His sister's text; one that, perhaps more than any other, was on her lips when she talked with him; one that hung at her coffin's head when he, a little boy, stood beside the coffin and looked down at her face, and looked up at that text, and took a mental photograph of both to live in his heart forever.
“This is your special chair,” Mrs. Roberts said, smiling up at him; and he understood her,—here was his opportunity to live out that text for his sister. Wouldn't he try!
“Well,” said Gracie, drawing a long breath, “as a study it is certainly a success. One can easily see, Flossy, why you were born with the ability to tell at a glance what colors harmonized, and just where things fitted in. I can't imagine anything prettier than this, and I cannot imagine what you are going to do with it.”
Whereupon they sat down to talk that important question over: what they were going to try to do. Sometimes I have wondered whether Ester, from her beautiful home, could look down on it all, and whether she smiled over the fact that her work was doing so much more than she had planned? She had roused in her little brother an ambition that had grown with his years, and that had helped to hold him away from many temptations: so much, doubtless, she had foreseen; but what a blessed thing it was that she had touched, in those long ago years, influences which had drawn her brother, in his young and perilous manhood, into intimate relations with such people as Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, so that they sat down familiarly to talk over mutual interests! But for Ester's words, spoken long ago, but for her strong desires transmitted to him, he might have sat with a very different circle, and talked over widely different schemes. On the edge of this circle Gracie Dennis hovered. She could not but be interested in their talk, for she was a Christian, and her father was a Christian, and she had, all her life breathed in the atmosphere of a Christian home.
At the same time she could but imagine some of their ideas wild ones, for she had never been associated with people who widely overstepped the conventional ways of doing things; and she had, of late, been much with Professor Ellis who had a sort of gentlemanly sneer for every phase of Christian work, and, so far as could be discovered, believed in nothing. He had not been outspoken, it is true, and herein lay one of the dangers. He was too skillful to be outspoken; but the subtle poison had been working, and although Gracie could not help being interested in those queer boys, she could not help thinking Flossy's whole scheme exceedingly visionary, and expected it to come to grief. The puzzling question was, why did Mr. Roberts, being a keen-sighted man, permit it all! Or was he so much in love with Flossy that he could not bear to thwart even her wildest flights? It was strange, too, to see a young man like Alfred Ried so absorbed; his sister must have had wonderful power over him, Gracie thought. She went back to his sister's influence, always, in trying to explain the matter, and never gave a thought to Christ's influence. Meantime she listened to the various plans proposed for the first Monday evening, and was sufficiently interested to gather her pretty face in a frown when the distant peal from the door-bell sounded through the house.
“What a pity to be interrupted by a caller!” she exclaimed. “This room is so much nicer than the parlor. Flossy, don't you hope it is some one to see Mr. Roberts on business?”
“No,” said Mrs. Roberts, shaking her head, with a smile, “I feel in special need of Mr. Roberts just now. Evan, I really think we must be excused to callers for this one evening; there are so many things to arrange.”
“Let us wait and see,” answered Mr. Roberts “perhaps the Lord sent the caller here to help us, or to be helped.”
At that moment came the card.
“Oh, it is Dr. Everett!” was Mrs. Roberts' exclamation. “Let us have him come directly here. Evan, please go and escort him. You were right,—the Lord has sent him to help us. I don't know how, I'm sure; but he is just the man to help everywhere.”