DORA felt very unhappy. She had broken the holy rest of the Lord’s day; she had repeated prayers without praying, heard God’s Word read without attending, had made a vain show of religion; and at last had worked and worked hard at her needle, as she might have done on any other day of the week. Dora had disobeyed what she knew to be the wishes of her mother, and then to hide such disobedience had uttered a lie to deceive her! The girl could not conceal from herself that she had done what was wrong—exceedingly wrong; that she had displeased a holy God, whose eyes are in every place beholding the evil and the good.

“Oh, what can I—what ought I to do now!” thought Dora, as slowly and sadly she went up to her own little room. Conscience gave an instant reply, “Retrace your steps as quickly as you can, own your fault to your mother, and ask forgiveness from God.” But Dora was very unwilling to do this; she was inclined to take a kind of half-way course.

“I need not say anything to mamma about what I have done,” thought Dora. “I will not touch my pretty work any more on Sunday; and to-morrow, as soon as I get up, I will unpick every stitch of what I have been sewing to-day. That will be a good punishment for me; yes, that will be the right kind of punishment for breaking the Fourth Commandment.”

Dora half satisfied her conscience by making this resolution to undo what ought not to have been done; but the little girl made a grievous mistake in supposing that any self-inflicted punishment can take away sin. We must go straight to the Lord for forgiveness, and ask it only for the sake of the Lamb of God, who suffered to take away guilt; and when we have sinned against our fellow-creatures, as well as against our Heavenly Father, we must honestly and openly confess to them what we have done, and ask their forgiveness. Dora shrank from doing this; she was extremely unwilling to own to her mother that she had been sewing on Sunday.

“Perhaps mamma would take away from me the making of the embroidered curtains altogether,” thought Dora, “and give it to Agnes instead; and then all the family would know the reason, and I should be lowered in the opinion even of little Elsie! Oh, how dreadfully ashamed I should feel, and what a bitter disappointment it would be to see the work in the hands of another, after I have taken such pains to draw out that beautiful pattern! Worst of all, Aunt Theodora would hear of my fault when we go to be with her at Christmas. She would be sure to ask why I had not embroidered the veil and the curtains, for she thinks that I embroider so well. Oh, I could not bear that the aunt whom I love so much—who loves me so much—should know what I have done! No, no, there is no use in speaking about the matter at all; I will punish myself by the tiresome unpicking, and then all will be right.”

Would all be right? Were Dora to punish herself ever so severely, would all be right? No, dear reader, no! self-punishment cannot wash away sin.

Dora was only deceiving herself now, as she had an hour before deceived her indulgent mother.

In the evening, after tea-time, the family assembled again in the study. Their usual employment on Sunday evenings had been to sing hymns with their mother, each in succession choosing a favorite hymn; but the whooping-cough had for weeks past put a stop to all singing, and it had cost Mrs. Temple some thought to find a way of making the evening Sabbath hour as pleasant to her family as it had usually been. The searching in the Bible for types had been a new kind of occupation, and had made the afternoon seem less long to the young prisoners at home than it might otherwise have appeared during the absence of their mother at church. The family circle looked a very happy one by the light of the fire round which they gathered; for autumn was beginning, the weather, though not very cold, was damp; and the illness from which the children were recovering made warmth and dryness so desirable, that the fire was always lighted at sunset.

“I like when we sit so cosy together before the blazing fire!” exclaimed little blue-eyed Elsie, cuddling close to her mother. “I hope that Eliza won’t bring in the candles; no one wants candles to talk by. Agnes, you won’t cough so badly if you put your feet here on the fender; please, Lucius, give the fire a good stir, and make the red flames leap up and dance. Are we not a happy party!” she added, squeezing tightly her mother’s hand in both of her own.

Smiling faces gave the reply. There was but one face that wore no smile. Dora sat on the other side of her mother, but the girl had drawn her chair a little back from the half-circle before the fire, and held a hand-screen before her face, not really to protect it from the scorching blaze, but that it might not be seen by the fire-light. Dora was glad, though not for the same reason as Elsie, that Eliza did not bring in the candles.