God's Loving Embrace

Part Twenty-Two

'And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children.'

Isaiah 54:13

Miss Grant was a Meadvale girl, fourth daughter of parents who moved to the village when she was a toddler, who trained as a guardian at the Christian Ladies College after attending Meadvale School. She had just missed the initial surge of demand for guardians but had been working for two years building up her experience. Her last post had been preparing two girls who were at the CLC for marriage and as her mother knew Mrs Brown, who knew she was between positions, she had accepted a week's work with the Robinson girls for the duration of their visit to Meadvale. She knew that the Brown's could not afford much, and she guessed that Pastor Brown was paying most of her wages, but it was another good job to put on her curriculum vitae and she was helping friends of her family in God's love.

Obviously she expected the two girls to be inexperienced, as she had been told about their background, and she had met the type before. Megan was very quiet, almost in shock, which was not a total surprise. So Miss Grant was gentle with her, taking her upstairs first, on her own, to get her ready for her bath before dinner. It was not a large house, and as Megan was very much the star of the show the guardian intended to settle her first, and then bring her sister up to bathe them together. Megan behaved quite well, even when out of her muzzle and mittens, and Miss Grant thought that the young Pastor had made a wise choice. So she laid her down on the spare bed to rest and went to get her sister.

Bethany was the exact opposite. She was trying hard to impress, which was rather different from obeying her instructions, and Miss Grant soon lost patience with her. She seemed to think that she knew how to do everything when it was clear that she had little idea, and long before Miss Grant got her in the bath she had used the paddle twice. Bethany really did not understand, and that was the point, of course. She did not need to understand, she just needed to obey. Her sister was not as eager to please, but she was obedient, and Miss Grant had to teach Bethany the difference. She did so with some gusto, knocking some of the arrogance out of the foolish girl with some pleasure.

Miss Grant had worked outside the first congregation, for a while. She was a local girl and she had tried to work for good families her parents knew at least by reputation, as her father was very nervous about sending her further afield. He gave her permission to work with an older guardian, someone her father knew, who was going to work for someone who worked for Sir Charles Buckingham, a senior civil servant with four teenage daughters. It had only been a short term contract, whilst her superior settled the four reluctant maidens, but it had taught her a lot about converts, willing or otherwise. In her admittedly limited experience, the more enthusiastic girls, the ones who saw an advantage in appearing to be pious, tended to be the ones who tried to live a lie. They were more calculating in their approach, always holding something back, thinking themselves to be in control somehow, and that was a heinous sin, of course. No maiden is ever in control, because they seek to earn God's love.

Maidens like that had to be broken before they could find God's love, and Miss Grant made a good start with Bethany Robinson, for her own good. She needed the indignation and an inbuilt sense of entitlement beaten out of her. Bethany cried, of course. She had clearly never been paddled before. Megan was visibly shocked by her sister's punishment, and that would do her no harm, Miss Grant noted, for the future. She would probably be looked after by nuns considering her husband's profession, and they did not suffer fools, gladly or otherwise.

'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?'

Jeremiah 17:9

"Surely I don't have to get involved in any individual cases these days, Marcus...can't you just summarise it for me?" Peter Munroe asked his principal private secretary with a deep sigh, reaching into his red box and tossing him the file. It was the end of a long day and he wanted to go home.