In moments of crisis, it is the strict adherence to
the habits of a lifetime which keeps the mind clear and the nerve
firm. Lois went on quietly preparing some sandwiches, which in all
probability would never be eaten, and Mrs. Carmichael resigned martial
occupation for the cutting-out of a baby's pinafore for an East-end
child whom she had under her special patronage. But her mind was
active and, stern, self-opinionated martinet that she was, she could
not altogether crush the regrets that swarmed up in this last
reckoning up of her life's activity. Better had her charity and
interest been centered on the dirty little children whom she had
indignantly tolerated on her compound! Better for them all would it
have been had each one of them sought to win the love and respect of
the subject race! Then, perhaps, they would not have been deserted in
this last hour of peril.
Mrs. Carmichael glanced at Beatrice Cary with a fresh pricking of
conscience. What, after all, had she done to deserve the chief
condemnation? She had played with fire. Had they not all played with
fire? She had looked upon a native as a toy fit to play with, to break
and throw away. Did they not all, behind their seeming tolerance and
Christian principles, hide an equal depreciation? Was she even as bad
as some? How many men revealed to their syces their darkest moods,
their lowest passions? How many women were to their ayahs subjects for
contemptuous Bazaar gossip.
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