No talent, and Phil's pansies

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

And then, all at once, as if some one had held a mirror up to her, she saw herself as she really had been for some days. She had not been thinking nearly so much of helping Johnny as of showing off herself—of showing how good and self-sacrificing she was—so much better than Maud, who cared for nothing but her fine white frocks and colored silk stockings—than Emma, who cared for nothing but play. She had been thinking how much better it was to be good, as she was, than to be dressy like Maud or beautiful like Emma. She had taken pains to have every one know that she spent an hour after breakfast teaching the little boy to knit, and she had been greatly "set up" in her own good opinion when the ladies praised her.

Then all those foolish dreams about setting up a hospital, and making her name famous—Amity could not think of them now without disgust. It had been her self—her own dear precious self—who was to be praised and glorified. Of her GOLDEN TEXT—of the motto which her friend Mrs. Paget had given her that day in the summer-house—she had never thought at all.

Amity buried her face in her hands, leaned her head against the side of the car, and cried bitterly. She had never been so ashamed and so unhappy in all her life.

"I wish I had never seen Johnny! I wish I had never come to Saratoga at all!" was her first thought. "But then I dare say I should have been just as bad anywhere else!" was her second. And she began to remember other cases where she had done things "to be seen of men."

It was a very sad two hours that Amity passed in the parlor-car that night, but it Was one of the most profitable evenings of her whole life. They were very late in reaching Saratoga, and Amity went straight to her own room. She was very tired and sleepy, and her head ached with sight-seeing and with crying, but she did not go to bed till she had kneeled down and confessed all her sin to her heavenly Father, and asked forgiveness in his name whose blood "cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). Then feeling somewhat comforted she lay down to sleep, after she had taken from her bag the presents she had bought for Johnny, and set them on her dressing-table.

There was a good deal of moving about on the floor overhead, and once she thought she heard some one crying.

"I hope Johnny is not sick again!" she thought. "Poor dear little man! I will make it up to him somehow." And with this thought she fell asleep.

But Amity was to find, as so many other people have found, that it is not so easy to "make up." She slept rather late, and as soon as she was dressed, she took the little music-box which she had wound up, and the cotton, and went up to Johnny's room.

"I will take the things to him directly," she thought; "then he can amuse himself with them, and as soon as I have done breakfast, I will give him his lesson."

As she came into the hall where Johnny lodged, she was surprised to see that the door was open, and that several people were standing about it, among them Mrs. Wickford, who held up her finger as Amity drew near. Maud was leaning against her mother, with her face hidden, but Amity could see that she was crying.