Your affectionate Sunday scholar,
BERTHA SANDERSON.
"I think we may join in the joy of the angels in the presence of God over the one sinner that repenteth," said Miss Eunice, as her sister finished this long and evidently earnest letter. "I think you may safely write to the dear child to come home and commence her new life among us. Your class is greatly blessed, my sister, and I think when we remember what it has done for Gretchen and Bertie, we may well thank God for the ship-fever as for an angel in disguise."
The next Sunday Etta Mountjoy detained her class a few moments after the school session, and read to them the whole of Bertie's letter.
It was received with various expressions of surprise, which were greatly augmented when the whole story of the fifty-dollar bill was told.
"I have brought this all before you, girls," she said, "not to make you think hardly of Bertie. She has suffered too much and is too evidently sincerely sorry for me to do that. I want you to rejoice with me in her repentance, and when she comes back, to receive her with full forgiveness and sympathy, and aid her in her efforts to lead a new life. I thought you ought to know how well one little girl among us has behaved under the most unjust suspicions and great unkindness. Not one of us has understood Katie Robertson. She has known for four weeks, from Bertie's statement to her, what was the real reason of our avoidance and suspicion, and she has never opened her mouth to explain the true state of the case and clear herself, as she might easily have done, because by so doing she would have been obliged to tell of the unkindness and malice of her companion.
"I think we all ought to ask her pardon for being so ready to condemn her unheard and to believe what was whispered against her; and, more than that, we ought to be very thankful to the Lord for giving her such a grand victory over herself."
Katie blushed and could find nothing to say, as one after another the girls and their teacher shook hands with her and kissed her; but it was a very happy heart the little girl carried home with her that bright Sunday.
"Tessa," she said, "it's all true, every word:
"'Commit thy way unto the Lord,
And He shall bring it to pass.'"