A Sevenfold Trouble

Description

Many thousands of readers have found inspiration, comfort, and happiness in reading the novels and stories of Grace Livingston Hill. In A Sevenfold Trouble, we are introduced to an unhappy home—misunderstood children, and an unappreciated step-mother. But kind Christian influences spread, touching at first a single heart, then inspiring the entire family. A Sevenfold Trouble is an entirely satisfying and uplifting story. This books has been carefully proofread and curated for quality. It is customized for display on the Kindle, and includes all original illustrations. There are no other books besides Grace Livingston Hill's A Sevenfold Trouble included in this edition. Excerpt: “Well,” said Hester Andrews, from under the chestnut tree, “can you go?” “No; of course I can’t. I should think you might know without asking. Do I ever go anywhere now days?” “It is just too mean for anything!” declared Hester. “What reason does she give this time?” There was a peculiar emphasis on the word “this,” which was meant to indicate that here was only one of the numberless times in which Margaret Moore had been shamefully treated. Margaret answered the tone as well as the words. “Oh! father says he can’t have me out so late in the evening; it isn’t the thing for a little girl, and he doesn’t approve of sail boats, anyway. As if I didn’t know where all that stuff came from!” “The idea! I declare, it’s a perfect shame. Wouldn’t you like to see your own mother keeping you at home from places, and treating you like a baby, or a slave, as she does?” “Don’t you speak my mother’s name the same day you do hers,” said Margaret, with fierce voice and flashing eyes. “Well, I’m sure I don’t wonder that you feel so,” was Hester’s soothing answer. “I’m just as sorry for you as I can be; I wonder sometimes that you don’t run away. Everyone says it comes harder on you, because you are a girl: the boys can keep out of her sight. Oh Mag! I’m so sorry you can’t go. If your mother were only here, what lovely times we could have.” And this was the help which Margaret’s most intimate friend brought her! In point of fact, these two knew no more of what the mourned mother would have done, than did the squirrels up in the chestnut-tree. She had been lying in the cemetery for a year when Hester Andrews’ family moved into the town, and Margaret was only a busy little elf of not quite six, when she received with gleeful laughter her mother’s last kiss. Could she know how the mother would treat the thirteen-year-old girl’s longings for sail boats and evening parties? Downstairs, Mrs. Moore, left to solitude and bitter thoughts, worked with swift, skilled fingers, and set lips. Not long alone; someone came to help her—a sister, married, and living at ease in a lovely home a few streets away; a younger sister who was sorry, so blindly and unwisely sorry for the elder’s harder lot, that she could not keep back her words of indignant sympathy. “It’s a shame!” she said, “just a burning shame, the way you are treated by those children. The idea of your being down on your knees mopping up the messes which they have made, on purpose to vex you. If I were you, Sophia, I wouldn’t endure it another day. It is a wonder to me that their father permits such a state of things. Henry and I were speaking of it last night.”