"By your face. You would have passed for an undertaker during the past three weeks, and I have tried by every art, but in vain, to chase away your funereal countenance."
Sterling broke into a hearty laugh.
"Mother, your imagination is out on a frolic. You will have to put a bridle on it."
Mrs. Sterling was right. Gilbert had learned that Dorothy would arrive on the morrow.
Dorothy had written her parents about her new-found joy, but they understood it not. They thought that it was some girlish emotion that her home life would quickly dissipate.
The news of her conversion came to Sterling as a burst of sunlight. In speaking of it to his mother he said:
"Of one thing I am sure, and that is that she will make a glorious Christian. What a light she will be in her home. And, mother, how fine to have her in my church!"
Dorothy had shortened her visit that she might hurry home and tell her loved ones of the change in her life. She could not explain the change, but she knew that for her old things had passed away and all things had become new.
She was anxious to tell her parents the simple story of Christ's love and sacrifice for sinners. She recited it almost immediately after her return, but their eyes seemed holden that they could not see. Possibly they did not want to see. At any rate, Dorothy received her first biting disappointment in the reception that her parents gave to her report about her new-found Savior.
With Mr. Sterling it was different, and in him she found a sympathetic listener to her story. Not that she impulsively bared her secrets to him; he was eager to know it all, and his keen interest in contrast to the utter lack of responsiveness on the part of the parents encouraged her to confide in him, and to Dorothy, with her new and trembling faith, Sterling was a friend in need.