied. At noon they sat down to dinner. They were rather tempted to give little Dick, the baby, the things he cried for, in order to keep him quiet; but the words, “eye service,” came into their minds several times, and they resisted the temptation. After dinner was over, the children cleared away and went into the garden to play. They were very merry at bo-peep with baby, when a girl, called Jenny Bryant, popped her head over the hedge and said, “We have had fine sport to-day, come to our house, and we will show you what it is.” Now Jenny, although a near neighbour, was a girl with whom their mother did not like her little daughters to be intimate, for although a good-tempered child, she was not well brought up, and cared very little for her father and mother.

On this day, her mother, as well as Bessie’s and Meggie’s, was out gleaning, and Jenny, and a few companions as idle as herself, had been gossipping with a gipsy woman, asking her to tell fortunes, as it is called; a thing which some people know to be silly, but which it is better to call by its true name, wicked. Now Jenny’s orders had been to let no one into the house, for Mrs. Bryant had many beautiful lace sleeves, and collars, and handkerchiefs, belonging to the gentlefolks of the village, lying on her dresser waiting to be ironed. But poor Jenny, no sooner was her mother’s eye taken from her than she invited several of the neighbouring girls to come in and chat with her; and these girls, as thoughtless as herself, had tempted her to ask the gipsy in. And now Jenny wanted Bessie and Meggie to come too, and tried all possible ways to tempt them to leave the cottage. “So near to our house,” said Jenny, “and so easy to lock the door. Oh, come along? It is such fun to hear the old woman’s stories.” But they refused. “If we go with you, Jenny,” said Meggie, “we should be disobeying mother.” “Did your mother tell you,” said Jenny, “not to leave the house?” “No,” replied Bessie, “but we know that she would not like our doing so; she never likes the house to be left.” “Well, you are over good,” said Jenny, with a jeering laugh; “I think it is enough if I do what mother tells me, without guessing at her wishes when she is out of it. Then, let us bring the gipsy in to you.”

“No! that would be as bad,” exclaimed both the children. “I am sure,” said the elder, “mother would dislike our talking to the gipsy.” “Nonsense!” said Jenny, as, laughing and mocking at the good little girls, she ran away across the green. She had scarcely got half way there, however, before two girls came running to meet her, saying that the gipsy would not wait, and that they had sent Fanny Mitchell, the third girl, home to get some money of her sister, to pay the gipsy—for gipsies will not tell fortunes for nothing.

But what was Jenny’s surprise when she came into the house to find the gipsy gone! and what was her mother’s anger when she returned at night, to find half-a-dozen handkerchiefs, some new lace, and fine-worked collars, gone too! How this came about Jenny knew well, and at length confessed.

The little girls who had acted, in their mother’s absence, out of heart-love to her, just the same as if she had been present, could bid her welcome with a joyful kiss that evening, and the mother, as she knelt down with them before they went to rest, and prayed to the great God to keep and preserve them, thanked Him that He had given to her children who served her with love and not with eye service.