"Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest."
THE Saturday afternoon matinee at the Auditorium in Chicago was just over and the usual crowd was struggling to get to its carriage before any one else. The Auditorium attendant was shouting out the numbers of different carriages and the carriage doors were slamming as the horses were driven rapidly up to the curb, held there impatiently by the drivers who had shivered long in the raw east wind, and then let go to plunge for a few minutes into the river of vehicles that tossed under the elevated railway and finally went whirling off up the avenue.
"Now then, 624," shouted the Auditorium attendant; "624!" he repeated, and there dashed up to the curb a splendid span of black horses attached to a carriage having the monogram, "C. R. S." in gilt letters on the panel of the door.
Two girls stepped out of the crowd towards the carriage. The older one had entered and taken her seat and the attendant was still holding the door open for the younger, who stood hesitating on the curb.
"Come, Felicia! What are you waiting for! I shall freeze to death!" called the voice from the carriage.
The girl outside of the carriage hastily unpinned a bunch of English violets from her dress and handed them to a small boy who was standing shivering on the edge of the sidewalk almost under the horses' feet. He took them, with a look of astonishment and a "Thank ye, lady!" and instantly buried a very grimy face in the bunch of perfume. The girl stepped into the carriage, the door shut with the incisive bang peculiar to well-made carriages of this sort, and in a few moments the coachman was speeding the horses rapidly up one of the boulevards.
"You are always doing some queer thing or other, Felicia," said the older girl as the carriage whirled on past the great residences already brilliantly lighted.
"Am I? What have I done that is queer now, Rose?" asked the other, looking up suddenly and turning her head towards her sister.
"Oh, giving those violets to that boy! He looked as if he needed a good hot supper more than a bunch of violets. It's a wonder you didn't invite him home with us. I shouldn't have been surprised if you had. You are always doing such queer things."
"Would it be queer to invite a boy like that to come to the house and get a hot supper?" Felicia asked the question softly and almost as if she were alone.