"Oh, Adèle," said Winifred, "I haven't thought to ask you in months how the choir is getting along. The mention of Dick reminds me. Do you still enjoy your singing?"
Adèle laughed. "My 'occupation's gone,'" she said. "We are supplanted by a boy choir. The present minister likes that better. A saucy little fellow who brings our evening paper and fights his business competitors once in a while is one of our successors. He looks quite cherubic in a surplice."
"And you?"
"I sing praises in the congregation, and what is left over I sometimes offer in the mission."
"So you still keep up your service at the mission?"
"Oh, yes!"
Adèle did not add how much appreciated were those services, nor how she had added visitation amongst the families represented at the mission to the evident blessing of not a few.
Their conversation drifted back to the subject of Hubert's leaving, and Adèle entered a compact of prayer for the right development of all things relating to it.
Gradually the Spirit of God wrought in the heart of Robert Gray. He was led to think of the darkness of unbelief out of which his son had been brought, and to consider how fitting a thing it was that a life thus renewed should be held at the command of God. But it was hard to think of him as a foreign missionary! Mr. Gray had believed theoretically in the cause of missions and had given a yearly subscription to the society representing it. But to give his son—ah, that was a different matter! At the first shock of the thought he had recoiled, and a naturally stubborn heart kept the question at bay for a time. But he could not long fight with God. The fellowship lost while he steeled his heart against the unwelcome demand was too great a price to pay. Gradually it came to him that the greater weight that bowed his soul and took the joyous spring from life was not Hubert's proposed leaving, but the hiding of God's face.
"In thy favor is life," he prayed. "Any bereavement would be better than for Thee to hide Thy face from me."