"Let us go right away from it, and tell me, please, just what you want to talk about. Only let me say this one little thing: I want you to come down to prayer-meeting next Wednesday evening, and discover in how many ways you can help it. Now I am ready."
CHAPTER XXII.
NEW LINES OF WORK.
BUT Alice hesitated. The subject, whatever it was that she wanted to talk about, evidently had its embarrassing side. Now that Claire sat in expectant silence, she grew silent too, and looked down, and toyed with the fringe of her wrap, her face in a frown that indicated either perplexity or distrust.
"I don't know why I should come to you," she said, at last, speaking half-angrily; "I suppose I am a simpleton, and shall get little thanks for any interference, yet it certainly seems to me as though something ought to be done, and as though you might do it."
"If there is any way in which I can help you," Claire said, "you hardly need to have me say how glad I shall be to do so."
"Would you, I wonder? Would you help in a perplexity that seems to me to be growing into a downright danger, and which I more than half suspect you could avert?"
There was something so significant in her tone, that Claire looked at her in wonderment for a moment, then said, choosing her words with care: