"Yes, dear Winnie, but it is so hard to know how to classify new emotions, and this is such a peculiar one that it seems nameless. You know papa feels bound, ever since that water-dream he had, to go down to the Mariners' Chapel on Sunday afternoon, and I used to read solemn poetry when it was too warm or too cold to go with him. Well, about two months ago it was fearfully warm, and papa had come home a fortnight earlier from the shore, on account of a suspicion he had that he had dreamed something and had forgotten it as soon as he awoke. This indistinct warning made him think we had better go home at all events, and home we came the first week in September, to the roasting, dusty city. But I did not then know that I was perhaps drawn back for a purpose; and oh, dear Winnie, there may be something in papa's visions, after all."
"He has had a good many of them," I said.
"So he has," assented Bessie; "and I was inclined to be impatient at this one, since it brought me home in the heat, and the house seemed so lonely, because Mrs. Tanner was still in the country with her married daughter."
"She having received no spectral warning," I hinted.
"Oh dear! no. Mrs. Tanner never dreams: she's opposed to it. Well, the first Sunday was so warm that I took up Solemn Thoughts in Verse instead of the Mariners'; and after I had read eight pages, it really seemed as if I had better have tried the heat out of doors, it was getting so gloomy within. So I got up and dressed, meaning to walk out and meet papa, and return with him. I don't know whether it was the Solemn Thoughts that confused me, or whether I was not paying attention, but I actually lost my way by turning at the wrong corner, and so came down Barton street toward a little chapel that I had often noticed before. Two dreadfully red-faced and short-haired little boys were at the entrance by the small iron gate. They had disagreed about something, I suppose, just as I came up, and they instantly began to fight, with the wickedest determination visible in their freckled little faces. At first, they kicked at each other, and growled out some awful words without the least sense, but with a great deal of profanity in them, and then they laid down their little books and tracts, and apparently tried to pull each other's head off. Of course it made me quite wretched to see them hurt each other in that shocking way, and so I interfered and tried to reconcile them, but the naughty little souls must have had a certain amount of kicking and scratching on hand to dispose of, for they united in bestowing it all on me the moment I came between them.
"I was just trying to save my dress and lace sacque from their boots and claws, when a reverend gentleman appeared at the door, and the bad boys became sneaking cowards at sight of him. I picked up their little tracts, while he tried to apologize for them; and it was so sad, Winnie, to think that those dear children had not profited by their lessons: one was called 'Love One Another,' and the other, 'Be Meek and Lowly.'
"While we were talking a lady joined us, and I went into the school at their invitation.
"Winnie, do you know anything practical about Sunday-school?"
"I went to one, and was for years in the class of an elderly maiden lady who urged us all to learn Scripture and hymns. I was so expert and high in favor that I could repeat forty verses at a time as glibly as a parrot."
"But I don't quite mean that sort of thing," said Bessie. "I mean a real, earnest teaching-place, where children are gathered in and told all about Christ's love and mercy--where they are softened and won to better thoughts and kinder actions, and their poor little minds filled with shining truth, instead of street dirt and abuse."