"Dear me! how stiff and proper they both were."—[Page 235].

THE CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT HOME

BY

PANSY

Author of "Four Girls at Chautauqua," "Ester Ried," "Links in
Rebecca's Life," "Julia Ried," "Household Puzzles,"
"Ruth Erskine's Crosses," "The Randolphs," "Wise
and Otherwise," "A new Graft on the Family
Tree," "What She Said, and What She
Meant," "The Pocket Measure," "Hall in
the Grove," "Some Young Heroines,"
"Five Friends," "Mrs. Solomon
Smith Looking
on," Etc.
TORONTO
WILLIAM BRIGGS, 78 & 80 KING ST. EAST
MONTREAL: C. W. COATES HALIFAX: S. F. HUESTIS

CONTENTS.

THE CHAUTAUQUA GIRLS AT
HOME.

CHAPTER I.

TREADING ON NEW GROUND.

HAT last Sabbath of August was a lovely day; it was the first Sabbath that our girls had spent at home since the revelation of Chautauqua. It seemed lovely to them. "The world looks as though it was made over new in the night," Eurie had said, as she threw open her blinds, and drew in whiffs of the sweet, soft air. And the church, whither these girls had so often betaken themselves on summer mornings, just like this one—how could two or three weeks have changed it? They could not feel that it was the same building.

Hitherto it had been to them simply the First Church; grander, by several degrees, than any other church in the city, having the finest choir, and the finest organ, and the most elegant carpets, and making the grandest floral display of all the temples, as became the First Church, of course; but to-day, this glowing, glorious August day, it was something infinitely above and beyond all this; it was the visible temple of the invisible God, their Saviour, and they were going up to worship—aye, really and truly to worship. They, in their different ways, according to their very different natures, felt this and were thrilled with it as their feet trod the aisles. People can feel a great many things, and not show them to the casual observer. Sitting in their respective pews, they looked in no sense different from the way they had looked on a hundred different Sabbaths before this.

Ruth Erskine, in the corner of her father's pew, attired, as she had often been before, in the most delicate and exquisite of summer silks, with exactly the right shade of necktie, gloves and sash, to set off the beauty of the dress, with the soft and delicate laces about her white throat, for which she was especially noted, looked not one whit different from the lady who sat there three weeks before. You wouldn't have known that her heart was singing for joy.

Flossy Shipley, aglow with elegance, as she always was, looked the same airy butterfly that had flitted in and out of that church on many a summer day before; and Marion, in her corner in the gallery, was simply the grave, somewhat weary-looking school-teacher at one of the wards—"a girl with infidel tendencies," that is all the great congregation knew about her; in fact, comparatively few of them knew even that.

Eurie Mitchell was the doctor's eldest daughter, and had in no sense improved as to her toilet—"a thing which could hardly be expected, since she had thrown away so much money on that wild scheme of living in the woods;" that was what some of the congregation thought about her.

Dr. Dennis saw all these girls, and looked gloomy over them; he was in the mood to need sympathetic hearers, to long to be in accord with his audience, and feel that they could sympathize with him in his reach after a higher type of religion. What could these four girls know about a higher type, when they had no religion at all, and had been spending two lawless weeks in looking at the subject, till their hearts were either attuned to ridicule or disgusted, according to their several temperaments? That was what the faces of our four girls said to him. Yet how they listened to his sermon.

"I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness." These were the words on which he spoke; and the burden of his thought was that satisfaction was not to be sought for here; nothing less than the absolute likeness should give absolute satisfaction; and this likeness was to be forever eagerly, earnestly, constantly, sought for, striven after, until some day would come that blessed awakening, and the picture would be found to be complete!

Was it the best sermon that had ever been preached? Was it the only spiritual sermon that the First Church people had ever heard, or was it that four girls had been to Chautauqua, and there learned how to listen? Their cheeks glowed, and their eyes dilated over the wonderful thoughts that the subject presented, the endless possibility for climbing!

Marion Wilbur had been counted ambitious; she had longed for a chance to reach high; here was her chance; she felt it, and gloried in it; she meant to try. Every nerve quivered with the determination, and the satisfaction of realizing that she belonged to the great royal family. No more obscurity for her. She was a child of the King, and the kingdom was in view. A crown, aglow with jewels—nothing less must satisfy her now. The sermon over, the hymn sung, and amid the pealing of the organ, as it played the worshipers down the aisles, our four girls met.

They knew each other's determination. The next thing to do was to go to Sunday-school. But I suppose you have no idea how strangely they felt; how much it seemed to them as if they were children who had come to a party uninvited, and as if they must at this last minute hide their heads and run home. The very effort to go up to the Sunday-school room seemed too much a cross to undertake.

There were so many to stare, and look their amazement; there was no one to go with; nobody to think of such a thing as asking them to go. It would have been so much less awkward if they could have followed in the lead of one who had said, "Won't you come up and see our Sunday-school?"

The superintendent passed them as they stood irresolute; he bowed courteously, and no more thought of asking them to join him than though they had been birds of brilliant plumage flying by. Dr. Dennis passed them; he said good-morning, not gladly, not even graciously; he dreaded those girls, and their undoubted influence. They had not the least idea how much mischief they had done him in the way of frittering away his influence heretofore. How should they know that he dreaded them? On the other hand how was he to know that they absolutely longed for him to take them by the hand, and say, "Come?" They looked at him curiously as he passed, and Eurie said:

"Doesn't it make your heart beat to think of going to him in his study, and having a private talk?"

"Dear me!" said Flossy, "I never shall think of such a thing. I couldn't do it any more than I could fly."

"There are harder things than that to do, I suspect; and it will come to a visit to his study if we are to unite with the church; don't you know that is what he always asks of those?"

And then these girls looked absolutely blank, for to two of them the thought of that duty had never occurred before; they did not understand it well enough to know that it was a privilege.

"Well," said Eurie, rallying first, of course, "are we to stand here gazing around us all day, because nobody knows enough to invite us to go up-stairs? It is clear that we are not to be invited. They are all come—all the Sabbath-school people; and, hark! why, they are singing."

"Dear me!" said Flossy; "then it is commenced; I hate to go in when it is commenced. How very unfortunate this is!"

"Serves us right," said Marion. "We ought to be in a condition to invite others, instead of waiting here to be invited. I'll tell you what, girls, if we ever get to feel that we do belong, let's constitute ourselves a committee to see after timid strangers, like ourselves, and give them a chance in, at least."

"Well," said Ruth, speaking for the first time, "shall we go home and wait till next Sunday, and take a fair start, as Flossy says, it isn't pleasant to go in after the exercises have fairly opened?" As she said this, for the first time in her life Miss Ruth Erskine began to have a dim idea that possibly she might be a coward; this certainly sounded a little like it.

Each waited to get a bit of advice from the other. Both Marion and Eurie, it must be confessed, bold spirits that they were, so dreaded this ordeal, that each hoped the other would advise retreat as the wisest thing to be done next. It was Flossy who spoke:

"I am going up now; it won't be any easier next Sunday, and I want to begin."

"There!" said Eurie, "that is just what I needed to shame me into common sense. What a company of idiots we are! Marion, what would you think of a day-scholar who would stand shivering outside your doors for this length of time? Now come on, all of you;" and she led the way up-stairs.

How very awkward it was! It was during the opening prayer that they arrived, and they had to stand by the door and be peeped at by irreverent children; then they had to invite themselves to a vacant seat near the door. The superintendent came that way presently, and said:

"Good-morning, young ladies; so you have come in to visit our school? Glad to see you; it is a pleasant place, I think you will find."

"That is extremely doubtful," Eurie said, in undertone, as he passed on. How the children did stare!

"They are certainly unused to visitors," Ruth said, growing uncomfortable under such prolonged gazing. "What is the use of all this, girls? We might better be at home."

"If we had grown up here," Eurie said, bravely, "we should probably have our place by this time. It all comes of our graceful lives. But I must say they make it very easy for people to stay away. Why on earth don't they invite us to go into Bible classes? What right have they to take it for granted that we came out of pure curiosity?"

The business of the hour went on, and our girls were still left unmolested. As the newness wore somewhat away, the situation began to grow funny. They could see that the pastor and the superintendent were engaged in anxious conversation, to judge by the gravity of their faces; and as their eyes occasionally roved in that direction, it was natural to suppose they were discussing the unexpected visitors.

Could they have heard the anxious talk it would have been a solemn comment on their reputations.

"That Morris class is vacant again to-day," the superintendent was saying; "I don't know what we are to do with that class; no one is willing to undertake it."

The pastor looked toward his own large class waiting for him, and said, with a weary sigh:

"I believe I shall have to give up my class to some one and take that. I don't want to; it is a class which requires more nervous energy than I have at command at this hour of the day. But what is to be done with them to-day?"

"Would it do to ask one of the young ladies on the visitors' seat?"

And then the eyes of the two men turned toward the girls.

"They are afraid of us," whispered Eurie, her propensity to see the ludicrous side of things in no whit destroyed by her conversion. "Look at their troubled faces; they think that we are harbingers of mischief. Oh me! What a reputation to have! But I declare it is funny." Whereupon she laughed softly, but unmistakably.

It was at this moment that Dr. Dennis' eyes rested on her.

"Oh, they are only here for material to make sport of," he said, gloomily; "Miss Erskine might keep the boys quiet for awhile if she chose to do so, I suppose."

"Or Miss Wilbur. Some of the boys in that class are in school, in her ward; they say she has grand order."

Dr. Dennis' face grew stern.

"No," he said, "don't ask her; at least we will not put them in a way to learn error, if we can teach them nothing good. Miss Wilbur is an infidel. I don't know what is to be done with that class, as you say. Poor Morris, I am afraid, will never be able to take it again; and he was utterly discouraged with them, anyway. They get no good here that I can see; and they certainly do infinite mischief to the rest of the school."

"But at the same time I suppose we cannot send them away?"

"Oh, certainly not. Well, suppose you try if Miss Erskine will sit there, and try to awe them by her dignity for awhile. And this week we must see what can be done; she won't try it, though, I presume."

It ended in the superintendent coming toward them at last. He didn't like to be too personal in his request, so he took the general way of putting a question, resting in the belief that each would refuse, and that then he could press the task on Miss Erskine.

"We are short of teachers to-day; would one of you be willing to sit with that class at your right, and try to interest them a little? They are a sad set; very little can be done with them, but we have to try."

I shall have to confess that both Ruth and Marion were appalled. The one shrank as much as the other. If it had been a class in mathematics or philosophy Marion would have been confident of her powers; but she felt so very ignorant of the Bible. She had come in, hoping and expecting a chance to slip into a grand Bible class, where she might learn some of the inner truths of that glorious lesson that she had been trying to study. But to teach it! This seemed impossible. As for Ruth, no thought of such an experience had as yet come to her. They, therefore, maintained a dismayed silence. Eurie was frank.

"I can't teach," she said; "I don't understand it myself. I shouldn't have the least idea what to say to anyone about the Bible lesson." And then they all turned and stared in a maze of surprise and perplexity at little fair-haired Flossy.

"I would like to try," she said, simply; "I have thought about the lesson all the week; I am not sure that I can teach anything, but I should like to talk the story over with them if they will let me."

There was nothing for it but to lead this exquisite bit of flesh and blood, in her dainty summer toilet, before that rough and rollicking class of boys, old enough, some of them, to be called young men, but without an idea as to the manner of conduct that should honor that name. It would be hard to tell which was the most amazed and embarrassed, the superintendent or the girls whom Flossy left looking after her. They were quite sobered now; they did not want Flossy to come to grief. A tender feeling that was new and sweet had sprung up in the heart of each of them toward her.

"That innocent little kitten knows no more what she has undertaken than if she were a dove," said Marion, dismay and discomfort struggling in her face. "Why, she might as well be Daniel in the den of lions."

"Well," said Eurie, speaking gravely, "he came out all right, you know." Then she hailed the passing superintendent:

"Mr. Stuart, isn't there a Bible class that we can go in? We didn't come to look on. We want to study the lesson."

"Oh, why, yes, certainly," Mr. Stuart said, stammering and looking unutterable astonishment. "Where would they like to go? There were two vacant seats in Mr. Pembrook's class, and one in Judge Elmore's."

Ruth instantly chose Judge Elmore's, and left Marion and Eurie to make their way to the vacant places in Mr. Pembrook's class.

The young ladies of the class moved along and made room for the new comers, and the teacher carefully told them what chapter and verse were being studied. They found their places, and Mr. Pembrook searched laboriously for his. He had lost the spot on his lesson leaf where he had read the last question, and he was all at sea.

"Let me see," he said, "where were we?"

None of them seemed to know; at least they gave him no information. One of them tried to button a glove that was too small for her; one yawned behind her Bible, and the most utter indifference in regard to the lesson or the school seemed to prevail.

"Oh," said. Mr. Pembrook, "here is where we were. I was just reading the thirtieth verse: 'As he spake these words many believed on him.' Who spake them?"

"Jesus," one answered, speaking the word with a yawn.

"What did Jesus say next?"

The next young lady thus appealed to, hurriedly looked up the place in her Bible and read:

"'Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, if ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed.'"

"Well," said Mr. Pembrook, after a thoughtful pause, "there doesn't seem to be anything to say on that verse; it is all there. Will you read the next verse?"

Now the "you" whom he timidly addressed was our Marion. She doesn't understand even now why her heart should have throbbed so strangely; and her voice trembled as she read aloud the simple words:

"'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'"

"Free from what?" she asked abruptly.

The class stared. Clearly the art of asking questions was an unknown accomplishment in that class. Mr. Pembrook looked at her through his glasses; then he pushed his glasses up on his forehead. Finally he took them off, and rubbed them carefully with the skirt of his coat before he essayed to answer.

"Why, my dear young lady, I suppose it means free from sin. The Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to his people, you know, to Christian people."

"Are Christian people free from sin?"

There was no note of cavil in Marion's voice. Her eyes were earnest and serious; and she waited, as one waits in honest perplexity, to have a puzzle solved. But she was known as one who held dangerous, even infidel notions, and Mr. Pembrook, bewildered as to how to answer her, seemed to feel that probably a rebuke was what she needed.

"It is not for us to find fault with the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, my dear young lady. He spoke them, and they must mean what they say. We are to accept them in all sincerity and humility, remembering that what we know not now we shall know hereafter. That is the Christian way to do."

And then he cleared his throat and asked the next young lady to read the next verse.

Two bright spots glowed on Marion's cheeks. She bent her head low over her Bible, and it was with difficulty that she kept a rush of tears from filling her eyes. Had she seemed to cavil at the words of her Lord when she simply longed with all her soul to understand? Did the promise mean, You shall be free from sin? Had she a right to look forward to and hope for the time when sin should have no more dominion? Then that other sentence: "Continue in my work." Just what did it mean? Could one who was searching it eagerly and prayerfully, and trying to abide by its directions, be said to be continuing in it?

There were a dozen questions that she longed to ask. She had sought the Sabbath-school this morning in search of help. She felt blind and lame, unable to take a step in any direction lest in her ignorance she should err, as already she had. Something in her way of speaking of these things must be radically wrong. She had misled this good man. It was no use to ask him questions.

As the lesson progressed there appeared other reasons why she need not question him. Clearly the good man knew nothing about his lesson save the questions contained on the bit of paper before him. It was entirely evident that he had not looked at the verses, nor thought of them until he came before his class.

It was equally plain that his scholars were entirely accustomed to this state of things, and were careful to follow his example. He could read a question at them from his lesson paper, and they could read an answer back to him from their Bibles, and this was all that either party expected of the other. Why these young ladies continued to come Sabbath after Sabbath, and go over this weary routine of question and answer was a mystery to Marion.

She came away from the school in a most uncomfortable frame of mind. That to which she had looked forward all the week had proved a disappointment and a failure. She was almost inclined to say that she would have no more to do with Sunday-schools; that they really were the humbug that she had always supposed them.

"Imagine my going to a philosophy class, knowing no more about the lesson than that old man did to-day!" she said to Eurie, as they walked down to the corner of Elm Street together.

"I know," said Eurie, speaking with unusual thoughtfulness; "but suppose you were dull in the class, if it were known after all that you could make the most brilliant philosophical experiments you would probably be listened to with respect."

"What do you mean?" asked Marion bewildered.

"Why, I mean that Deacon Pembrook can perform the experiments successfully. In other words, to come down to your comprehension, he succeeds in living so pure and careful a Christian life that he has the respect and confidence of everybody. What if he can't preach? He can practice. However, I am willing to admit that the dear old man would be more edifying if he would study his lesson a little. Wasn't it funny to think of calling that 'teaching?'" And then this volatile young lady laughed. But her moralizing had done Marion good.

She said good-morning more cheerily, and went on her way thinking over the many things that she had heard in honor of Deacon Pembrook; so that by the time she had reached her boarding-house, although his teaching would certainly make a very poor show, yet his sweet Christian life had come up to plead for him, and Marion was forced to feel that the truth had "made him free."

"But it is a real pity not to study his lesson," she said, as she went about her gloomy-looking room. "Those girls didn't get a single idea to help them in any way. Some of them need ideas badly enough. Two or three of them are members of the church, I am sure. That Allie March is, but she has no ideas on any subject; you can see that in the grammar class."

And then Marion remembered that Allie March was in her grammar class; and Allie was a professed Christian. Could she help her? It was not pride in Marion, but she had to smile at the thought of herself being helped by so very third-rate a brain as that which Allie March possessed. And then she paused, with her hand on the clothes-press door, and her face glowed at the new and surprising thought that just then came to her.

"Would it not be possible for her, Marion Wilbur, to help Allie March, even in her Christian life!"

All that afternoon, though, she went about or sat down in her room with a sense of loneliness. No one to speak to who could understand and would believe in her, even in the Sunday-school they were afraid of her. How could she help or be helped, while this state of things lasted?

It was in the early twilight that, as she sat with her hat and sack on, waiting for Eurie, who had engaged to call for her to go to church, she strayed across a verse or two in her new possession, the Bible, that touched the point. It was where Saul "essayed to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple." Her experience precisely! They were afraid of her influence; afraid of her tongue; afraid of her example; and, indeed, what reason had they to feel otherwise? But she read on, that blessed verse wherein it says: "But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him." She was reading this for the second time, when Eurie came.

"See here, Eurie, read this," she said, as she passed her the Bible and made her final preparations for church. "Isn't that our experience? I mean I think it is to be ours. Judging from to-day as a foretaste, they will be afraid of us and believe not that we are disciples."

Eurie laughed, a quick little laugh that had an undertone of feeling in it, as she said:

"Well, then, I hope we shall find a Barnabas to vouch for us before long."

And Marion knew that she, too, felt the loneliness and the sense of belonging to no one. "We must help each other very much, we girls." This she said to herself as they went down the steps together.

CHAPTER II.

FLOSSY "BEGINS."

LOSSY SHIPLEY'S first day at Sabbath-school was different. She went over to the class of boys, who were almost young men, with trepidation indeed, and yet with an assured sort of feeling that they would be quiet. Just how she was going to accomplish this she was not certain. She had studied the words of the lesson most carefully and prayerfully; indeed, they had been more in her mind all the week than had anything else. At the same time, she by no means understood how to teach those words and thoughts to the style of young men who were now before her.

Still, there was that in Flossy which always held the attention of the young men; she knew this to be the case, and, without understanding what her peculiar power was, she felt that she had it, and believed that she could call it into service for this new work. They stared at her a little as she took her seat, then they nudged each other, and giggled, and looked down at their dusty boots, guiltless of any attempt at being black, and shuffled them in a way to make a disagreeable noise.

They knew Flossy—that is, they knew what street she lived on, and how the outside of her father's house looked, and what her standing in society was; they knew nothing of her in the capacity of a Sunday-school teacher; and, truth to tell, they did not believe she could teach. She was a doll set up before them for them to admire and pretend to listen to; they did not intend to do it; she had nothing in common with them; they had a right to make her uncomfortable if they could, and they were sure that they could. This was the mood in which she found them.

"Good-morning," she said, brightly; and they glanced at each other, and shuffled their feet louder, and some of them chuckled louder, while one of them said:

"It's rather late in the morning, ain't it? We got up quite a spell ago."

This passed for a joke, and they laughed aloud. At this point Flossy caught Dr. Dennis' distressed face turned that way. It was not reassuring; he evidently expected disastrous times in that corner. Flossy ignored the discourteous treatment of her "good-morning," and opened her Bible.

"Do you know," she said, with a soft little laugh, "that I haven't the least idea how to teach a Sunday-school lesson? I never did such a thing in my life; so you mustn't expect wisdom from me. The very most I can do is to talk the matter over with you, and ask you what you think about it."

Whereupon they looked at each other again and laughed; but this time it was a puzzled sort of laugh. This was a new experience. They had had teachers who knew extremely little about the lesson, and proved it conclusively, but never once did they own it. Their plan had rather been to assume the wisdom of Solomon, and in no particular to be found wanting in information. They did not know what answer to make to Flossy.

"Have you Bibles?" she asked them.

"No."

"Well, here are Lesson Leaves. These are pieces of the Bible, I suppose. Are they nice? I don't know anything about them. I have never been in Sunday-school, you see; not since I was a little girl. What are these cards for, please?"

Now, they understood all about the management of the library cards, and the method of giving out books by their means, and Flossy was so evidently ignorant, and so puzzled by their attempts at explanation, and asked so many questions, and took so long to understand it, that they really became very much interested in making it clear to her, and then in helping her carry out the programme which they had explained; and everyone of them had a queer sense of relationship to the school that they had not possessed before. They knew more than she did, and she was willing to own it.

"Now about this lesson," she said, at last. "I really don't see how people teach such lessons."

"They don't," said one whom they called "Rich. Johnson." "They just pretend to, and they go around it, and through it, and ask baby questions, and pretend that they know a great deal; that's the kind of teaching that we are used to."

Flossy laughed.

"You won't get it to-day," she said, "for I certainly don't know a great deal, and I don't know how to pretend that I do. But I like to read about this talk that Christ had with the people; and I should have liked of all things to have been there and heard him. I would like to go now to the place where he was. Wouldn't you like to go to Jerusalem?"

What an awkward way they had of looking from one to the other, and nudging each other. Rich. Johnson seemed to be the speaker for the class. He spoke now in a gruff, unprepossessing voice;

"I'd enough sight rather go to California."

The others thought this a joke, and laughed accordingly. Flossy caught at it.

"California," she said, brightly. "Oh, I've been there. I don't wonder that you want to go. It is a grand country. I saw some of those great trees that we have heard about."

"Flossy laid her Bible in her lap, and began."—Page 35.

And forthwith she launched into an eager description of the mammoth tree; and as they leaned forward, and asked now and then an intelligent question, Flossy blessed the good fortune that had made her her father's chosen companion on his hasty trip to California the year before. What had all the trees in California to do with the Sabbath-school lesson? Nothing, of course; but Flossy saw with a little thrill of satisfaction that the boys were becoming interested in her.

"But for all that," she said, coming back suddenly, "I should like ever so much to go to Jerusalem. I felt so more and more, after I went to that meeting at Chautauqua, and saw the city all laid out and a model of the very temple, you know, where Jesus was when he spoke these words."

They did not laugh this time; on the contrary, they looked interested. She could describe a tree, perhaps she had something else worth hearing.

"What's that?" said Rich. "That's something I never heard of."

And then Flossy laid her Bible in her lap, and began to describe the living picture of the Holy Land, as she had seen and loved it at Chautauqua. Of course you know that she did that well. Was not her heart there? Had she not found a new love, and life, and hope, while she walked those sunny paths that led to Bethany, and to the Mount of Olives? Every one of the boys listened, and some of them questioned, and Rich. said, when she paused:

"Well, now, that's an idea, I declare. I wouldn't mind seeing it myself."

And to each one of them came a glimmering feeling that there actually was such a city as Jerusalem, and such a person as Jesus Christ did really live, and walk, and talk here on the earth. Then Flossy took up her Bible again.

"But, of course, the next best thing to going to places, and actually seeing people, is to read about them, and find out what the people said and did. I like these verses especially, because they mean us as well as those to whom they were spoken. Look at this verse. I have been all the week over it, and I don't see but I shall have to stay over it all my life. 'Then said Jesus, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed.' Just think how far that reaches! All through the words of Jesus. So many of them, so many things to do, and so many not to do; and then not only to begin to follow them, but to continue; day after day getting a little farther, and knowing a little more. After all, it's very fascinating work, isn't it? If it is hard, like climbing a mountain, one gets nearer the top all the while; and when you do really reach the top, how splendid it is! Or, doing a hard piece of work, it's so nice to get nearer and nearer to the end of it, and feel that you have done it."

One of the boys yawned. It was not so interesting as the description of the miniature Jerusalem. One of them looked sarcastic. This was Rich.

"Do you suppose there ever was anybody like that?" he asked, and the most lofty incredulity was in his voice.

"Like what?"

"Why, that followed out that kind of talk. I know enough about the Bible to know they are mighty scarce. I'd go to Jerusalem on foot to see a real one. Where's the folks, I'd like to know, that live up to half of the things it says in the Bible? Why, they even say it can't be done, and that's why it seems all bosh to me. What was the use of putting it in there if it can't be done?"

Here was one who had evidently thought, and thought seriously about these things. Is there a boy of seventeen in our country who has not? Flossy felt timid. How should she answer the sharp, sarcastic words? He had been studying inconsistencies, and had grown bitter. The others looked on curiously; they had a certain kind of pride in Rich. He was their genius who held all the teachers at bay with his ingenious tongue. But Flossy had been at a morning meeting in Chautauqua where there was talk on this very subject. It came back to her now.

"As for being able to do it," she said, quickly, "I don't feel sure that we have anything to do with that, until we have convinced ourselves that we have been just as good as we possibly could. Honestly, now, do you think you have been?"

"No," said Rich., promptly; "of course not. And, what is more, I never pretended that I was."

"Well, I know I haven't been; I am perfectly certain that in a hundred ways I could have done better. Why, there is nothing that I could not have improved upon if I had tried. So by our own confessions what right have you and I to stumble over not being able to be perfect, so long as we have not begun to be as near it as we could?"

How was he to answer this?

"Oh, well," he said, "I haven't made any pretensions; I'm talking about those who have."

"That's exactly like myself; and, as nearly as I can see, we both belong to the class who knew our duty, and had nothing to do with it. Now, I want to tell you that I have decided not to stand with that class any longer."

Flossy paused an instant, caught her breath, and a rich flush spread over her pretty face. This was her first actual "witnessing" outside of the narrow limits of her intimate three friends who all sympathized.

"I gave myself to this Jesus when I was at Chautauqua," I said to him; "that I had stood one side, and had nothing to do with his words all my life; just taken his favors in silence and indifference, but that for the future I was to belong to him. Now, of course, I don't know how many times I shall fail, nor how many things I shall fail in. The most I know is, that I mean to 'continue.' After all, don't you see that the verse doesn't say, If you are perfect, but simply, 'If you continue.' Now, if I am trying to climb a hill, it makes a difference with my progress, to be sure, whether I stumble and fall back a few steps now and then. But for all that I may continue to climb; and if I do I shall be sure to reach the top. So now my resolution is to 'continue' in his words all the rest of my life."

She did not ask Rich. to do the same. She said not a word to him about himself. She said not a personal word to one of them, but every boy there felt himself asked to join her. More than that, not a boy of them but respected her. It is wonderful, after all, how rarely in this wicked world we meet with other than respect in answer to a frank avowal of our determination to be on the Lord's side. They were all quiet for an instant; and again Flossy caught a glimpse of Dr. Dennis' face. It looked perplexity and distrust. Was she telling them a fairy story, or teaching them a new game of whist?

"Then there is such a grand promise in this lesson," Flossy went on. "I like it ever so much for that. 'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'"

"Free from what?" asked Rich., abruptly. The very question that Miss Marion Wilbur had asked in such anxiety. But Flossy was in a measure prepared for him. It chanced that she had asked Evan Roberts that self-same question.

"Why, free from the power and dominion of Satan; not belonging to him any more, and having a strength that is beyond and above anything earthly to lean upon, stronger than Satan's power can ever be."

Rich. gave a scornful little laugh.

"He is an old fellow that I don't particularly believe in," he said, loftily, as though that forever settled the question as to the existence of such a person. "I think a fellow is a silly coward who lays the blame of his wickedness off on Satan's shoulders; just as if Satan could make him do what he didn't choose to do! always supposing that there is such a creature."

Oh wise and wily Flossy! She knew he was wrong. She knew he had contradicted his own logic, used but a few minutes before, but she did not attempt to prove it to him; for, in the first place, she felt instinctively that the most difficult thing in the world is to convince an ignorant person that he has been foolish and illogical in his argument. You may prove this to an intelligent mind that is accustomed to reason, and to weigh the merits of questions, but it is a rare thing to find an uncultured brain that can follow you closely enough to be convinced of his own folly.

Flossy did not understand herself well enough to reason this out. It was simply a fine instinct that she had, perhaps it ought to be called "tact," that led her to be careful how she tried anything of this sort. Besides, there was another reason. She did not know how to set about doing it. It is one thing to see a sophistry, and another to take to pieces the filmy threads of which it is composed. She waived the whole subject, and jumped to one on which there could be but one opinion.

"Well, then, suppose you were right, and every one were free to be perfect if he would; that only reaches to the end of this life. We surely haven't been perfect, you and I, for instance, so our perfection cannot save us from the penalty of sin, and that is death. What a grand thing it would be to be free from that! You believe in death, don't you? and I suppose, like every other sensible person, you are afraid of death, unless you have found something that makes you free from its power."

Rich. was still in a scornful mood.

"Should like to see anybody that is free from that!" he said, sneeringly. "As near as I can make out, those persons who think they are good are just as likely to die as the rest of us."

"Ah, yes, but it isn't just that little minute of dying that you and I are afraid of; it is afterward. We are afraid of what will come next. You see, I know all about it, for I was awfully afraid; I had such a fear as I suppose you know nothing about. When it thundered I shivered as if I had a chill, and it seemed to me as if every flash of lightning was going to kill me; and when I went on a journey I could enjoy nothing for the fear that there might be an accident and I might be killed. But I declare to you that I have found something that has taken the fear away. I do not mean that I would like to be killed, or that I am tired of living, or anything of the sort. I like to live a great deal better than I ever did before; I think the world is twice as nice, and everything a great deal pleasanter; but when I was coming home from Chautauqua I would waken in the night in the sleeping-car, and I found to my surprise that, although I thought of the same thing, the possibility that there might be an accident that would cost me my life, yet I felt that horrible sense of fear and dread was utterly gone. I could feel that though death in itself might be sad and solemn, yet it was, after all, but the step that opened the door to joy. In short"—and here Flossy's face shone with a rare sweet smile—"I know that the truth as it is in Jesus has made me free."

Rich. was utterly silent. What could he reply in the face of this simple, quiet "I know?" To say, "I don't believe it," would be the height of folly, and he realized it.

As for the rest, they had listened to this talk with various degrees of interest; the most of them amused that Rich. should be drawn into any talk so serious, and be evidently so earnest.

Let me tell you a little about these young men. They were not from the very lowest depths of society; that is, they had homes and family ties, and they had enough to eat and to wear; in fact they earned these latter, each for himself. There were two of them who had the advantage of the public schools, and were fair sort of scholars. Rich. Johnson was one of these, and was therefore somewhat looked up to and respected by those, even, who would not have gone to school another day if they could.

But they were far enough out of the reach of Flossy Shipley; so far that she had never come in contact with one of them before in her life. She had no idea as to their names, or their homes, or their lives. She had no sort of idea of the temptations by which they were surrounded, nor what they needed. Perhaps this very fact removed all touch of patronage from her tone; as, when the bell rang, she found, to her great surprise, that the lesson hour was over, she turned back to them for a moment and said with that sparkling little smile of hers:

"I'm real sorry you hadn't a teacher to-day. I should have been glad to have taught the lesson if I had known how; but you see how it is; I have all these things to learn."

"Now, Rich. Johnson rather prided himself on his rudeness; a strange thing to pride one's self on, to be sure. But pride takes all sorts of curious forms, and he had actually rather gloried in his ability to say rude and cutting things at a moment's notice; words, you know, that the boys in his set called 'cute.' But he was at this time actually surprised into being almost gallant.

"We never had a better teacher," he said, quickly. "If you are only just learning you better try it again on us; we like the style enough sight better than the finished up kind."

And then Flossy smiled again, and thanked them, and said she had enjoyed it. And then she did an unprecedented thing. She invited them all to call on her, in a pretty, graceful way, precisely as she would have invited a gentleman friend who had seen her home from a concert, the quiet, courteous invitation to her father's house, which is a mere matter of form among the young ladies of her set, but which to these boys was as astonishing as an invitation to the Garden of Eden.

They had not the slightest intention of accepting the invitation, but they felt, without realizing what made them feel so, a sudden added touch of self-respect. I almost think they were more careful of their words during the rest of that day than they would have been but for that invitation.

"Isn't Sunday-school splendid?" Flossy said to Ruth Erskine, as, with her cheeks in a fine glow of glad satisfaction that she had "begun," she joined Ruth in the hall.

"It was very interesting," said Ruth, in her more quiet, thoughtful way. She was thoughtful during the entire walk home.

It was her lot to slip into one of those grand classes where Bible teaching means something more than simply reading over the verses. There had been good seed sown with a lavish hand, and there had been careful probing to see if it had taken root. Ruth had some stronger ideas about the importance of "continuing." She had a renewed sense of the blessedness of being made "free." She went home with a renewed desire to consecrate herself, and not only to enjoy, but to labor, that others might enter into that rest. Blessed are those teachers whose earnest Sabbath work produces such fruit as this!

CHAPTER III.

BURDENS.

NDER the influence of the sermon, and the prayers, and the glorious music, life grew to be rose-color to Marion before she reached home that Sabbath evening. She came home with springing step, and with her heart full of plans and possibilities for the future. Not even the dismalness of her unattractive room and desolate surroundings had power to drive the song from her heart. She went about humming the grand tune with which the evening service had closed:

"In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o'er the wrecks of time."

As she sang, her whole soul thrilled with the joy of glorying in such a theme, and her last thought, as she closed her eyes for the night, was about a plan of work that she meant to carry out.

What could have happened in the night to so change the face of the world for her! It looked so utterly different in the morning. School was to open, and she shrank from it, dreaded it. The work looked all drudgery, and the plans she had formed the night before seemed impossibilities. The face of nature had changed wonderfully. In place of radiant sunshine there was falling a steady, dismal rain; the clouds bent low, and looked like lead; the wind was moaning in a dismal way, that felt like a wail; and nothing but umbrellas, and water-proofs, and rubber over-coats, and dreariness, were abroad.

The pretty, summery school dress that Marion had laid out to wear was hung sadly back in her wardrobe, and the inevitable black alpaca came to the surface. It seemed to her the symbol of her old life of dreariness, which she imagined had gone from her. It was not that she felt utterly dismal and desolate; it was not that she had forgotten her late experiences; it was not that she did not know that she had the Friend who is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever;" it was simply that she could not feel it, and joy in it as she had done only yesterday; and her religious life was too recent not to be swayed by feeling and impulse.

The fact that there was a clear sun shining above the clouds, and a strong and firm mountain up in the sunshine, on which it was her privilege to stand, despite what was going on below, she did not understand. She did not know what effect the weather and the sense of fatigue were having on her, and she felt not only mortified, but alarmed, that her joy had so soon gone out in cloud and gloom.

If she could only just run around the corner to see Eurie a minute, or up the hill to Flossy's home, how much it would help her; and the thought that she was actually looking to Flossy Shipley and Eurie Mitchell for help of any sort brought the first smile that she had indulged in that morning; she was certainly changed when she could look to them for comfort or sympathy.

Is there anyone reading this account of an every day life who does not understand, by past experience, just how trying a first day at school is, when teachers and scholars have come out from the influence of a long summer vacation? Next week, or even to-morrow, they will have battled with, and, in a measure, choked the spirit of disgust, or homesickness, or weariness, with which they come back from play to work; but to-day nothing seems quite so hard in all the world as to turn from the hundred things that have interested and delighted them, and settle down to grammar, and philosophy, and algebra.

Teachers and scholars alike are apt to feel the depression of such circumstances; and when you add to the other discomforts, that of a steady, pouring rain, with a sound of fall in every whiff of wind, you will understand that Marion was to have comparatively little help from outside influences. She felt the gloom in her heart deepen as the day went on. She was astonished and mortified at herself to find that the old feelings of irritability and sharpness still held her in grasp; she was not free from them, at least.

Her tongue was as strongly tempted to be sarcastic, and her tone to be stern, as ever they had been. None of the scholars helped her. Those of them who were neither gloomy, nor listless, nor inclined to be cross, were simply silly; they laughed on every possible occasion, with or without an excuse; they devised ways and means to draw off the attention of these who made faint efforts to be studious; and, in short, were decidedly the most provoking of all the elements of the day. Marion found herself more than once curling her lip in the old sarcastic way at the inconsistencies and improprieties of those among her pupils who bore the name of Christian.

During the long recess she tried to go away by herself, in the hope that her heart might quiet down, and rest itself on some of the new and solid ground on which she had so lately learned to tread. But they followed her: several of the teachers, in a gayety of mood, that was half affected to hide the homesickness of their hearts, and therefore infected no one else with a cheerful spirit. They were armed with a package of examination papers, given in by those scholars who aspired to a higher grade. They loudly called on Marion for assistance.

"You haven't had a single examination class yet; then it is clearly your duty to help the afflicted. 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' you know."

It was Miss Banks who said this, and she had barely escaped being Marion's intimate friend; as it was, she came nearer being familiar with her than with any other. She wondered now how it could have been that she had liked her! Her voice sounded so shrill and unwinning, and the quotation that she so glibly uttered was such a jar. However, she turned back with a wan attempt at a smile, and said:

"I shall have enough examination papers of my own before night. How do yours range?" And she took half a dozen that were reached out to her.

"They range precisely as if we had a parcel of idiots in our care. The blunders that these aspiring young ladies and gentlemen make in orthography are enough to set one's teeth on edge."

"Orthography!" said Marion, with a curling lip. "They are years too old for any such common-place as that; it must be history, at least. Here is Allie March struggling for the advanced history class, and I venture to say she doesn't know who was President four years ago."

And then Marion suddenly remembered that Allie March was the one whom, in her glorified moments of only the day before she had aspired to help forward in her Christian life. If she had seen that sneer and heard those sharp words would it have helped her, or inclined her ever to look that way for help? Then Marion and the rest gave themselves to silence and to work.

"What is the prospect for promotion?" Prof. Easton said, as he came and leaned over the desk before which they worked.

Miss Banks looked up with a laugh.

"It reminds one of one's childhood and Scripture learning days: 'Many are called, but few are chosen.' There will be exceedingly few chosen from this class."

Why did those Bible quotations so jar Marion? It had been one of her weak points to quote them aptly, and with stinging sarcasm. Perhaps that was one reason why she so keenly felt their impropriety now; she had been so long among the "called," and so very recently among the "chosen."

The possibility of having spent a lifetime without ever becoming one of those "chosen" ones, seemed so fearful to her, and she felt that she had so narrowly escaped that end, that she shivered and drew her little shawl around her as she glanced up quickly at Prof. Easton.

He was a Christian man, a member of the First Church—would he have any reply to make to this irreverent application of solemn truth? No, he had only a laugh for reply; it might have been at Miss Banks' rueful face that he laughed; but Marion would have liked him better if he had looked grave. Miss Banks at that moment caught a glimpse of Marion's grave face.

"Miss Wilbur," she said, quickly, "what on earth can have happened to you during vacation? I never in my life saw you look so solemn. Didn't I hear something about your going to the woods to camp-meeting? How was that? I verily believe you spent your time on the anxious-seat, and have caught the expression. Did you find anyone to say to you, 'Come unto me?' I'm sure you 'labor' hard enough, and look 'heavy laden,' doesn't she, Prof. Easton? I really think we shall have to start a prayer-meeting over her."

Marion threw down the paper she was correcting with a nervous start, and her voice sounded sharper than she meant.

"How is it possible, Miss Banks, that you can repeat those words in such a shockingly irreverent way? Surely you profess to have at least a nominal respect for the One who first uttered them!"

"Really!" said Miss Banks, with an embarrassed laugh, astonishment and confusion struggling for the mastery on her flushed face. "'Is Saul also among the prophets?' There! I declare, I am quoting again. Is that wicked, too? Prof. Easton, how is that? Miss Wilbur has been to camp-meeting, and is not responsible for her words, but you ought to be good authority. Is it wicked for me to quote Scripture? Haven't I as good a right to Bible verses as any of you? Here has Miss Wilbur been giving us lessons in that art for the last two years, and she suddenly deserts and takes to preaching at us. Is that fair, now? If it were not wicked I might say to her, 'Physician, heal thyself.'"

Marion bestowed a quick, searching, almost pleading glance on Prof. Easton, and then looked down with a flushed and disappointed face. He was not equal to a bold spreading of his professed colors. He laughed, not easily, or as if he enjoyed the sharp words veiled so thinly by pleasantry, but as if he were in an awkward position, and did not see his way out.

"You were just a little hard on Miss Wilbur in your selections, you must remember," he said at last. "People can always be excused for more or less sombreness on the first day of the term."

And then he went away hurriedly, as if he desired to avoid anything further in that strain.

Hard on Miss Wilbur? Did he suppose she cared for such vapid nonsense? What surprised and hurt her was that he so utterly ignored the question at issue. Did he, a professed Christian of many years' standing, see no impropriety in this manner of quoting the very words of the Lord himself! or hadn't he sufficient moral courage to rebuke it? Either conclusion was distasteful; especially distasteful to her, Marion found, because the one in question was Prof. Easton. Hitherto she had held him a little above the ordinary. Was he then so very common after all?

This little occurrence did not serve to sweeten her day. The more so, that after she had quieted down a little, at noon, she tried to join the other teachers as usual, and felt an air of stiffness, or embarrassment, or unnaturalness, of some sort, in their manner to her. Twice, as she came toward them, Miss Banks, who was talking volubly, hushed into sudden and utter silence.

After that, Marion went into the upper hall and ate her lunch by herself. Matters grew worse, rather than better, as the afternoon session dragged its slow hours along. The air of the school-room seemed close and unbearable, and the moment a window was raised the driving rain rushed in and tormented the victim who sat nearest to it.

Poor Marion, who was as susceptible to the temperature of rooms as a thermometer, tried each window in succession during the afternoon, and came to the desperate conclusion that the rain came from all quarters of the leaden sky at once.

The spirit of unrest that pervaded the room grew into positive lawlessness as the day waned, and Marion's tone had taken even unusual sharpness; her self-command was giving way. Instead of helping, she had been positively an injury to Allie March; first by the sharpness of her reprimands, and then by sarcastic comments on her extreme dullness.

But the girl who had tried her the most during the entire day was the most brilliant, and, as a rule, the most studious scholar in her room. Every teacher knows that the good scholar who occasionally makes a failure is the one who exasperates the most; you are so utterly unprepared for anything but perfection on that one's part.

Not that Gracie Dennis was perfect; she was by far too noisy and decided for that; but she was, as a rule, lady-like in her manners and words, showing her careful teaching and her own sense of self-respect.

There had been little sympathy, however, between Marion and herself. She was too much like Marion in a haughty independence of manner to ever become that lady's favorite. Why, as to that, I am not sure that she had a favorite; there were many who liked her, and all respected her, but no one thought of expressing outright affection for Miss Wilbur.

As for Grace Dennis, she had come nearer to outwitting her teacher than had any other young lady in the room, and she stood less in awe of her.

On this particular day the spirit of disquiet seemed to have gotten entire possession of the girl; she had not given fifteen minutes to downright work, but had dawdled and lounged in a most exasperating manner, and at times exhibited a dullness that was very hard to bear patiently, because Marion felt so certain that it was either feigned or the result of willful inattention. Several times had Marion to speak decidedly to the young ladies in her seat, once or twice directly to Grace herself, and at last, losing all patience with her, she took decided measures.

"Miss Dennis, I really have something to do besides watch you all the time. If you please you may bring your book to the desk and take the seat beside me; then if you must whisper, I can afford you a special audience."

What an unheard of thing! Grace Dennis actually called to the platform, to the post of disgrace! The leading young lady in the school! and Rev. Dr. Dennis' only daughter! Some of the scholars looked aghast; some of the class who had long envied her were rude and cruel enough to indulge in an audible giggle.

As for Grace herself, hardly any one could have been more amazed. It was many a day since, with all her love of fun, and her dangerous position as a leader, she had been obliged to receive a public reprimand; she had never in her life been called to that public seat, which was but one remove from being sent to Prof. Easton's private office!

Her great handsome eyes dilated and flashed, and her cheeks glowed like fire. She half arose, then sat down again, and the school waited breathlessly, being about equally divided as to whether she would obey or rebel. Marion herself was somewhat in doubt, and in her excitement over the unwonted scene, concluded to make obedience a necessity.

"On the second thought, you may have your choice, Miss Dennis; you may come to the desk or repair at once to Prof. Easton's room, and state the cause of your appearance."

Again the hateful giggle! There were those who knew why being sent to Prof. Easton was the worst thing that Gracie Dennis thought could happen to her. She arose again, and now she had the advantage of her teacher, for there were dignity and composure in her voice as she said:

"I believe I have never disobeyed your orders, Miss Wilbur; I certainly do not propose to do so now."

Then she came with composed step and took her seat beside Marion: but her eyes still glittered, and, as the business of the hour went on more quietly than any hour that had preceded it, Marion, as she caught glimpses now and then of the face bent over her Latin Grammar, saw that it was flushed almost to a purple hue, and that the intense look in those handsome eyes did not quiet. She had roused a dangerous spirit.

To add to the embarrassment and the keenness of her rebuke, the door leading from the recitation room, behind the platform, suddenly opened, and Prof. Easton himself came around to speak to Marion. He paused in astonishment as he caught sight of the culprit beside her, and for an instant was visibly embarrassed; then he rallied, and, bowing slightly and very gravely, passed her by, and addressed Marion in a low voice.

As for Gracie, she did not once lift her eyes after the first swift glance had assured her who the caller was.

"I have made an enemy," thought Marion to herself, as, her own excitement beginning to subside, she had time to reflect on whether she had done wisely. "She will never forgive me this public insult, as she will choose to call it. I see it in her handsome, dangerous eyes. And, yet, I can hardly see how I could have done otherwise? If almost any of the others had given me half the provocation that she has to-day, I should have sent them to Prof. Easton, without question. Why should I hesitate in her favor? Oh, me, what a miserable day it has been! and I meant it to be such a good one! I wonder if my Christian life must be marked by such weary and ignominious failures as this? Gracie Dennis is one of the Christian (?) young ladies. A lovely Christian she has shown, and, if I am not mistaken, will continue to show to me! I wonder if it amounts to nothing but a name, after all, with the most of them?"

And here Marion stopped this train of thought, because she suddenly remembered that she was now numbered among those on whom others were looking and wondering if their religion meant anything but name. Suppose that some had been looking at her in that light this day? How would they have decided?

She found that she was not willing to be judged by the same rule that she was almost unconsciously applying to Gracie Dennis. Then she went back over the day, and tried to discover wherein she had failed, and how she might have done what would have been better. Could she not, after all, have gotten along without so severe and public a rebuke to this young girl at her side?

She knew her temperament well. Indeed it was—she confessed it to herself—a good deal like her own. What would be a trifle to half the girls in the school, what would be forgotten by the best of them in a day or two, would burn in this girl's memory, and affect her after life and manner, almost in spite of herself—the more so, because of that unfortunate call from Prof. Easton.

Marion knew by the swift glance which he gave at this strange situation that it meant something to him. Then it was doubly hard for Gracie. She began to feel sorry for her; to wish that she might in some way smooth over the chasm that she had builded between them.

"She is very young," she said to herself, with a little sigh. "I ought not to have expected such wonderful things of her. I wish I had managed differently; it is too late now; I wonder how I shall get out of it all? Shall I just let her go home without saying anything?"

All these troubled thoughts wandered through Marion's brain during the intervals of quiet, when nothing was heard save the scratch of pens, for the entire room was engaged in a dictation exercise, which was to determine their standing in the writing class. At last there was quiet.

The demon of inattention had seemingly been exorcised or subdued, for all were industriously at work, and Marion had a chance to rest from the alert watchfulness which had characterized the day.

All at work but Gracie. She still bent over her Latin grammar. She had not asked permission to join the dictation class, and Marion had not volunteered it. Truth to tell, she hardly dared venture to address her at all. The eyes had lost none of their keen flash, and the color seemed to be deepening, instead of subsiding on her pretty soft cheeks.

Marion, as her eyes roved over the exercise book in her hand, felt her heart arrested by these words among the selections for dictation:

"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

They smote her like a blow from an unseen hand. What burdens of homesickness and ennui and weariness might not all these girls have had to bear to-day! Had she helped them? Had her manner been winning and hopeful and invigorating? Had her words been gentle and well chosen, as well as firm and decisive? Her answers to these questions stung her.

Moved by a sudden impulse, and not giving herself time to shrink from the determination, she bent forward a little and addressed Gracie:

"Read that, Gracie. I have not obeyed its direction to-day; have you? Do you think you have helped me to bear my burdens?"

Would Gracie answer her at all? Would her answer be cold and haughty; as nearly rude as she had dared to make it? Marion felt her heart throb while she waited. And she had to wait, for Gracie was utterly silent.

At last her teacher stole a glance at her. The great beautiful eyes were lifted to her face. The flash was passing out of them. In its place there was a puzzled, wondering, questioning look. And, when at last she spoke, her voice was timid, as if she were half frightened at her own words, and yet eager as one who must know:

"Miss Wilbur, you don't mean—oh, do you mean that you want to fulfill the law of Christ; that you own him?"

"That I own him and love him," Marion said, her cheeks glowing now as Gracie's did, "and that I want above all things, to fulfill his law, and yet that I have miserably failed, even this first day."

Among Marion's sad thoughts that day had been:

"There is no one to know, or to care, whether I am different or not. If I could only tell some one—some Christian who would be glad—but who is there to tell? Prof. Easton is a Christian, but he doesn't care enough about the Lord Jesus to rebuke those who profane his name; he has let me do it in his presence, and smiled at my wit. And these girls" (and here Marion's lip had curled), "they don't know what they mean by their professions."

She was unprepared for what followed. Gracie Dennis, graceful, queenly in her dignity, and haughty, even in her mirth, said, suddenly, in a voice which quivered with gladness:

"Oh, I am so glad; so glad! Oh, Miss Wilbur, I don't know how to be thankful enough!" And then she raised her head suddenly, and her glowing lips just touched Marion's cheek.

It was so unusual for Marion to be kissed. Her friends at Chautauqua had been those who rarely indulged in that sort of caress—never, at least, with her. And, while, as I told you, many of them liked, and all of them respected her, it was yet an unheard of thing for the scholars to caress Miss Wilbur. And then, too, Gracie Dennis was by no means lavish of her kisses. This made the token seem so much more. It felt almost like a benediction.

Gracie's next words were humbling to her:

"Miss Wilbur, will you forgive me? I didn't mean to annoy you. I don't know what has been the matter with me."

But, long before this, the last laggard had finished her line, and was staring in undisguised astonishment at the scene enacted on the platform.

Marion rallied her excited thoughts. "Dear child," she said, "we have each something to forgive. I think I have been too severe with you. We will try to help each other to-morrow."

Then she gave the next sentence as calmly as usual. But she went home that night, through the rain, with a quick step and with joy in her heart. It was not all profession. It meant something to those girls; to Grace Dennis it meant everything. It was enough to make her forget her passion, and her wounded pride, and to make her face actually radiant with joy.

It should mean more to her. She had failed that day. She had not been, in any sense, what she meant to be; what she ought to have been. But there was a blessed verse: "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities."

What a salvation! Able to forgive transgression, to cover sin, to remember it no more. It all seemed very natural to her to-night; very like an infinite Saviour; one infinitely loving.

She began to realize that even poor human love could cover a multitude of sins. How easy it seemed to her that it would be to overlook the mistakes and shortcomings of Gracie Dennis, after this!

CHAPTER IV.

COL. BAKER'S SABBATH EVENING.

MONG Marion Wilbur's gloomy thoughts during that trying Monday were these: "Some lives are a good deal harder to bear than others. It would be nonsense for some people to talk about crosses. There are Ruth and Flossy; what do they know about annoyances or self-denials? Such homes as theirs and such occupations as theirs have very little in common with hard, uncongenial work such as mine. Eurie Mitchell has less easy times; but then it is home, and father, and mother, and family friends. She isn't all alone. None of them can sympathize with me. I don't see how Flossy Shipley is ever to grow, if 'crosses are a fruitful condition of the Christian life.' I'm sure she can do as she pleases, and when she pleases."

Thus much Marion knew about other lives than hers. The actual truth was that Flossy's shadows began on Sabbath evening, while Marion was yet on the heights.

It was just as they stepped from the aisle of the church into the wide hall that Col. Baker joined her. This was not a new experience. He was very apt to join her. No other gentleman had been a more frequent or more enjoyable guest at her father's house. Indeed, he was so familiar that he was as likely to come on the Sabbath as on any other day, and was often in the habit of calling to accompany Flossy to any evening service where there was to be a little grander style of music than usual, or a special floral display.

In fact he had called this very evening on such an errand, but it was after Flossy had gone to her own church. So her first meeting with him since Chautauqua experiences was in that hall belonging to the First Church.

"Good-evening," he said, joining her without the formality of a question as to whether it would be agreeable; his friendship was on too assured a footing for the need of that formality. "You are more than usually devoted to the First Church, are you not? I saw you in the family pew this morning. I felt certain of being in time to take you to the South Side to-night. St. Stephen's Church has a grand choral service this evening. I was in at one of the rehearsals, and it promised to be an unusually fine thing. I am disappointed that you did not hear it."

Here began Flossy's unhappiness. Neither Marion nor Ruth could have appreciated it. To either of those it would have been an actual satisfaction to have said to Col. Baker, in a calm and superior tone of voice:

"Thanks for your kindness, but I have decided to attend my own church service regularly after this, and would therefore not have been able to accompany you if I had been at home."

But for Flossy such an explanation was simply dreadful. It was so natural, and would have been so easy, to have murmured a word of regret at her absence, and expressed disappointment in having missed the choral.

But for that address to the children, given under the trees at Chautauqua, by Dr. Hurlbut, she would have said these smooth, sweet-sounding words as sweetly as usual, without a thought of conscience. But had not he shown her, as plainly as though he had looked down into her heart and seen it there, that these pleasant, courteous phrases which are so winning and so false were among her besetting sins? Had he not put her forever on her guard concerning them? Had she not promised to wage solemn war against the tendency to so sin with her graceful tongue? Yet how she dreaded the plain speaking!

How would Marion's lips have curled over the idea of such a small matter as that being a cross! And yet Flossy could have been sweet and patient and tender to the listless, homesick school-girls, and kissed away half their gloom, and thought it no cross at all. Verily there is a difference in these crosses, and verily, "every heart knoweth its own bitterness."

Col. Baker was loth to leave the subject:

"Aren't you being unusually devout to-day?" he asked. "I heard of you at Sabbath-school I was certain after that effort, I should find you at home, resting. What spell came over you to give the First Church so much of your time?"

"One would think, to hear you, that I never went to church on Sabbath evening," Flossy said. And then to a certain degree conscience triumphed. "I have not been very often, it is true; but I intend to reform in that respect in the future. I mean to go whenever I can, and I mean to go always to the First Church."

Col. Baker looked at her curiously in the moonlight.

"Is that an outgrowth of your experience in the woods?" he asked.

"Yes," Flossy said simply and bravely.

He longed to question further, to quiz her a little, but something in the tone of the monosyllable prevented. So he said:

"I am at least surprised at part of the decision. I thought part of the work of those gatherings was to teach fellowship and unity. Why should you desert other churches?"

"There is no desertion about it. I do not belong to other churches, and nobody has reason to expect me at any of them; but my pastor has a right to expect me to be in my pew."

"Oh; then it is the accident of the first choice that must determine one's sitting in church for all future time?"

"With me it has been only an accident," she said, simply. "I suppose there are people who had better reasons for selecting their church home. But I am very well satisfied with my place." And then Flossy was very glad that they were nearing her father's house. The gladness did not last, however. There hung over it another cross. This Col. Baker had been in the habit of being invited to enter, and of spending an hour or more in cosy chat with the family. Nothing confidential or special in these Sabbath evening calls; they seemed simply to serve to pass away a dull hour. They had been pleasant to Flossy. But it so happened that the hours of the Sabbath had grown precious to her; none of them were dull; every moment of them was needed.

Besides, in their walk up the hill from the auditorium one evening, Evan Roberts had said in answer to a wonderment from her that so little was accomplished by the Sabbath services throughout the land:

"I think one reason is the habit that so many people have of frittering a way any serious impression or solemn thought they may have had by a stream of small talk in which they indulge with their own family or their intimate friends, after what they call the Sabbath is past. Do you know there are hundreds of people, good, well-meaning—in fact, Christians—who seem to think that the old Puritan rules in regard to hours hold yet, in part. It begins at eight or nine o'clock, when they have their nap out; and at the very latest it closes with the minister's benediction after the second service; and they laugh and talk on the way home and at home as if the restraints of the day were over at last."

How precisely he had described the Sabbath day of the Shipley family. With what a sense of relief had she often sat and chatted with Col. Baker at the close of what had been to her an irksome day, and felt that at last the sense of propriety would not be shocked if they laughed and bantered each other as usual.

Things were different now. But poor Flossy's face flushed, and her heart beat hard over the trial of not asking Col. Baker to come in. Silly child! Ruth would have said, and her calm, clear voice would not have hesitated over the words; "Col. Baker, I can not ask you in this evening, because I have determined to receive no more calls, even from intimate friends, on the Sabbath. On any other evening I shall be happy to see you."

As for Marion, she would have decidedly enjoyed saying it. But Flossy, she could never have explained it to him. Her voice would have trembled too much, and her heart beat too hard. The very most that she could do was to keep her lips closed. No invitation from her should pass them, and this in itself was five times more of a cross than it would have been for either of the others to have spoken.

However, it did no good. Col. Baker's friendship was on too assured a footing to wait for ceremony. He had received too many invitations of that nature to even notice the omission now. Though Flossy paused and turned toward him he did not notice it, but himself opened the door for her and passed in at her side, talking still about some matter connected with his plans for the evening, that had been overthrown by her strange propensity for church.

She did not hear him at all; she was both grieved and annoyed. If only she dared go directly to her room! If she had been Ruth Erskine it would have been done in a moment.

They sat down in the back parlor, and it was made evident to Flossy that the entertainment of Col. Baker would be considered her special duty. The library door was closed, and the sound of subdued voices there told that Kitty Shipley and her suitor were having a confidential talk. Kitty wouldn't help, then. Mrs. Shipley had retired, and Mr. Shipley sat at the drop light reading the journal. He glanced up at their entrance, gave Col. Baker the courteous and yet familiar greeting that welcomed him as a special friend of the house, and then went on with his reading. As for her brother Charlie, he had not come in, and probably would not for hours to come.

What was there for Flossy to do but to take a seat and talk to Col. Baker? Yet how she shrank from it! She wanted to be alone, to go over in her heart all the sweet and blessed experiences of the day, for this day had helped her much. She wanted to think about those boys in the school, and form plans for their future, and try to decide whether it could be that they would really like her for a teacher, and whether Dr. Dennis would let her undertake the class. Why would not Col. Baker go home?

"What is the matter with you?" he asked, studying her face curiously, and with a doubtful sound in his voice. "I don't believe that strange freak of yours did you any good."

"It did me more good than anything that ever happened to me in my life," Flossy said, positively.

If she could only have explained to him just what the nature of that good was! Possibly she might have tried, only there sat her father. Who could tell when his interest in the Times would cease, and he give attention to her? Flossy could not understand why she should be so afraid of her father in this matter; but she was very much afraid.

The talk they had was of that kind known as "small." To Flossy it seemed exceedingly small, and she did not know how to make it otherwise. She began to wonder if she and Col. Baker really had any ideas in common; yet Col. Baker could talk with gentlemen, and talk well. It was simply the habit of being frippery with the ladies that made his words seem so foolish to Flossy.

Contrary to her expectation, her brother Charlie suddenly appeared on the scene; and for a time she was privileged to slip into the background. Charlie had been to hear the choral, and Col. Baker was very anxious to know as to its success. You would have supposed them to be talking about a prima donna concert. At last Charlie turned to Flossy with the trying question:

"Sis, why didn't you go to the choral? I thought you were coming for her, Baker. Didn't you tell me so?"

"I came, but was too late. Miss Flossy had already betaken herself to the First Church."

"So you missed the choral?"

"Well, only part of it. I went for an hour; then I left, and went in search of your sister, to discover if I could what special attractions First Church had for her to-night."

Now this fashion of going to one service until he was tired, and then quietly slipping out in search of something more attractive, was peculiar to Col. Baker. Flossy had known of his doing it on several different occasions. The very most that she had thought about it had been, that it was making one's self very conspicuous. She didn't believe she would like to do it, even if she were a man. But to-night the action had taken an irreverent shade that it never had before. She discovered that she utterly disapproved of it. There seemed to be many things in Col. Baker that met with her disapproval. Meantime the talk went on.

"Did you find the attraction?" Charlie asked.

Col. Baker shrugged his handsome shoulders.

"I confess I couldn't find it in the sermon. It was one of the Doctor's sharpest and bluest efforts. That poor man has the dyspepsia, I feel certain. Seems to me he develops an increased ability for making people miserable."

Now, Col. Baker fully expected to draw forth by this remark one of Flossy's silvery laughs, which, to tell the truth, were becoming sweeter to his ears than any choral.

He was surprised and annoyed at the steady look of thoughtful, not to say distressed gravity that she gave him out of those soft blue eyes of hers. He did not know what to make of this Flossy; he was feeling the change in her more decidedly than anyone else had done. He waited for Flossy's answer, and she gave it at last, in a grave, rebuking tone of voice:

"I liked the sermon very much."

"Did you, indeed? I confess I am astonished. I gave you the credit of possessing a more tender heart. Frankly, then, I didn't. I must say I don't like to go to church to be made uncomfortable."

"Did you find that sentence in the paper?" Flossy asked, a little gleam of mischief in her eyes. "Because, if you did, I should have thought you would have considered it answered very well by the comments."

"As a rule, I am not obliged to resort to the papers to find remarks to quote," Col. Baker said, with an attempt at gayety, which but half concealed the evident annoyance that he felt. "But I judge the paper found some one suffering in the same way. Pray, what was the answer?"

"Why, the writer said that he supposed no one liked to be uncomfortable; but whether it was the sermon that should change, or the life, in order to remove the discomfort, was a question for each to decide for himself."

"Sharp!" said Charlie, laughing; "you've got hit, Baker."

"Oh, no," he said, "not at all. Don't you see, the author kindly accorded permission for each person to decide the question for himself? Now I have it decided so far as I am concerned. I prefer a change in the sermon. Oh, Dr. Dennis is a good man; no one doubts it; but he is too severe a sermonizer. His own church officers admit that. He is really driving the young people away from the church. I should not be greatly surprised if there had to be a change in that locality very soon. The spirit of the times demands more liberality, and a larger measure of Christian charity."

Col. Baker was really too well educated a man to have allowed himself to use these terms parrot-like, without knowledge or thought as to their meaning; but the truth was, he cared so little about church and Christian charity, and all those phrases, as to have very little idea of what he meant himself when he used them.

But pretty little Flossy had never argued with him, never been known to argue with anybody. Why should he not occasionally awe her with his high sounding words? It is a pity that Ruth or Marion had not been there to take up the theme; and yet it is doubtful if arguments would have had any weight with him. The truth was, he did not need to be convinced. Probably Flossy's perfect gravity, and dignity, and silence, did more to answer him than any keen words could have done.

CHAPTER V.

NEW MUSIC.

HARLIE arose suddenly and went toward the piano. Things were becoming uncomfortably grave.

"Sis," he said, "can't you give us some new music? Try this new piece; Baker hasn't heard you sing it. I don't think it is remarkable, but it is better than none. We seem to have a very small list of music that will pass the orthodox line for Sunday use."

Both he and Flossy had sighed over the dearth of pretty things that were suited to Sunday. The one in question was one of the worst of its kind—one of that class which Satan seems to have been at work getting up, for the purpose of lulling to rest weak consciences. Sickly, sentimental ideas, expressed in words that are on the very verge of silly; and yet, with just enough solemn sounding phrases in them, thrown in here and there, to allow them to be caught up by a certain class, and pronounced "sacred song." Flossy had herself selected this one, and before her departure for Chautauqua had pronounced it very good. She had not looked at it since she came home. Charlie spread it open for her on the piano, then returned to the sofa to enjoy the music. Flossy's voice was sweet and tender; no power in it, and little change of feeling, but pleasant to listen to, and capable of being tender and pathetic. She looked over the sacred song with a feeling of aversion almost amounting to disgust. The pitiful attempts at religion sounded to her recently impressed heart almost like a caricature. On the piano beside her lay a copy of "Gospel Songs;" open, so it happened (?), at the blessed and solemn hymn, "How much owest thou?" Now a coincidence that seemed remarkable, and at once startled and impressed Flossy, was that Dr. Dennis' text for the evening had been the words, "How much owest thou unto my Lord?" She hesitated just a moment, then she resolutely pushed aside the sheet music, drew the book toward her, and without giving herself time for a prelude, gave herself to the beautiful and well-remembered words:

"How much owest thou?
For years of tender, watchful care,
A father's faith, a mother's prayer—
How much owest thou?
"How much owest thou?
For calls, and warnings loud and plain,
For songs and sermons heard in vain—
How much owest thou?
"How much owest thou?
Thy day of grace is almost o'er,
The judgment time is just before—
How much owest thou?
"How much owest thou?
Oh, child of God, and heir of heaven,
Thy soul redeemed, thy sins forgiven—
How much owest thou?"

Flossy had heard Mr. Bliss, with his grand and glorious voice, ring that out on a certain evening at Chautauqua, where all the associations of the hour and place had been solemn and sacred. It might have been in part these memories, and the sense of something missed, that made her have a homesick longing for the place and song again, that gave to her voice an unusually sweet and plaintive sound. Every word was plain and clear, and wonderfully solemn; but when she reached the words,

"Oh, child of God, and heir of heaven,
Thy soul redeemed, thy sins forgiven,"

There rang out a note of triumph that filled the room, and made the hearts of her listeners throb with surprise and wonder. Long before the song was closed her father had laid aside the Times, and, with spectacles pushed above his eyes, was listening intently. Absolute silence reigned for a moment, as Flossy's voice died out in sweetness; then Charlie, clearing his throat said:

"Well, I van! I said I didn't consider the song remarkable. But I take it back; it is certainly remarkable. Did you ever hear anything that had so changed since you last met it?"

Col. Baker did not at once reply. The very first line had struck him, for the reason that above most men, he had reason to remember a "mother's prayer." There were circumstances connected with that mother of his that made the line doubly startling to him. He was agitated by the wonderful directness of the solemn words, and he was vexed that they agitated him; so when he did speak, to conceal his feeling, he made his voice flippant.

"It is a remarkable production, worthy of camp-meeting, I should say. But, Miss Flossy, allow me to congratulate you. It was sung with striking effect."

Flossy arose suddenly from the piano, and closed the book of hymns.

"Col. Baker," she said, "may I ask you to excuse me this evening? I find I am not in a mood to enjoy conversation; my brother will entertain you, I am sure."

And before Col. Baker could recover from his astonishment sufficiently to make any reply at all, she had given him a courteous bow for good-night, and escaped from the room.

The situation was discussed by the Shipley family at the next morning's breakfast table. Flossy had come down a trifle late, looking pale and somewhat sober, and was rallied by Kitty as to the cause.

"Her conscience is troubling her a little, I fancy," her father said, eyeing her closely from under heavy brows. "Weren't you just a little hard on the colonel, last night, daughter? He is willing to endure considerable from you, I guess; but I wouldn't try him too far."

"What was the trouble, father? What has Flossy done now? I thought she was going to be good at last?"

"Done! You may well ask what, Miss Kitty. Suppose the friend you had shut up in the library had been informed suddenly that you were not in a mood to talk with him, and then you had decamped and left him to the tender mercies of two men?"

"Why, Flossy Shipley! you didn't do that, did you? Really, if I were Col. Baker I would never call on you again."

"I don't see the harm," Flossy said, simply. "Father and Charlie were both there. Surely that was company enough for him. I hadn't invited him to call."

"Oh, undoubtedly he calls on purpose to see father and Charlie! He has not been so attentive to the family during your absence, I can assure you. We haven't so much as had a peep at him since you went away. Flossy, I hadn't an idea you could be so rude. I declare, I think that Wilbur girl is demoralizing you. They say she has no idea of considering people's feelings; but then, one expects it of her class."

Mrs. Shipley came to Flossy's aid:

"Poor child, I don't blame her for slipping away. She was tired. She had been to church twice, and to Sunday-school at noon, without any lunch, too. Flossy, you mustn't indulge in such an absurd freak another Sunday. It is too much for you. I am sure it is not strange that you wanted to get away to rest."

Then the father:

"I dare say you were tired, as your mother says; in fact, though, I must say I think I never saw you looking better than you were last evening. But it was a trifle thoughtless, daughter, and I want you to be more careful in the future. Col. Baker's father was my oldest and most valued friend, and I want his son to be treated with the utmost consideration, and to feel that he is always welcome. Since he has so special a friendship for you, you must just remember that his position in society is one of the highest, and that you are really decidedly honored. Not that I am rebuking you, Flossy dear, only putting you on your guard; for remember that you carry a very thoughtless little head on your pretty shoulders."

And then he leaned over and patted the thoughtless head, and gave the glowing cheek such a loving, fatherly kiss.

As for poor Flossy, the bit of steak she was trying to swallow seemed to choke her; she struggled bravely to keep back the tears that she felt were all ready to fall. The way looked shadowy to her; she felt like a deceitful coward. Here were they, making excuses for her—tired, thoughtless, and the like. Oh, for courage to say to them that she had not been tired at all, and that she thought about that action of hers longer than she had thought about anything in her life, up to a few weeks ago.

If she could only tell them out boldly and plainly that everything was changed to her, that she looked at life from a different standpoint; and that, standing where she did now, it looked all wrong to spend the last hours of the Sabbath in entertaining company. But her poor little tongue, all unused to being brave, so shrank from this ordeal, and the lump in her throat so nearly choked her, that she made no attempt at words.

So the shadows that had fallen on her heart grew heavier as she went about her pretty room. She foresaw a troubled future. Not only must the explanation come, but she foresaw that her changed plans would lie right athwart the views and plans of her father.

What endless trouble and discomfort would this occasion! Also, there were her pet schemes for Sunday-school, including those boys for whom she had already planned a dozen different things.

Her mother had frankly expressed her opinion, and, although it is not the age when parents say, nor were Flossy's parents of the sort who would ever have said, "You must do thus, and you shall not do so," still, she foresaw endless discussions; sarcastic raillery from Kittie and Charlie; persuasions from her mother; earnest protests from her father, and a general air of lack of sympathy or interest about them all.

These things were to Flossy almost more than, under some circumstances, the martyr's stake would have been to Marion Wilbur. Then she, too, as she went about doing sundry little things toward making her room more perfect in its order, took up Marion's fashion of pitying herself, and looking longingly at the brightness in some other life.

Not Marion's, for she was all alone, and had great responsibilities, and no one to shield her or help her or comfort her; that was dreadful. Not Ruth's, for her life was so high up among books and paintings and grandeur, that it looked like cold elegance and nothing else.

She wouldn't have lived that life; but there was Eurie Mitchell, in a little home that had always looked sunny and cheerful when she had taken occasional peeps into it—somewhat stirred up, as became a large family and small means, but with a cleanly, cheery sort of stir that was agreeable rather than otherwise.

And there were little children to love and care for—children who put their arms around one's neck and said, "I love you," a great many times in a day.

Flossy, having never tried it, did not realize that if the fingers had been sticky or greasy or a trifle black, as they were apt to be, it would be an exceeding annoyance to her. She saw what people usually do see about other people's cares and duties, only the pretty, pleasant side. To have felt somewhat of the other side she should have spent that Monday with Eurie.

To Eurie a Monday rain was a positive affliction; it necessitated the marshaling of tubs and pails into the little kitchen, and the endurance of Mrs. Maloney's presence in constant contact with the dinner arrangements—on pleasant days Mrs. Maloney betook herself to the open air.

Then, in the Mitchell family there was that trial to any woman of ordinary patience, a small girl who "helped"—worked for her board mornings and evenings, and played at school the rest of the time.

Sallie Whitcomb, the creature who tried Eurie, was rather duller than the most of her class and had her days or spells when she seemed utterly incapable of understanding the English language. This day was very apt to be Monday; and on the particular Monday of which I write, the spell was on her in full force.

To add to the bewilderments of the day, Dr. Mitchell, after a very hurried breakfast, had departed, taking the household genius with him, to see a patient and friend, who was worse.

"I don't know how you will manage," Mrs. Mitchell had said, as she paid a hasty visit to the kitchen. "There is bread to mix, you know, and that yeast ought to be made to-day; and then the starch you must look after or it will be lumpy; and oh, Eurie, do see that your father's handkerchiefs are all picked up, he leaves them around so. You must keep an eye on the baby, for he is a trifle hoarse this morning; and Robbie mustn't go in the wind—mustn't eat a single apple, for he isn't at all well; you must see to that, Eurie—I wouldn't have you forget him for anything. See here, when the baby takes a nap, see that the lower sash is shut—there is quite a draught through the room. I don't know how you are to get through. You must keep Jennie from school to take care of the children, and do the best you can. If Mrs. Craymer hadn't sent for me I wouldn't go this morning, much as I want to see her, but I think I ought to, as it is."

"Of course," Eurie said, cheerily. "Don't worry about us, mother; we'll get through somehow. I'll see to Mrs. Maloney and all the rest."

"Well, be careful about the bread; don't let it get too light, and don't for anything put it in too soon: it was a trifle heavy last week, you know, and your father dislikes it so. Never mind much about dinner; your father will have to go to two or three places when he gets back from the Valley, and I can get up a warm bite for him while he is gone."

And with a little sigh, and a regretful look back into the crowded, steamy kitchen, Mrs. Mitchell answered her husband's hurried call and ran. So Eurie was left mistress of the occasion.

It looked like a mountain to her. The dishes were piled higher than usual, for the Sabbath evening lunch had made many that had not been washed. And Sallie, who should have been deep into them already, was at that moment hanging on the gate she had gone to shut, and watching the retreating tail of the doctor's horse.

"Sallie!" Eurie called, and Sallie came, looking bewildered and indolent, eating an apple as she walked.

"Now, Sallie, you must hurry with the dishes, see how soon you can get them all out of the way. I have the bread to mix and a dozen other things to do, and I can't help you a bit."

At the same time she had an inward consciousness that the great army of dishes would never marshal into place till she came to their aid.

This was the beginning, not a pleasant one, and the bewilderments of the morning deepened with every passing half hour.

What happened? Dear me, what didn't? Inexperienced Eurie, who rarely had the family bread left on her hands, went to mixing it before getting baking tins ready, and Sallie left her dishes to attend to it, and dripped dish-water over them and the molding-board and on Eurie's clean apron, in such an unmistakable manner, that the annoyed young lady washed her hands of dough and dumped the whole pile of tins unceremoniously into the dish-water.

"They are so greasy I can't touch them!" she said in disdain, "and have drops of dish-water all over them, and besides here is the core of an apple in one. I wonder, Sallie, if you eat apples while you are washing the dishes! Put some wood in the stove. Jennie, can't you come here and wipe these dishes? We won't get them out of the way before mother comes home."

Jenny appeared at the door, book in hand.

"How can I leave the baby, Eurie? Robbie says he can't play with him—he feels too sick. I think something ought to be done for Robbie; his cheeks are as red as scarlet."

Whereupon Eurie left dishes and bread and went in to feel of Robbie's pulse, and ask how he felt, and get a pillow for him to lie on the lounge; and the baby cried for her and had to be taken a minute; so the time went—time always goes like lightning in the kitchen on Monday morning. When that bread was finally set to rise, Eurie dismissed Sallie from the dish-pan in disgust, with orders to sweep the room, if she could leave her apple long enough.

CHAPTER VI.

DISTURBING ELEMENTS.

HE next anxiety was the baby, who contrived to tumble himself over in his high chair, and cried loudly. Eurie ran. Dr. Mitchell was always so troubled about bumps on the head. She bathed this in cold water, and in arnica, and petted, and soothed, and pacified as well as she could a child who thought it a special and unendurable state of things not to have mamma and nobody else. Between the petting she administered wholesome reproof to Jennie.

"If you hadn't been reading, instead of attending to him this would not have happened I wish I had told mother to lock up all the books before she went. You are great help; worth while to stay from school to bury yourself in a book."

"I haven't read a dozen pages this morning," Jennie said, with glowing cheeks. "He was sitting in his high chair, just as he always is, and I had stepped across the room to get a picture-book for Robbie. How could I know that he was going to fall? I don't think you are very kind, anyway, when I am helping all that I can, and losing school besides."

And Miss Jennie put on an air of lofty and injured innocence.

"I believe she is sweeping right on the bread," said Eurie, her thoughts turned into another channel. "Go and see, Jennie."

Jennie went, and returned as full of comfort as any of Job's friends.

"She swept right straight at it; and she left the door open, and the wind blew the cloth off, and a great hunk of dust and dirt lies right on top of one loaf, and the clothes are boiling over on the others. Nice bread you'll have!"

Before this sentence was half finished, Eurie sat the baby on the floor and ran, stopping only to give orders that Jennie should not let him go to sleep for anything.

The door-bell was the next sound that tried her nerves. The little parlor where they had lingered late, she and Nellis, last evening, when they had a pleasant talk together, the pleasantest she had ever had with that brother; now she remembered how it looked; how he had said, as he glanced back when they were leaving:

"Eurie, I hope you won't have any special calls before you get around to this room in the morning; it looks as though there had been an upheaval of books and papers here."

Books, and papers, and dust, and her hat and sack, and Jennie's gloves, and Robbie's play-things; she had forgotten the parlor.

Meantime, Jennie had rushed to the door, and now returned, holding the kitchen door open, and talking loud enough to be heard distinctly in the parlor.

"Eurie, Leonard Brooks is in the parlor. He says he wants to see you for just a minute, and I should think that is about as long as he would care to stay; it looks like sixty in there."

"Oh, dear me!" said Eurie, and she looked down at her dress. It had long black streaks running diagonally across it, and dish-water and grease combined on her apron; a few drops of arnica on her sleeves and hands did not improve the general effect.

"Jennie, why in the world didn't you tell him that I was engaged, and couldn't see him this morning?"

"Why, how should I know that you wanted me to say so to people? You didn't tell me. He said he was in a hurry. He isn't alone, either; there is a strange gentleman with him."

Worse and worse.

"I won't go," said Eurie.

"But you will have to. I told him you were at home, and would be in in a moment. Go on, what do you care?"

There was no way but to follow this advice; but she did care. She set the starch back on the stove, and washed her hands, and waited while Sallie ran up-stairs and hunted a towel; then she went, flushed and annoyed, to the parlor. Leonard Brooks was an old acquaintance, but who was the stranger?

"Mr. Holden, of New York," Leonard said.

"They would detain her but a moment, as she was doubtless engaged;" and then Leonard looked mischievously down at the streaked dress. He was not used to seeing Eurie look so entirely awry in the matter of her toilet.

Mr. Holden was going to get up a tableau entertainment, and needed home talent to help him; he, Leonard, had volunteered to introduce him to some of the talented ladies of the city, and had put her first on the list. Eurie struggled with her embarrassment, and answered in her usual way:

"He can see at a glance that I merit the compliment. If myself and all my surroundings don't show a marked talent for disorder, I don't know what would."

Mr. Holden was courteous and gallant in the extreme. He took very little notice of the remark; ignored the state of the room utterly; apologized for the unseemly hour of their call, attributing it to his earnest desire to secure her name before there was any other engagement made; "might he depend on her influence and help?"

Eurie was in a hurry. She smelled the starch scorching; Robbie was crying fretfully, and the baby was so quiet she feared he was asleep; the main point was, to get rid of her callers as soon as possible. She asked few questions, and knew as little about the projected entertainment as possible, save that she was pledged to a rehearsal on the coming Wednesday at eight o'clock. Then she bowed them out with a sense of relief; and, merely remarking to Jennie that she wished she could coax Robbie and the baby into the parlor, and clear it up a little before anybody more formidable arrived, she went back to the scorched starch and other trials.

From that time forth a great many people wanted Dr. Mitchell. The bell rang, and rang, and rang. Jennie had to run, and Eurie had to run to baby. Then came noon bringing the boys home from school, hungry and in a hurry; and Eurie had to go to Sallie's help, who was struggling to get the table set, and something on it to eat.

Whereupon the bread suddenly announced itself ready for the oven by spreading over one-half of the bread cloth, with a sticky mass. Then the bell rang again.

"I hope that is some one who will send to the Valley for father right away; then we shall have mother again."

This was Eurie's half aloud admission that she was not equal to the strain. Then she listened for Jennie's report. The parlor door being opened, and somebody being invited thither; and that room not cleared up yet! Then came Jennie with her exasperating news.

"It is Dr. Snowdon, from Morristown, and he wants father for a consultation; says he is going to take him back with him on the two o'clock train, and he wants to know if you could let him have a mouthful of dinner with father? He met father at the crossing half a mile below, and he told him to come right on."

"And where is mother?" said Eurie, pale and almost breathless under this new calamity.

"Why, he didn't say; but I suppose she is with father. He stopped to call at the Newton's. I guess you will have to hurry, won't you?"

Jennie was provokingly cool and composed; no sense of responsibility rested upon her.

"Hurry!" said Eurie. "Why, he can't have any dinner here. We haven't a thing in the house for a stranger."

"Well," said Jennie, balancing herself on one foot, "shall I go and tell him that he must take himself off to a hotel?"

"Nonsense!" said Eurie; "you know better." Then she whisked into the kitchen. Twenty minutes of one, and the train went at ten minutes of two, and nothing to eat, and Dr. Snowdon (of all particular and gentlemanly mortals, without a wife or a home, or any sense of the drawbacks of Monday) to eat it! Is it hardly to be wondered at that the boys voted Eurie awfully cross?

"Altogether, it was just the most horrid time that ever anybody had." That was the way Eurie closed the account of it, as she sat curled on the foot of Marion's bed, with the three friends, who had been listening and laughing, gathered around her in different attitudes of attention.

"Oh, you can laugh, and so can I, now that it is over," Eurie said. "But I should just like to have seen one of you in my place; it was no laughing matter, I can tell you. It was just the beginning of vexations, though; the whole week, so far, has been exasperating in every respect. Never anything went less according to planning than my programme for the week has."

Each of her auditors could have echoed that, but they were silent. At last Marion asked:

"But how did you get out of it? Tell us that. Now, a dinner of any kind is something that is beyond me. I can imagine you transfixed with horror. Just tell us what you did."

"Why, you will wonder who came to my rescue; but I tell you, girls, Nellis is the best fellow in the world. If I was half as good a Christian as he is, without any of that to help him, I should be a thankful mortal. I didn't expect him, thought he had gone away for the day; but when he came he took in the situation at a glance. Half a dozen words of explanation set him right. 'Never mind.' he said. 'Tell him we didn't mean to have dinner so early, but we flew around and got them a bite—then let's do it.' 'But what will the bite be?' I asked, and I stood looking up at him like a ninny who had never gotten a meal in her life. 'Why, bread, and butter, and coffee, and a dish of sauce, and a pickle, or something of that sort;' and the things really sounded appetizing as he told them off. 'Come,' he said, 'I'll grind the coffee, and make it; I used to be a dabster at that dish when I was in college. Jennie, you set the table, and Ned will help; he's well enough for that, I know.'

"And in less time than it takes to tell it, he had us all at work, baby and all; and, really, we managed to get up quite a decent meal, out of nothing, you understand; had it ready when father drove up; and he said it was as good a dinner as he had had in a week. But, oh, me! I'm glad such days don't come very often. You see, none of you know anything about it. You girls with your kitchens supplied with first-class cooks, and without any more idea of what goes on in the way of work before you are fed than though you lived in the moon, what do you know about such a day as I have described? Here's Marion, to be sure, who has about as empty a purse as mine; but as for kitchens, and wash days, and picked-up dinners, she is a novice."

"I know all about those last articles, so far as eating them is concerned," Marion said, grimly. "I know things about them that you don't, and never will. But I have made up my mind that living a Christian life isn't walking on a feather bed, whether you live in a palace or a fourth-rate board-house, and teach school. I shouldn't wonder if there were such things as vexations everywhere."

"I don't doubt it," Ruth Erskine said, speaking more quickly than was usual to her. The others had been more or less communicative with each other. It wasn't in Ruth's nature to tell how tried, and dissatisfied she had been with herself and her life, and her surroundings all the week. She was not sympathetic by nature. She couldn't tell her inward feeling to any one; but she could indorse heartily the discovery that Marion had made.

"Well, I know one thing," said Eurie, "it requires twice the grace that I supposed it did to get through with kitchen duties and exasperations and keep one's temper. I shall think, after this, that mother is a saint when she gets through the day without boxing our ears three or four times around. Come, let's go to meeting."

It was Wednesday evening, and our four girls had met to talk over the events of the week, and to keep each other countenance during their first prayer-meeting.

"It is almost worse than going to Sunday-school," Eurie said, as they went up the steps, "except that we can help ourselves to seats without waiting for any attentions which would not be shown."

Now the First Church people were not given to going to prayer-meeting. It is somewhat remarkable how many First Churches there are to which that remark will apply. The chapel was large and inviting, looking as though in the days of its planning many had been expected at the social meetings, or else it was built with an eye to festivals and societies. The size of the room only made the few persons who were in it, seem fewer in number than they were.

Flossy had been to prayer-meeting several times before with a cousin who visited them, but none of the others had attended such a meeting since they could remember. To Eurie and Ruth it was a real surprise to see the rows of empty seats. As for Marion she had overheard sarcastic remarks enough in the watchful and critical world in which she had moved to have a shrewd suspicion that such was the case.

"I don't know where to sit," whispered Flossy, shrinking from the gaze of several heads that were turned to see who the new comers were. "Don't you suppose they will seat us?"

"Not they," said Eurie, "Don't you remember Sunday? We must just put the courageous face on and march forward. I'm going directly to the front. I always said if ever I went to prayer-meeting at all, I shouldn't act as though I was ashamed that I came." Saying which she led the way to the second seat from the desk, directly in line with Dr. Dennis' eye.

That gentleman looked down at them with troubled face. Marion looked to see it light up, for she said in her heart:

"Gracie has surely told him my secret."

She knew little about the ways in the busy minister's household. The delightful communion of feeling that she had imagined between father and daughter was almost unknown to them. Very fond and proud of his daughter was Dr. Dennis; very careful of her health and her associations; very grateful that she was a Christian, and so, safe.

But so busy and harassed was his life, so endless were the calls on his time and his patience and his sympathy, that almost without his being aware of it, his own family were the only members of his church who never received any pastoral calls.

Consequently a reserve like unto that in too many households had grown up between himself and his child, utterly unsuspected by the father, never but half owned by the daughter. He thought of her religious life with joy and thanksgiving; when she went astray, was careful and tender in his admonition; yet of the inner workings of her life, of her reaching after higher and better living, of her growth in grace, or her days of disappointment and failure and decline he knew no more than the veriest stranger with whom she never spoke.

For while Grace Dennis loved and reverenced her father more than she did any other earthly being, she acknowledged to herself that she could not have told him even of the little conversation between her teacher and herself. She could, and did, tell him all about the lesson in algebra, but not a word about the lesson in Christian love.

So on this evening his face expressed no satisfaction in the presence of the strangers. He was simply disturbed that they had formed a league to meet here with mischief ahead, as he verily believed.

He arose and read the opening hymn; then looked about him in a disturbed way. Nobody to lead the singing. This was too often the case. The quartette choir rarely indeed found their way to the prayer-meeting; and when the one who was a church-member occasionally came to the weekly meeting, for reasons best known to herself, apparently the power of song for which she received so good a Sabbath-day salary had utterly gone from her, for she never opened her lips.

"I hope," said Dr. Dennis, "that there is some one present who can start this tune; it is simple. A prayer-meeting without singing loses half its spiritual force." Still everyone was dumb. "I am sorry that I cannot sing at all," he said again, after a moment's pause. "If I could, ever so little, it would be my delight to consecrate my voice to the service of God's house."

Still silence. All this made Marion remember her resolves at Chautauqua.

"What tunes do people sing in prayer-meeting?" she whispered to Eurie.

"I don't know, I am sure," Eurie whispered back. And then the ludicrous side happened to forcibly strike that young lady, just then she shook with laughter and shook the seat. Dr. Dennis looked down at her with grave, rebuking eye.

"Well," he began; "if we cannot sing"—

And then, before he had time to say further, a soft, sweet voice, so tremulous it almost brought the tears to think what a tremendous stretch of courage it had taken, quivered on the air.

CHAPTER VII.

PRAYER-MEETING AND TABLEAUX.

T was Flossy who had triumphed again over self and a strong natural timidity. Her voice trembled but for an instant, then it was literally absorbed in the rich, full tones which Marion allowed to roll out from her throat—richer, fuller, stronger than they would have been had she not again received this sharp rebuke from the timid baby of their party. But that voice of hers! I wish I could describe it to you. It is not often that one hears such a voice. Such an one had never been heard in that room, and the few occupants were surely justified in twisting their heads to see from whence it came.

It was still a new thing to Marion to sing such words as were in that hymn; and in the beauty of them, and the enjoyment of their richness, she lost sight of self and the attention she was attracting, and sang with all her heart. It so happened that every one of the three friends could help her not a little, so our girls had the singing in their own hands for the evening.

When the next hymn was announced, Marion leaned forward, smiling a little, and covered with her firm, strong hand the trembling little gloved hand of Flossy, and herself gave the key-note in clear, strong tones that neither faltered nor trembled.

"You've taken up your little cross bravely," she whispered afterward. "Shown me my duty and shamed me into it; the very lightest end of it shall not rest on you any more."

Notwithstanding the singing, and finding that it could be well done, Dr. Dennis took care to see that there should be much of it, that meeting dragged. The few who were in the habit of saying anything, waited until the very latest moment, as if hopeful that they might find a way of escape altogether, and yet, when once started, talked on as though they had forgotten how to arrange a suitable closing, and must therefore go on. Then the prayers seemed to our new-comers and new-beginners in prayer very strange and unnatural.

"Do you suppose Mr. Helm really feels such a deep interest in everything under the sun?" queried Eurie. "Or did he pray for all the world in detail because that is the proper way to do? Someway, I don't feel as if I could ever learn to pray in that way. I believe I shall have to ask for just what I want and then stop."

"If you succeed in keeping to the latter part of your determination you will do better than the most of them," Marion said. "I can't help thinking that the worst feature of it is the keeping on, long after the person wants to stop. Now, I tell you, girls, that is not the way they prayed at Chautauqua, is it?"

"Well," said Flossy, "it is not the way Dr. Dennis prays, either; but then, he has a theological education; that makes a difference, I suppose."

"No it doesn't, you mouse, make a speck of difference. That old Uncle Billy, as they call him, who sat down by the door in the corner, hasn't a theological education, nor any other sort of education. Did he speak one single sentence according to rule? Yet, didn't you notice his prayer? Different from most of the others. He meant it."

"But you wouldn't say that none of the others meant it?" Ruth said, speaking hesitatingly and questioningly.

"No," Marion answered, slowly. "I suppose not, of course; yet there is something the matter with them. It may be that the ones who make them, may feel them, but they don't succeed in making me feel."

"Well, honestly," said Eurie, "I'm disappointed. I have heard that people who were really Christians liked to go to prayer-meeting better than anywhere else, but I feel awfully wicked about it. But, as true as I live, I have been in places that I thought were ever so much pleasanter than it was there this evening. Now, to tell the plain truth, some of the time I was dreadfully bored. I'm specially disappointed, too, for I had a plan to trying to coax Nellis into going with me, but I really don't know whether I want him to go or not."

But this talk was when they were on their way homeward. Before that, as they went down the steps, Eurie said:

"What plans have you for the evening, girls? Won't you go with me?"

And then she went back to that tormenting Monday, and told of Leonard Brooks' call with his friend Mr. Holden, and of the tableau entertainment to which she was pledged. They had all heard more or less of it, and all in some form or other had received petitions for help, but none of them had come in direct contact with it, save Eurie, and it appeared that the rest of them had given the matter very little attention. Still, they were willing to go with Eurie, and see what was to be seen. At least they walked on in that direction.

Dr. Dennis and his daughter were directly behind them. As they neared a brightly-lighted street corner, he came up to Eurie and Marion, who were walking together, with a pleasant good-evening. Something in Marion's manner of singing the hymn had interested him, and also he was interested in learning, if he could, what motive had brought them to so unusual a place as the prayer-meeting.

"It is a lovely evening for a walk," he said. "But, Miss Wilbur, you don't propose to take it alone, I hope! Isn't your boarding place at some distance?"

She was not going directly home, Marion explained, not caring to admit the loneliness, and also what evidently seemed to Dr. Dennis the impropriety of having to traverse the street alone so often that it had failed to seem a strange thing to her. Eurie volunteered further information:

"We are going up to Annesley's Hall, to make arrangements for the tableau entertainment."

Now, it so happened that Dr. Dennis knew more about the tableau entertainment than Eurie did, and his few minutes of feeling that perhaps he had misjudged those girls, departed at once; so did his genial manner.

"Indeed!" he said, in the coldest tone imaginable, and almost immediately dropped back with his daughter.

There was a gentleman hurrying down the walk, evidently for the purpose of overtaking him. At this moment he pronounced the doctor's name.

"Walk on, Grace, I will join you in a moment," the girls heard Dr. Dennis say, and Grace stepped forward alone.

Marion glanced back. But a few weeks ago it would have been nothing to her that Grace Dennis or anyone else walked alone, so that she had no need for their company. But the law of unselfishness, which is the very essence of a true Christian life, was already beginning to work unconsciously in this girl's heart, and it made her turn now and say to Grace, with winning voice:

"Have you lost your companion? Come and walk with us until you can have him again. Miss Mitchell, Miss Dennis."

It was a fact that, though Eurie was of the same church with Grace Dennis, and though she knew Grace by sight, and bowed to her in the daytime, their familiarity with each other was not so sufficient as to insure a gas-light recognition.

"We know each other," Grace said, brightly, "at least we ought to. We do when we see each other plainly enough. I have been meaning to call with papa, Miss Mitchell, but I haven't been able to, yet; I am only a school girl, you know."

Eurie preferred to ignore the calling question; she had little sympathy with that phase of fashionable life; so she plunged at once into another subject.

"Are you going to the hall to-night, Miss Dennis, to help in getting up the tableau entertainment?"

Something in the quick way in which Grace Dennis said, "Oh, no," made Marion anxious to question further.

"Why not?" she asked. "Miss Mitchell says they want all the ladies of talent; I'm sure you and I ought to be there. I can imagine you in a splendid tableau, Gracie; perhaps you would better go and help. To be sure, I haven't been really invited myself, but I guess I can get in somehow. Won't you go with us now?"

"I can't, Miss Wilbur. I should like to go; I enjoy tableaux ever so much; but papa does not approve of making tableaux of Scripture scenes. You know, ministers have to be in advance on all these subjects."

Grace spoke in an apologetic tone, and with a flushed face, as one who had been obliged into saying a rude thing, and must make it sound as best she could.

"Are they to be Scripture scenes?" Eurie asked; and in the same breath added: "Why does he disapprove?"

"I don't think I could give his reasons. He thinks them irreverent, sometimes, I fancy; but I am not sure. I never heard him say very much on the subject; but I know quite well that he would not like me to go. Don't you know, Miss Mitchell, that clergymen always have to stand aloof from so many things, because they are set up as examples for others to follow?"

"But what is the use of it if others don't follow?" said quick-witted Eurie. "We must look into this question. I have never thought of it. It will have to be put down with that long list of subjects on which I have never had any thoughts; that list swells every day."

At this point Dr. Dennis somewhat decidedly summoned his daughter to his side, and it was after they had turned onto another street that the girls took the prayer-meeting into consideration.

They were still talking of it when they reached the hall. Quite a company were assembled, among them Eurie's brother, who was to meet her there, and Col. Baker, who had come for the purpose of meeting Flossy, much to her discomfiture. Mr. Holden and Leonard Brooks came over to the seat which they had taken, and the former was presented to the rest of the party.

"This is capital!" Nellis Mitchell said. "Holden, I congratulate you. I knew Flossy would help, and possibly Miss Wilbur; but I will confess to not even hoping for you, Miss Erskine."

"If your hopes are necessary to the completion of this scheme, I advise you not to raise them high so far as I am concerned, for they will have a grievous fall. I am the most indifferent of spectators." This from Ruth, in her most formal and haughty tone. Nellis Mitchell was not one of her favorites.

"Oh, you will help us, will you not?" Mr. Holden asked, in a tone so familiar and friendly that Ruth flushed as she answered:

"Thank you, no."

Whereupon Mr. Holden discovered himself to be silenced.

"Never mind," Leonard Brooks said, "we have enough helpers promised to make the thing a grand success. Eurie, let me show you the picture of one which we have planned for you; the scenic effect is really very fine—Oriental, you know; and you will light up splendidly in that picture."

"Thank you," said Eurie, in an absent-minded tone: and she had to be twice recalled from her thoughts before she turned to look at the plate spread before her. On the instant an angry flush arose, spreading itself over her face as she looked. "You do not mean that you are to present this?" she said, at length.

"Why not?" asked Leonard, in astonishment. Mr. Holden hastened to explain:

"It is not often chosen for tableaux, I admit; but on that account is all the more desirable. We want to get away from the ordinary sort. This is magnificent in its working up. I had it in New York last winter, and it was one of the finest presented."

"It will not be presented with my help." Eurie's tone was so cold and haughty that Marion turned toward her in surprise, and for the first time glanced at the plate.

"Why, Miss Mitchell!" Mr. Holden exclaimed, "I am surprised and grieved if I have annoyed you by my selection. I was thinking how well you would light up an Oriental scene. Is it the representation of the Saviour that you dislike? I cannot see why that should be objectionable. It is dealing with him as a mere man, you know. It is simply an Oriental dress of a male figure that we want to represent, and this figure of Christ as he sat at the well is so exceedingly minute and so carefully drawn that it works up finely."

"Christ at the well of Samaria!" read Flossy, now bending over the book, and her eyes and cheeks told the story of her aversion to the idea. "Who would be willing to personate the Saviour?"

Mr. Holden was prompt with his answer:

"I have had not the slightest difficulty in that matter. My friend, Col. Baker here, expressed himself as entirely willing to undertake it. Why, my dear young ladies, you see it is nothing but the masculine form of dress that we want to bring out. There is really nothing more irreverent in it than there is in your looking at this picture here to-night."

"Then we will not look longer at the picture," Eurie said, drawing back suddenly, the color on her face deepening into crimson. "It is useless for you to undertake an argument with me. I will be very plain with you, and inform you that, aside from the irreverent nature of the tableau, I consider myself insulted in being chosen to make a public representation of that character. I am certainly absolved from my promise, Mr. Holden; and I beg you to withdraw my name from your list at once."

Mr. Holden turned the leaf on the offending picture. He was amazed and grieved; he had looked at the picture purely in an artistic light; he supposed all people looked thus at tableau pictures; it was certainly a compliment that he meant to pay, and not the shadow of a discourtesy; but since they looked at it in that singular manner, of course it should be withdrawn from the lists; nothing further should be said about it. Let him show them, just allow him to show them, one plate which was the very finest in scenic effect of anything that he had ever gotten up. The name of it was "The Ancient Feast."

Eurie turned hotly away, but Flossy and Ruth looked. It was a representation of Belshazzar at his impious feast, at the time when he was arrested by the handwriting on the wall. Ruth Erskine curled her handsome lip into something like a sneer.

"Does Col. Baker kindly propose to aid you in representing the hand of God?" she said, in her haughtiest tones. "He is so willing to lend himself to the other piece of sacrilege, that one can hardly expect him to shrink even from this."

Mr. Holden promptly closed his book.

"There is some mistake," he said. "I supposed the ladies and gentlemen gathered here came in for the purpose of helping, not for ridiculing. Of course if we differ so entirely on these topics we can be of very little help to each other."

"So I should judge," Marion said. "And, that being the case, shall we go?"

"What nonsense!" said Leonard Brooks, following after the retreating party, but speaking only in a low tone, and addressing Eurie. "One expects such lofty humbug from Miss Erskine, and even from Miss Wilbur—the tragic is in her line; but I thought you would enter into and enjoy the whole thing. I told Holden that you would be the backbone of the matter."

"Thank you," said Eurie, her voice half choked with indignation and wounded pride. "And I presume you assisted in the selection of the characters that I should personate! As I said, I consider myself insulted. Please allow me to pass."

Much excited, and some of them very much ashamed, they all found themselves on the street again, Nellis Mitchell being the only one of the astonished gentlemen who had bethought himself, or had had sufficient courage to join them.

"Well, what next?" he said.

"Nell," said Eurie, "what do you think of that?"

Nellis shrugged his shoulders.

"It is not according to my way of thinking," he said; "but they told me you had promised, and I thought if you had, with your eyes open, it was none of my business. I congratulate you on being fairly out of it. That Holden is a scamp, I believe."

"And Col. Baker was going to take that character," said Flossy to herself. And Eurie, in her heart, felt grieved and hurt that her friend of long standing, Leonard Brooks, could have said and done just what he had; he could never be to her as though he had not said and done those things. As for Marion, all she said was:

"I begin to have a clearer idea of what Grace Dennis and her father mean."

CHAPTER VIII.

DR. DENNIS' STUDY.

HEY walked on in absolute silence for a few minutes, each busy with her own thoughts. Eurie was the first to speak:

"Girls, I propose we go and call on Dr. Dennis."

Ruth and Marion uttered exclamations of dismay, or it might have been of surprise. Flossy spoke:

"You don't mean now?"

"Now, this minute. We have an hour at our disposal, and we are all together. Why not, and have it over with? I tell you, that man is afraid of us! And when you come to think of it, why should he not be? What have we ever done to help his work; and how much we may have done to hinder it! I never realized how much, until this present moment. It enrages me to think how many enterprises, like this one, I have been engaged in without giving it a thought. Just imagine how such things must look to Dr. Dennis!"

"But, Eurie, you have never been mixed in with anything like that performance, as it is to be! What do you mean by admitting it?" It was Ruth who spoke, in some heat; the association rankled in her heart.

"Not precisely that sort of thing, I admit; but what must be the reputation I have earned, when I can be so coolly picked out for such work? I tell you, girls, I am angry. I suppose I ought to be grateful, for my eyes have certainly been opened to see a good many things that I never saw before; but it was a rough opening. Shall we go to the parsonage, or not?"

"Oh, dear! I don't feel in the least like it," Flossy said, timidly.

"Do you ever expect to feel like it?" Eurie asked, still speaking hotly. "For myself, I must say that I do. I am tired of my place; I want to be admitted, and belong, somewhere. It is entirely evident to me that I don't belong where I did. I have discovered that a great many things about me are changed. I feel that I shall not assimilate well. Let me get in where I can have a chance. I want to belong to that Sunday-school, for instance; to be recognized as a part of it, and to be counted in a place. So do you, Flossy, I am sure; why not settle the matter?"

Yes, Flossy certainly wanted to belong to that Sunday-school; more than that, she wanted to belong to that class. Her heart had been with it all the week. If there was a hope that she might be permitted to try it for awhile, she was willing even to call on Dr. Dennis, though that act looked awfully formidable to her.

"I suppose it is very silly not to want to go this evening, as well as any time," she admitted at last.

"Of course it is," Marion said, energetically. "Let us turn this corner at once, and in two minutes more we shall have rung his bell; then that will settle the question. Nothing like going ahead and doing things, without waiting to get into the mood."

"See here," said Nellis Mitchell, speaking for the first time. "Please to take into consideration what you propose to do with me? I take it that you don't want me to make this call with you. My sister has been remarkably bewildering in her remarks, but I gather that it is something like a confidential talk that you are seeking with the doctor, into which I am not to be admitted."

"I forgot that you were along," said Eurie, with her usual frankness. "No, Nell, we don't want you to call with us; not this time."

"I might ask for a separate room, and make my call on Miss Grace. At least I might try it; but I doubt her father's permitting such a tremendous action: so, really, I don't see quite what you are to do with me. I am entirely at your disposal."

"See here, Nell, couldn't you call for us, in half an hour, say? Girls, could we stay half an hour, do you suppose? We shall have to do something of the kind; it won't do for us to go home alone. I see what we can do, Nell. You go to father's office, and wait just a little while; if we are not there in half an hour, you can call for us at Dr. Dennis'; and if we find we are not equal to a call of that length, we will come to the office; will that do?"

The obliging brother made a low bow of mock ceremony, assured her that he was entirely at her service, that she might command him and he would serve to the best of his knowledge and ability, made a careful minute of the present time, in order to be exact at the half hour, and as they laughingly declined his offer to ring the doctor's bell for them, he lifted his hat to them, with the lowest of bows, and disappeared around the corner.

"He is such a dear fellow!" said Eurie, looking fondly after him.

"I don't see in what respect," muttered Ruth in an aside to Flossy. Ruth had a special aversion to this young man; possibly it might have been because he treated her with the most good-humored indifference, despite all her dignity and coldness.

Meantime, in Dr. Dennis' study, his daughter was hovering around among the books, trying to bring order out of confusion on the shelves and table, and at the same time find a favorite volume she was reading. The doctor turned on a brighter flame of gas, then lowered it, and seemed in a disturbed state of mind. At last he spoke:

"I don't know that my caution is needed, daughter—I have no reason to think that it is, from anything in your conduct at least; but I feel like saying to you that I have less and less liking for those young ladies, who seem, since their unfortunate freak of attending that Chautauqua meeting, to have banded themselves together, I can hardly imagine why; they are certainly unlike enough. But I distrust them in almost every way. I am sorry that you are at school, under Miss Wilbur's influence; not that I dread her influence on you, except in a general way."

At this point Grace opened her bright lips to speak; there was an eager sentence glowing on her tongue, but her father had not finished his:

"I know all that you can say; that you have nothing to do with her religious, or non-religious, views, and that she is a splendid teacher. I don't doubt it; but I repeat to you that I distrust all of them. I don't know why they have seen fit to come to our Sabbath-school, and to our meeting this evening, unless it be to gain an unhappy influence over some whom they desire to lead astray. I can hardly think so meanly of them as that, either. I do not say that such was their motive, but simply that I do not understand it, and am afraid of it; and I desire you to have just as little to do with any of them as ordinary civility will admit. Hitherto I have thought of Ruth Erskine as simply a leader of fashion, and of Flossy Shipley as the tool of the fashionable world; but I am afraid their dangerous friends are leading them to be more. The tableau affair, to-night, I have investigated to a certain degree, and I consider it one of the worst of its kind. I would not have you associated with it for—well, any consideration that I can imagine; and yet, if I mistake not, I heard them urging you to join them."

Again Grace essayed to speak, but the pealing of the door bell interrupted her.

"Who is it, Hannah?" Dr. Dennis questioned, as that personage peeped her head in at the door.

"It is four young ladies, Dr. Dennis, and they want to see you."

Grace arose to depart.

"Do you know any of them, Hannah?" the doctor asked.

"Well, sir, one of them is the Miss Wilbur who teaches, and I think another is Dr. Mitchell's daughter. I don't know the others."

"Show them in here," said Dr. Dennis, promptly. "And, daughter, you will please remain. They have doubtless come to petition me for your assistance in the tableaux, and I have not the least desire to be considered a household tyrant, or to have them suppose that you are my prisoner. I would much rather that you should give them your own opinions on the subject like a brave little woman."

"But father," Grace said, and there was a gleam of mischief in her eye, "I haven't any opinions on this subject. The most that I can say is, that you don't wish me to have anything to do with them; and so, like a dutiful daughter, I decline."

"Well, then," he said, smiling back on her in a satisfied way, "show them how gracefully you can play the part of a dutiful daughter. While you are so young, and while I am here to have opinions for you, the dutiful part cheerfully done is really all that is necessary."

And this was the introduction that the four girls had to the pastor's study. How shy they felt! Ruth could hardly ever remember of feeling so very much embarrassed. As for Eurie, she began to feel that distressing sense of the ludicrous creeping over her, and so was horribly afraid that she should laugh. Marion went forward to Grace, and in the warm, glad greeting that this young girl gave, felt her heart melted and warmed.

Dr. Dennis, confident in the errand that had brought them, decided to lead the conversation himself, and give them no chance to approach the topic smoothly.

"Have you done up the tableaux so promptly?" he asked. And while he addressed his question to Marion, Eurie felt that he looked right at her.

Marion's answer was prompt and to the point.

"Yes, sir, we have. Miss Mitchell was the only one of us who was pledged; and I believe she was entirely dissatisfied with the character of the entertainment, and withdrew her support."

"Indeed!" Dr. Dennis' manner of pronouncing this word was, in effect, saying, "Is it possible that there can be an entertainment of so questionable a character that Miss Mitchell will withdraw from it?"

At least that was the way the word sounded to Eurie, but she had been roused to unusual sensitiveness. The effect was to rouse her still further, to put to flight every trace of embarrassment and every desire to laugh. She spoke in a clear, strong voice:

"Dr. Dennis, we shall be talking at cross purposes if we do not make some explanation of our object in calling this evening. We feel that we do not belong in the society where you are classing us; in fact, we do not belong anywhere. Our views and feelings have greatly changed within a short time. We want to make a corresponding change in our associations; at least, so far as is desirable. Our special object in calling just now is, that we know it will soon be time for the communion in your church, and we have thought that perhaps we ought to make a public profession of our changed views."

Was ever a man more bent on misunderstanding plain English than was Dr. Dennis this evening? He looked at his callers in an astonished and embarrassed way for a moment, as if uncertain whether to consider them lunatics or not; and then said, addressing himself to Eurie:

"My dear young lady, I fear you are laboring under a mistake as to the object in uniting with the Church of Christ, and the preparation necessary. You know, as a church, we hold that something more than a desire to change one's social relations should actuate the person to take such a step; that, indeed, there should be a radical change of heart."

Poor Eurie! She thought she had been so plain in her explanation. She flushed, and commenced a stammering sentence; then paused, and looked appealingly at Ruth and Marion.

Finally she did what, for Eurie Mitchell to do, was unprecedented, lost all self-control, and broke into a sudden and passionate gust of tears.

"Eurie, don't!" Marion said; to her it was actual pain to see tears. As for Dr. Dennis, he was very much at his wits' end, and Ruth's embarrassment grew upon her every moment. Flossy came to the rescue.

"Dr. Dennis," she said, and he noticed even then that her voice was strangely sweet and winning, "Eurie means that we love Jesus, and we believe he has forgiven us and called us by name. We mean we want to be his, and to serve him forever; and we want to acknowledge him publicly, because we think he has so directed."

How simple and sweet the story was, after all, when one just gave up attempting to be proper, and gave the quiet truth. Ruth was struck with the simplicity and the directness of the words; she began to have not only an admiration, but an unfeigned respect for Flossy Shipley. But you should have seen Dr. Dennis' face. It is a pity Eurie could not have seen it at that moment; if she had not had hers buried in the sofa pillow she would have caught the quick glad look of surprise and joy and heartfelt thankfulness that spoke in his eyes. He arose suddenly, and, holding out his hand to Flossy, said:

"Let me greet you, and thank you, and ask you to forgive me, in the same breath. I have been very slow to understand, and strangely stupid and unsympathetic. I feel very much as I fancy poor doubting Thomas must have done. Forgive me; I am so astonished, and so glad that I don't know how to express the feeling. Do you speak for all your friends here, Miss Flossy? And may I ask something about the wonderful experience that has drawn you all into the ark?"

But Flossy's courage had forsaken her; it was born of sympathy with Eurie's tears. She looked down now, tearful herself, and trembling like a leaf. Ruth found voice to answer for her.

"Our experience, Dr. Dennis, can be summed up in one word—Chautauqua."

Dr. Dennis gave a little start; another astonishment.

"Do you mean that you were converted during that meeting?"

Marion smiled.

"We do not know enough about terms, to really be sure that that is the right one to use," she said; "at least, I do not. But we do know this, that we met the Lord Jesus there, and that, as Flossy says, we love him, and have given our lives into his keeping."

"You cannot say more than that after a hundred years of experience," he said, quickly.

"Well, dear friends, I cannot, as I said, express to you my gratitude and joy. And you are coming into the church, and are ready to take up work for the Master, and live for him? Thank the Lord."

Little need had our girls to talk of Dr. Dennis' coldness and dignity after that. How entirely his heart had melted! What a blessed talk they had! So many questions about Chautauqua, so much to tell that delighted him. They had not the least idea that it was possible to feel so much at ease with a minister as they grew to feel with him.

The bell rang and was answered, and yet no one intruded on their quiet, and the talk went on, until Marion, with a sudden recollection of Nellis Mitchell, and their appointment with him, stole a glance at her watch, and was astonished into the announcement:

"Girls, we have been here an hour and a quarter!"

"Is it possible!" Ruth said, rising at once. "Father will be alarmed, I am afraid."

Dr. Dennis rose also.

"I did not know I was keeping you so," he said. "Our theme was a fascinating one. Will you wait a moment, and let me make ready to see you safely home?"

But it appeared, on opening the door, that Nellis Mitchell occupied an easy-chair in the parlor, just across the hall.

"I'm a patient young man, and at your service," he said, coming toward them as they emerged. "Please give me credit for promptness. I was here at the half hour."

As they walked home, Nellis with his sister on one arm, and Flossy Shipley on the other, he said:

"Now, what am I to understand by this sudden and violent intimacy at the parsonage? Miss Flossy, my sister has hitherto made yearly calls of two seconds' duration on the doctor's sister when she is not home to receive them."

"A great many things are to be different from what they have hitherto been," Flossy said, with a soft little laugh.

"So I begin to perceive."

"Nell," said Eurie, turning back when she was half way up the stairs, having said good-night, "are you going to help them with those tableaux?"

"Not much," said Nellis.

And Eurie, as she went on, said:

"I shouldn't be surprised if Nell felt differently about some things from what he used to. Oh, I wonder if I can't coax him in?"

CHAPTER IX.

A WHITE SUNDAY.

MONG other topics that were discussed with great interest during that call at Dr. Dennis' was the Sunday-school, and the place that our girls were to take in it, Flossy was not likely to forget that matter. Her heart was too full of plans concerning "those boys."

Early in the talk she overwhelmed and embarrassed Dr. Dennis with the request that she might be allowed to try that class. Now if it had been Ruth or Marion who had made the same request, it would have been unhesitatingly granted. The doctor had a high opinion of the intellectual abilities of both these young ladies, and now that they had appeared to consecrate those abilities, he was willing to receive them.

But this little summer butterfly, with her small sweet ways and winning smile! He had no more idea that she could teach than that a humming-bird could; and of all classes in the school, to expect to do anything with those large wild boys! It was preposterous.

"My dear friend," he said, and he could hardly keep from smiling, even though he was embarrassed, "you have no idea what you are asking! That is altogether the most difficult class in the school. Some of our best teachers have failed there. The fact is, those boys don't want to be instructed; they are in search of fun. They are a hard set, I am really afraid. I wouldn't have you tried and discouraged by them. We are at a loss what to do with them, I will admit; for no one who can do it seems willing to try them. In fact, I am not sure that we have anyone who can. I understand your motive, Miss Flossy, and appreciate your zeal; but you must not crush yourself in that way. Since you have been out of the Sunday-school for so many years, and, I presume, have not made the Bible a study—unhappily, it is not used as a text book in many of our schools—would it not be well for you to join some excellent Bible-class for awhile? I think you would like it better, and grow faster, and we really have some superior teachers among the Bible-classes."

And while he said this, the wise doctor hoped in his heart that she would not be offended with his plain speaking, and that some good angel would suggest to Marion Wilbur the propriety of trying that class of boys.

Flossy was not offended, though Marion Wilbur, spoken to in the same way, would have been certain to have felt it. Little Flossy, though sorely disappointed, so much so that she could hardly keep the tears from rising, admitted that she did not know how to teach, and that, of course, she ought to study the Bible, and would like ever so much to do so.

It so happened that the other girls were more than willing to be enrolled as pupils; indeed, had not an idea of taking any other position. So, after a little more talk, it was decided that they all join Dr. Dennis' class, every one of them expressing a prompt preference for that class above the others. In his heart Dr. Dennis entirely approved of this arrangement, for he wanted the training of Flossy and Eurie, and he meant to make teachers of the other two as soon as possible.

Now it came to pass that an unlooked-for element came into all this planning—none other than the boys themselves. They had ideas of their own, and they belonged to that part of the world which is hard to govern. They would have Miss Flossy Shipley to be their teacher, and they would have no one else; she suited them exactly, and no one else did.

"But, my dear boys," Dr. Dennis said, "Miss Shipley is new to the work of teaching; she is but a learner herself; she feels that her place is in the Bible-class, so that she may acquire the best ways of presenting lessons."

"Did she say she wouldn't teach us?" queried Rich. Johnson, with his keen eyes fixed on the doctor's face.

What could that embarrassed but truthful man do but slowly shake his head, and say, hesitatingly:

"No, she didn't say that; but I advised her to join a Bible-class for awhile."

"Then we want her," Rich. said, stoutly. "Don't we, boys? She just suits us, Dr. Dennis; and she is the first one we ever had that we cared a snap for. We had just about made up our minds to quit it; but, on the whole, if we can have her we will give it another trial."

This strange sentence was uttered in a most matter-of-fact business way, and the perplexed doctor, quite unused to dealing with that class of brain and manners, was compelled to beat a retreat, and come to Flossy with his novel report. A gleam of satisfaction, not to say triumph, lighted up her pretty face, and aglow with smiles and blushes, she made her way with alacrity to her chosen class. Teachers and scholars thoroughly suited with each other; surely they could do some work during that hour that would tell on the future. Meantime, the superintendent was having his perplexities over in another corner of the room. He came to Dr. Dennis at last for advice.

"Miss Hart is absent to-day; her class is almost impossible to supply; no one is willing to try the little midgets."

"Miss Hart," Dr. Dennis repeated, thoughtfully; "the primary class, eh; it is hard to manage; and yet, with all the sub-teachers present, one would think it might be done."

"They are not all present," Mr. Stuart said. "They never are."

Dr. Dennis ignored this remark.

"I'll tell you what to do," he said, with a sudden lighting up of his thoughtful face. "Get Miss Wilbur to go in there; she is equal to the emergency, or I am much mistaken."

Mr. Stuart started in unqualified astonishment.

"I thought," he said, recovering his voice, "that you seriously objected to her as a teacher in Sabbath-school?"

"I have changed my mind," Dr. Dennis said, with a happy smile, "or, the Lord has changed her heart. Ask her to take the class."

So two of our girls found work.

Another thing occurred to make that Sabbath a memorable one. The evening was especially lovely, and, there happening to be no other attraction, a much larger number than usual of the First Church people got out to the second service. Our girls were all present, and, what was unusual, other representatives from their families were with them.

Also, Col. Baker had obliged himself to endure the infliction of another sermon from Dr. Dennis, in order that he might have the pleasure of a walk home in the glorious moonlight with Miss Flossy.

The sermon was one of special solemnity and power. The pastor's recent communion with new-born souls had quickened his own heart and increased the longing desire for the coming of the Spirit of God into their midst. At the sermon's close, he took what, for the First Church, was a very wide and startling departure from the beaten track. After a tender personal appeal, especially addressed to the young people of his flock, he said:

"Now, impelled by what I cannot but feel is the voice of the Lord Jesus, by his Spirit, I want to ask if there are any present who feel so much of a desire to be numbered with the Lord's friends, that they are willing to ask us to pray for them, to the end that they may be found of him. Is there one in this audience who, by rising and standing for but a moment, will thus simply and quietly indicate to us such a desire and willingness?"

Who ever heard of the First Church pastor doing so strange a thing? His people had voted for festivals, and concerts, and lectures, and picnics, and entertainments of all sorts and shades. They had taken rising votes, and they had voted by raising the hand; they had made speeches, many of them, on the questions to be presented; they had added their voice to the pastor's explanations; they had urged the wisdom and the propriety of the question presented; they had said they earnestly hoped the matter would meet careful attention; and no one in the church had thought such proceedings strange. But to ask people to rise in their seats, and thus signify that they were thinking of the question of eternal life, and home, and peace, and unutterable blessedness—what innovation was this?

Much rustling and coughing took place; then solemn silence prevailed. Not a deacon there, or officer of any sort, had the least idea of audibly hoping that the pastor's words would receive thoughtful attention; not a person arose; the silence was felt to be embarrassing and oppressive to the last degree.

Dr. Dennis relieved them at last by reading the closing hymn. During the reading, when startled thoughts became sufficiently composed to flow in their accustomed channels, many, almost unconsciously to themselves, prepared speeches which they meant to utter the moment their lips were unsealed by the pronouncing of the benediction.

"A very strange thing to do."

"What could Dr. Dennis be thinking of?"

"A most unwise effort to force the private lives of people before the public."

"An unfortunate attempt to get up an excitement."

"Well meant, but most ill-timed and mistaken zeal, which would have a reaction that would do harm."

These and a dozen other mental comments that roved through people's brains, while they were supposed to be joining in the hymn of praise, were suddenly cut short by the sound of Dr. Dennis' voice again—not in benediction, as surely they had a right to expect by this time, but with another appeal.

"I am still of the impression that there are those present who are doing violence to their convictions of right, and to good judgment, by not responding to my invitation. Let us remember to pray for all such. Now, I want to ask if there are any in this congregation who have lately proved the truth of the doctrine that there is a Saviour from sin, and a peace that the world cannot give. If there are those present, who have decided this question recently, will they rise for a moment, thus testifying to the truth of the words which have been spoken this evening, and thus witnessing that they have chosen the Lord Jesus for their portion?"

Another sensation! Dr. Dennis must have taken leave of his senses! This was more embarrassing than the last. The wise ones were sure that there had been no conversions in a long time. So far as they knew and believed, entirely other thoughts were occupying the minds of the people.

Then, into the midst of this commotion of thought, there stole that solemn hush, almost of heart-beatings, which betokens a new revelation, that astonishes and thrills and solemnizes.

There were persons standing. Ladies! One—two—three. Yes, one in the gallery. There were four of them! Who were they? Why, that little, volatile Flossy Shipley was one! How strange! And that girl in the gallery was the teacher at one of the Ward schools. It had been rumored that she was an infidel!

Who in the world was that beside Judge Erskine? It couldn't be his daughter! Yet it certainly was. And behold, in the doctor's pew stood Eurie, the young lady who was so free and careless in her manners and address, that, were it not for the fact that she was the doctor's daughter, her very respectability would have stood a chance of being questioned!

As it was, there were mothers in the church who were quite willing that their daughters should have as little to do with her as possible. Yet, to-night their daughters sat beside them, unable to rise, in any way to testify to the truth of the religion of Jesus Christ; and Eurie Mitchell, with grave, earnest face, in which decision and determination were plainly written, stood up to testify that the Lord was true to his promises.

Gradually there dawned upon the minds of many who knew these girls, the remembrance that they had been together to that great Sunday-school meeting at Chautauqua. How foolish the scheme had seemed to them when they heard of it; how sneeringly they had commented on the absurdity of such supposed representatives from the Sunday-school world.

Surely this seeming folly had been the power of God, and the wisdom of God. There were those in the first church, as, indeed, there are many in every church of Christ, who rejoiced with all their souls at the sound of this good news.

There was another thing that occurred that night over which the angels, at least, rejoiced. There was another witness. He was only a poor young fellow, a day laborer in one of the machine shops, a new-comer to the city. He knew almost nobody in that great church where he had chanced to be a worshipper, and, literally no one knew him.

When the invitation was first given, he had shrunken from it. Satan, with ever-ready skill, and with that consummate wisdom which makes him as eager after the common day laborers as he is among the wealthy and influential, had whispered to him that the pastor did not mean such as he; no one knew him, his influence would be nothing. This church was too large and too grand, and it was not meant that he should make himself so conspicuous as to stand alone in that great audience-room, and testify that the Lord Jesus had called him.

So he sat still; but as one and another of those young ladies arose quietly, with true dignity and sweet composure testifying to their love for the Lord, John Warden's earnest soul was moved to shame at his own shrinking, and from his obscure seat, back under the gallery, he rose up, and Satan, foiled that time, shrunk away.

As for our girls, they held no parley with their consciences, or with the tempter; they did not even think of it. On the contrary, they were glad, every one, that the way was made so plain and so easy to them. Each of them had friends whom they especially desired to have know of the recent and great change that had come to their lives. With some of these friends they shrank unaccountably from talking about this matter. With others of them they did not understand how to made the matter plain.

But here it was explained for them, so plainly, so simply, that it seemed that every one must understand, and their own future determination as to life was carefully explained for them. There was nothing to do but to rise up, and, by that simple act, subscribe their names to the explanation—so making it theirs.

I declare to you that the thought of its being a cross to do so did not once occur to them. Neither did the thought that they were occupying a conspicuous position affect them. They were used to conspicuous positions; they had been twice as prominent in that very church when other subjects than religion had been under consideration.

At a certain festival, years before, they had every one taken part in a musical entertainment that brought them most conspicuously before an audience three times the size of the evening congregation. So you see they were used to it.

And, as for the fancy that it becomes a more conspicuous and unladylike matter to stand up for the Lord Jesus Christ, than it does to stand up for anything else under the sun; Satan was much too wise, and knew his material entirely too well, to suggest any such absurdity to them.

Flossy had been the only one of their number in the least likely to be swayed by such arguments. But Flossy had set herself with earnest soul and solemn purpose to follow the light wherever it should shine, without allowing her timid heart time for questioning, and the father of all evil finds such people exceedingly hard to manage.

"How do you do," said Dr. Dennis to John Warden, two minutes after the benediction was fully pronounced. "I was very glad to see you to-night. I am not sure that I have ever met you? No? I thought so; a stranger? Well, we welcome you. Where do you board?"

And a certain black book came promptly out of the doctor's pocket. John Warden's name, and street, and number, and business were written therein, and John Warden felt for the first time in his life as though he had a Christian brother in that great city, and a name and a place with the people of God.

Another surprise a waited him. Marion and Eurie were right behind him. Marion came up boldly and held out her hand:

"We seem to have started on the road together," she said. "We ought to shake hands, and wish each other a safe journey."

Then she and Eurie and John Warden shook each other heartily by the hand; and Flossy, standing watching, led by this bolder spirit into that which would not have occurred to her to do, slipped from her place beside Col. Baker, and, holding her lavender kidded little hand out to his broad brown palm, said, with a grace and a sweetness that belonged to neither of the others: "I am one of them." Whereupon John Warden was not sure that he had not shaken hands with an angel.

CHAPTER X.

THE RAINY EVENING.

COOL, rainy evening, one of those sudden and sharp reminders of autumn that in our variable climate come to us in the midst of summer. The heavy clouds had made the day shut down early, and the rain was so persistent that it was useless to plan walks or rides, or entertainments of that nature. Also it was an evening when none but those who are habitual callers at special homes are expected.

One of these was Col. Baker. The idea of being detained by rain from spending the evening with Flossy Shipley did not occur to him; on the contrary, he rejoiced over the prospect of a long and uninterrupted talk. The more indifferent Flossy grew to these long talks the more eager was Col. Baker to enjoy them. The further she slipped away from him, the more eagerly he followed after. Perhaps that is human nature; at least it was Col. Baker's nature.

In some of his plans he was disappointed. Mrs. Shipley was gone for a three days' visit to a neighboring city, and Flossy was snugly settled in the back parlor entertaining her father.

"Show him right in here," directed her father, as soon as Col. Baker was announced. Then to Flossy: "Now we can have a game at cards as soon as Charlie comes in. Where is he?"

Rainy evenings, when four people could be secured sufficiently disengaged to join in his favorite amusement, was the special delight of Mr. Shipley. So behold them, half an hour after, deep in a game of cards, Col. Baker accepting the situation with as good a grace as he could assume, notwithstanding the fact that playing cards, simply for amusement, in that quiet way in a back parlor, was a good deal of a bore to him; but it would be bad policy to tell Mr. Shipley so. Their game was interrupted by a ring of the door-bell.

"Oh, dear!" said Mr. Shipley, "I hope that is no nuisance on business. One would think nothing but business would call people out on such a disagreeable night."

"As, for instance, myself," Col. Baker said, laughingly.

"Oh, you. Of course, special friends are an exception."

And Col. Baker was well pleased to be ranked among the exceptions. Meantime the ringer was heralded.

"It is Dr. Dennis, sir. Shall I show him in here?"

"I suppose so," Mr. Shipley said, gloomily, as one not well pleased; and he added, in under tone, "What on earth can the man want?"

Meantime Col. Baker, with a sudden dexterous move, unceremoniously swept the whole pack of cards out of sight under a paper by his side.

It so happened that Dr. Dennis' call was purely one of business; some item connected with the financial portion of the church, which Dr. Dennis desired to report in a special sermon that was being prepared.

Mr. Shipley, although he was so rarely an attendant at church, and made no secret of his indifference to the whole subject of personal religion, was yet a power in the financial world, and as such recognized and deferred to by the First Church.

Dr. Dennis was in haste, and beyond a specially cordial greeting for Flossy, and an expression of satisfaction at her success with the class the previous Sabbath, he had no more to say, and Mr. Shipley soon had the pleasure of bowing him out, rejoicing in his heart, as he did so, that the clergyman was so prompt a man.

"He would have made a capital business man," he said, returning to his seat. "I never come in contact with him that I don't notice a sort of executive ability about him that makes me think what a success he might have been."

There was no one to ask whether that remark meant that he was at present supposed to be a failure. There was another subject which presently engrossed several of them.

"Now be so kind as to give an account of yourself," Charlie Shipley said, addressing Col. Baker. "What on earth did you mean by making a muddle of our game in that way? I was in a fair way for winning. I suppose you won't own that that was your object."

Col. Baker laughed.

"My object was a purely benevolent one. I had a desire to shield your sister from the woebegone lecture she would have been sure to receive on the sinfulness of her course. If he had found her playing cards, what would have been the result?"

Mr. Shipley was the first to make answer, in a somewhat testy tone:

"Your generosity was uncalled for, Colonel. My daughter, when she is in her father's house, is answerable to him, and not to Dr. Dennis, or any other divine."

"I don't in the least understand what you are talking about," said mystified Flossy. "Of what interest could it have been to Dr. Dennis what I am doing; and why should he have delivered a lecture?"

Col. Baker and Charlie Shipley exchanged amused glances, and the former quoted, significantly:

"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." Then he added, as Flossy still waited with questioning gaze: "Why, Miss Flossy, of course you know that the clergy think cards are synonyms for the deadly sin, and that to hold one in one's hand is equivalent to being poisoned, body and soul?"

"I am sure I did not know it. Why, I knew, of course, that gambling houses were not proper; but what is the harm in a game of cards? What can Dr. Dennis see, for instance, in our playing together here in this room, and simply for amusement?"

Col. Baker shrugged his handsome shoulders. That shrug meant a great deal, accomplished a great deal. It was nearly certain to silence a timid opposer; there was something so expressively sarcastic about it; it hid so much one felt sure Col. Baker might say if he deemed it prudent or worth while. It had often silenced Flossy into a conscious little laugh. To-night she was in earnest; she paid no attention to the shrug, but waited, questioningly, for her answer, and as it was her turn to play next, it seemed necessary to answer her if one wanted the game to go on.

"I am sure I don't know," Col. Baker said, at last. "I have very little idea what he would consider the harm; I am not sure that he would be able to tell. It is probably a narrow, strait-laced way that the cloth have of looking at this question, in common with all other questions, save prayer-meetings and almsgiving. Their lives are very much narrowed down, Miss Flossy."

Flossy was entirely unsatisfied. She had a higher opinion of Dr. Dennis' "breadth" than she had of Col. Baker's; she thought his life had a very much higher range; she was very much puzzled and annoyed. Her father came into the conflict:

"Come, come, Flossy, how long are you going to keep us waiting? It is of no particular consequence what Dr. Dennis thinks or does not think. He has a right to his own opinions. It is a free country."

Ah, but it did make a tremendous difference to Flossy. She had accepted Dr. Dennis as her pastor; she had determined to look to him for help and guidance in this new and strange path on which her feet had so lately entered.

She wondered if Col. Baker could be right. Was it possible that Dr. Dennis disapproved of cards played at home in this quiet way! If he did, why did he? And, another puzzling point, how did Col. Baker know it? They two certainly did not come in contact, that they should understand each other's ideas.

She went on with her card-playing, but she played very badly. More than once Col. Baker rallied her with good-humored sarcasm, and her father spoke impatiently. Flossy's interest in the game was gone; instead, her heart was busy with this new idea. She went back to it again in one of her pauses in the game.

"Col. Baker, don't you really know at all what arguments clergymen have against card-playing for amusement?"

Again that expressive shrug; but it had lost its power over Flossy, and its owner saw it, and made haste to answer her waiting eyes.

"I really am not familiar with their weapons of warfare; probably I could not appreciate them if I were; I only know that the entire class frown upon all such innocent devices for passing a rainy evening. But it never struck me as strange, because the fact is, they frown equally on all pastimes and entertainments of any sort; that is, a certain class do—fanatics, I believe, is the name they are known by. They believe, as nearly as I am capable of understanding their belief, that life should be spent in psalm-singing and praying."

Whereupon Flossy called to mind the witty things she had heard, and the merry laughs which had rung around her at Chautauqua, given by the most intense of these fanatics; she even remembered that she had seen two of the most celebrated in that direction playing with a party of young men and boys on the croquet ground, and laughing most uproariously over their defeat. It was all nonsense to try to compass her brain with such an argument as that; she shook her head resolutely.

"They do no such thing; I know some of them very well; I don't know of any people who have nicer times. How do you know these things, Col. Baker?"

Col. Baker essayed to be serious:

"Miss Flossy," he said, leaning over and fixing his handsome eyes impressively on her face, "is it possible you do not know that, as a rule, clergymen set their faces like a flint against all amusements of every sort? I do not mean that there are not exceptions, but I do mean most assuredly that Dr. Dennis is not one of them. He is as rigid as it is possible for mortal man to be.

"Herein is where the church does harm. In my own opinion, it is to blame for the most, if not for all, of the excesses of the day; they are the natural rebound of nerves that have been strained too tightly by the over-tension of the church."

Surely this was a fine sentence. The Flossy of a few weeks ago would have admired the smooth-sounding words and the exquisitely modulated voice as it rolled them forth. How had the present Flossy been quickened as to her sense of the fitness of things. She laughed mischievously. She couldn't argue; she did not attempt it. All she said was, simply:

"Col. Baker, on your honor, as a gentleman of truth and veracity, do you think the excesses of which you speak, occur, as a rule, in those whose lives have been very tightly bound by the church, or by anything else, save their own reckless fancies?"

Charlie Shipley laughed outright at this point. He always enjoyed a sharp thing wherever heard, and without regard to whether he felt himself thrust at or not.

"Baker, you are getting the worst of it," he said, gayly. "Sis, upon my word, that two weeks in the woods has made you real keen in argument; but you play abominably."

"There is no pleasure in the game now!" This the father said, throwing down his cards somewhat testily. "Flossy, I hope you will not get to be a girl of one idea—tied to the professional conscience. What is proper for you could hardly be expected to be just the thing for Dr. Dennis; and you have nothing to do, as I said before, with what he approves or disapproves."

"But, father," Flossy said, speaking somewhat timidly, as she could not help doing when she talked about these matters to her father, "if we call clergymen our spiritual guides, and look up to them to set examples for us to follow, what is the use of the example if we don't follow it at all, but conclude they are simply doing things for their own benefit?"

"I never call them my spiritual guides, and I have not the least desire to have my daughter do so. I consider myself capable of guiding my own family, especially my own children, without any help."

This was said in Mr. Shipley's stiffest tone. He was evidently very much tried with this interruption to his evening's entertainment. Whatever might be said of the others, he was certainly very fond of cards. He, however, threw down the remaining ones, declaring that the spirit of the game was gone.

"Merged into a theological discussion," Charlie said, with a half laugh, half sneer; "and of all the people to indulge in one, this particular circle would be supposed to be the last."

"Well, I am certainly very sorry that I was the innocent cause of such an upheaval," Col. Baker said, in the half serious, half mocking, tone that was becoming especially trying to Flossy. "It seems that I unwittingly burst a bombshell when I overturned those cards. I hadn't an idea of it. Miss Flossy, what can I do to atone for making you so uneasy? I assure you it was really pure benevolence on my part. What can I do to prove it?"

"Nothing," Flossy said, smiling pleasantly. She was very much obliged. He had awakened thought about a matter that had never before occurred to her. She began to think there were a good many things in her life that had not been given very much thought. She meant to look into this thing, and understand it if she could. Indeed, that was what she wanted of all things to do.

Nothing could be simpler and sweeter, and nothing could be more unlike the Flossy of Col. Baker's former acquaintance.

"I shouldn't wonder a bit if you had roused a hornet's nest about your ears," Charlie Shipley said to his friend. "Now I tell you, you may not believe it, but my little sister is just exactly the stuff out of which they made martyrs in those unenlightened days when anybody thought there was enough truth in anything to take the trouble to suffer for it. She can be made by skillful handling into a very queen of martyrs, and if you fall in the ruins, it will be your own fault."

But he did not say this until Flossy had suddenly and unceremoniously excused herself, and the two gentlemen were alone over their cigars.

"Confound that Chautauqua scheme!" Col. Baker said, kicking an innocent hassock half across the room with his indignant foot. "That is where all these new ideas started. I wish there was a law against fanaticism. Those young women of strong mind and disagreeable manners are getting a most uncomfortable influence over her, too. If I were you, Charlie, I would try to put an end to that intimacy."

Charlie whistled softly.

"Which do you mean?" he asked at last. "The Erskine girl, or the Wilbur one? I tell you, Baker, with all the years of your acquaintance, you don't know that little Flossy as well as you think you do. Let me tell you, my man, there is something about her, or in her, that is capable of development, and that is being developed (or I am mistaken), that will make her the leader, in a quiet way, of a dozen decided and outspoken girls like those two, and of several men like yourself besides, if she chooses to lead you."

"Well, confound the development then! I liked her better as she was before."

"More congenial, I admit; at least I should think so; but not half so interesting to watch. I have real good times now. I am continually wondering what she will do next."

CHAPTER XI.

THE NEXT THING.

HAT she did next that night was to sit with her elbows in her lap, and her chin resting on her hands, and stare into vacancy for half an hour. She was very much bewildered. Col. Baker had awakened a train of thought that would never slumber again. He need not hope for such a thing. Her brother Charlie saw deeper into her nature than she did herself. She was tenacious of an idea; she had grasped at this one, which, of itself, would perhaps never have occurred to her.

Hitherto she had played at cards as she had played on the piano or worked at her worsted cats and dogs, or frittered away an evening in the smallest of small talk, or done a hundred other things, without thought of results, without so much as realizing that there were such things as results connected with such trifling commonplaces.

At least, so far as the matter of cards was concerned, she would never do so again. Her quiet had been disturbed. The process of reasoning by which she found herself disturbed was very simple. She had discovered, as if by accident, that her pastor; as she loved to call Dr. Dennis, lingering on the word, now that it had such a new meaning for her, disapproved of card-playing, not only for himself, but for her; at least that Col. Baker so supposed.

Now there must be some foundation for this belief of his. Either there was something in the nature of the game which Col. Baker recognized, and which she did not, that made him understand, as by instinct, that it would be disapproved by Dr. Dennis, or else he had heard him so express himself, or else he was totally mistaken, and was misrepresenting that gentleman's character.

She thought all this over as she sat staring into space, and she went one step further—she meant to discover which of these three statements was correct. If Dr. Dennis thought it wrong to play cards, then he must have reasons for so thinking. She accepted that at once as a necessity to the man. They must also have been carefully weighed reasons, else he would not have given them a place in his creed. This also was a necessity to a nature like his.

Clearly there was something here for her to study; but how to set about it? Over this she puzzled a good deal; she did not like to go directly to Dr. Dennis and ask for herself; she did not know how to set to work to discover for herself the truth; she could pray for light, that to be sure; but having brought her common sense with her into religious matters, she no more expected light to blaze upon her at the moment of praying for it, than she expected the sun to burst into the room despite the closing of blinds and dropping of curtain, merely because she prayed that it might shine.

Clearly if she wanted the sun, it was her part to open blinds and draw back curtains; clearly if she wanted mental light, it was her part to use the means that God had placed at her disposal. Thus much she realized. But not being a self-reliant girl, it resulted in her saying to Eurie Mitchell when she slipped in the next evening to spend an hour:

"I wish we girls could get together somewhere this evening; I have something to talk over that puzzles me a great deal."

You are to understand that the expression, "we girls," meant the four who had lived Chautauqua together; from henceforth and forever "we girls" who went through the varied experiences of life together that were crowded into those two weeks, would be separated from all other girls, and their intercourse would necessarily be different from any other friendships, colored always with that which they had lived together under the trees.

"Well," said Eurie, quick, as usual, to carry out what another only suggested, "I'm sure that is easily managed. We can call for Ruth, and go around to Marion's den; she is always in, and she never has any company."

"But Ruth nearly always has," objected Flossy, who had an instant vision of herself among the fashionable callers in the Erskine parlor, unable to get away without absolute rudeness.

"I'll risk Ruth if she happens to want to come with us," Eurie said, nodding her head sagely. "She will dispose of her callers in some way; strangle them, or what is easier and safer, simply ignore their existence and beg to be excused. Ruth is equal to any amount of well-bred rudeness; all that is necessary is the desire to perform a certain action, and she will do it."

This prophecy of Eurie's proved to be the case. Nellis Mitchell was called into service to see the girls safely over to the Erskine mansion, where they found two gentlemen calling on Ruth and her father. No sooner did she hear of their desire to be together, than, feeling instant sympathy with it, she said, "I'll go in five minutes." Then they heard her quiet voice in the parlor:

"Father, will you and our friends excuse me for the remainder of the evening, and will you enjoy my part of the call and yours too? I have just had a summons elsewhere that demands attention."

"Isn't that perfect in its propriety, besides bringing things to the exact point where she wants them to be?" whispered Eurie to Flossy as they waited in the hall. "Oh, it takes Ruth to manage."

"I wonder," said Flossy, with her far-away look, and half-distressed, wholly-perplexed curve of the lip—"I wonder if it is strictly true; that is what troubles me a good deal."

Oh, Dr. Hurlbut your address to the children that summer day under the trees was the germ of this shoot of sensitiveness for the strict truth, that shall bloom into conscientious fruit.

It was by this process that they were all together in Marion's den, as Eurie called her stuffed and uninviting little room. Never was mortal more glad to be interrupted than she, as she unceremoniously tossed aside school-books and papers, and made room for them around the table.

"You are a blessed trio," she said, exultantly. "What good angel put it into your hearts to come to me just now and here? I am in the dismals; have been down all day in the depths of swamp-land, feeling as if I hadn't a friend on earth, and didn't want one; and here you are, you blessed three."

"But we didn't come for fun or to comfort you, or anything of that sort," explained Flossy, earnestly, true to the purpose that had started her. "We came to talk something over."

"I don't doubt it. Talk it over then by all means. I'll talk at it with all my heart. We generally do talk something over, I have observed, when we get together; at least we do of late years. Which one wants to talk?"

Thus introduced, Flossy explained the nature of her perplexities; her occupation the evening before; the interruption from Dr. Dennis; the sweeping action of Col. Baker, and the consequent talk.

"Now do you suppose that is true?" she said, suddenly breaking off at the point where Col. Baker had assured her that all clergymen looked with utter disfavor on cards.

Marion glanced from one to another of the faces before her with an amused air; none of them spoke.

"It is rather queer," she said, at last, "that I have to be authority, or that I seem to be the only one posted, when I have but just emerged from a state of unbelief in the whole subject. But I tell you truly, my blessed little innocent, Col. Baker is well posted; not only the clergy, but he will find a large class of the most enlightened Christians, look with disapproval on the whole thing in all its variations."

"Why do they?" This from Flossy, with a perplexed and troubled tone.

"Well," said Marion, "now that question is more easily asked than answered. It requires an argument."

"An argument is just what I want; I like to have things explained. Before that, though, one thing that puzzles me is how should Col. Baker be so familiar with the views of clergymen?"

"That is a curious fact, my mousie; you will find it, I fancy, in all sorts of strange places. People who are not Christians seem to have an intuitive perception of the fitness of things. It is like dancing and theatre-going, and a dozen other questions. It is very unusual to meet people who do not sneer at Christians for upholding such amusements; they seem to realize an incongruity between them and the Christian profession. It was just as plain to me, I know, and I have sneered many a time over card-playing Christians, and here you are, dear little Flossy, among them, just for the purpose of teaching me not to judge."

Ruth, for the first time, took up the subject:

"If your statement is true, Marion, how is it that so many professed Christians indulge in these very things?"

"Precisely the question that I just asked myself while I was talking. By what means they become destitute of that keen insight into consistencies and inconsistencies, the moment they enter the lists as Christian people, is more than I can understand, unless it is because they decide to succumb to the necessity of doing as other people do, and let any special thinking alone as inconvenient and unprofitable. I don't know how it is; only you watch this question and think about it, and you will discover that just so surely as you come in contact with any who are active and alert in Christian work, whose religion you respect as amounting to something, you are almost sure to see them avoiding all these amusements. Who ever heard of a minister being asked to spend an evening in social card-playing! I presume that even Col. Baker himself knows that that would be improper, and he would be the first to sneer."

"Of course," Ruth said, "ministers were expected to be examples for other people to follow."

"Well, then," Flossy said, her perplexity in no way lessened, "ought we not to follow?"

Whereupon Marion clapped her hands.

"Little Flossy among the logicians!" she said. "That is the point, Ruth Erskine. If the example is for us to follow, why don't we follow? Now, what do you honestly think about this question yourself?"

"Why," said Ruth, hesitatingly, "I have always played cards, in select circles, being careful, of course, with whom I played; just as I am careful with whom I associate, and, contrary to your supposition, I have always supposed those people who frowned on such amusements to be a set of narrow-minded fanatics. And I didn't know that Christian people did frown on such amusements; though, to be sure, now that I think of it, there are certain ones who never come to card-parties nor dancing-parties. I guess the difficulty is that I have never thought anything about it."

Marion was looking sober.

"The fact is," she said, gravely, "that with all my loneliness and poverty and general forlornness, I have had a different bringing up from any of you. My father did not believe in any of these things."

"And he was a Christian man," Flossy said, quickly. "Then he must have had a reason for his belief. That is what I want to get at. What was it?"

"He found it in an old book," said Marion, looking at her, brightly, through shining eyes. "He found most of his knowledge and his hope and joy in that same book. The Bible was almost the only book he had, and he made much of that."

"And yet you hated the Bible!" Eurie said this almost involuntarily, with a surprised tone.

"I hated the way in which people lived it, so different from my father's way. I don't think I ever really discarded the book itself. But I was a fool; I don't mind owning that."

Flossy brought them back to the subject.

"But about this question," she said. "The Bible was just where I went for help, but I didn't find it; I looked in the Concordance for cards and for amusements, and for every word which I could think of, that would cover it, but I couldn't find anything."

Marion laughed again. This little morsel's ignorance of the Bible was to this girl, who had been an avowed infidel for more than a dozen years, something very strange.

"The Bible is a big book, darling," she said, still laughing. "But, after all, I fancy you will find something about the principle that governs cards, even if you cannot find the word."

Meantime Ruth had been for some minutes regarding Eurie's grave face and attentive eyes, with no small astonishment in her gaze. At this point she interrupted:

"Eurie Mitchell, what can be the matter with you? were you ever known to be so quiet? I haven't heard you speak on this theme, or any other, since you came into the room; yet you look as though you had some ideas, if you chose to advance them. Where do you stand on this card question?"

"We never play cards at home," Eurie said, quickly, "and we never go where we know they are to be played."

Flossy turned upon her the most surprised eyes. Dr. Mitchell's family was the most decidedly unconventional and free and easy of any represented there. Flossy had supposed that they, of all others, would make cards a daily pastime.

"Why not?" she asked, briefly and earnestly, as one eager to learn.

"It is on Nell's account," Eurie said, still speaking very gravely. "Nell has but one fault, and that is card-playing; he is just passionately fond of it; he is tempted everywhere. Father says Grandfather Mitchell was just so, and Nell inherits the taste. It is a great temptation to him, and we do not like to foster it at home."

"But home card-playing is so different; that isn't gambling." This from Flossy, questioningly.

"Nell learned to play at home," Eurie said, quickly. "That is, he learned at Grandfather Mitchell's when he was a little boy. We have no means of knowing whether he would have been led into gambling but for that early education. I know that Robbie shall never learn if we can help it; we never mean to allow him to go where any sort of cards are played, so long as we have him under control."

All this was utterly new to Flossy.

"Then, if your little Robbie should come, with other children, to see me, and I should teach them a game of cards to amuse them, I might be doing you a positive injury," she said, thoughtfully.

"I certainly should so consider it," Eurie said, with quickness and with feeling. "Girls, I speak vehemently on this subject always; having one serious lesson at home makes people think."

"It is a question whether we have any right to indulge in an amusement that has the power to lead people astray," Ruth said, grave and thoughtful, "especially when it is impossible to tell what boy may he growing up under that influence to whom it will become a snare."

Marion added:

"Flossy, do you begin to see?"

"I see in every direction," Flossy said. "There is no telling when we may be doing harm. But, now, let me be personal; I play with father a great deal; he is an old man, and he has no special temptation, certainly. I have heard him say he never played for anything of more value than a pin in his life. What harm can there possibly be in my spending an evening with him in such an amusement, if it rests and entertains him?"

"Imagine some of your Sunday-school boys accepting your invitation to call on you, and finding you playing a social game with your father; then imagine them quoting you in support of their game at the billiard saloon that same evening a little later," Marion said, quickly. "You see, my little Flossy, we don't live in nutshells or sealed cans; we are at all times liable to be broken in upon by people whom we may influence and whom we may harm. I confess I don't want to do anything at home that will have to be pushed out of sight in haste and confusion because some one happens to come in. I want to be honest, even in my play."

Over this Flossy looked absolutely aghast. Those boys of hers, they were getting a strong hold upon her already; she longed to lead them. Was it possible that by her very amusements she might lead them astray! Another point was, that Nellis Mitchell could never be invited to join them in a game. She had invited him often, and she winced at the thought. Did his sister think she had helped him into temptation? Following these trains of thought, she was led into another, over which she thought aloud.

"And suppose any of them should ask me if I ever played cards! I should have to say yes."

"Precisely," said Marion. "And don't you go to thinking that you can ever hide behind that foolish little explanation, 'I play simply for amusement; I think it is wrong to play for money.' It won't do: it takes logical brains to see the difference, and some even of those won't see it; but they can readily see that, having plenty of money, of course you have no temptation to play cards for it, and they see that with them it is different."

CHAPTER XII.

SETTLING QUESTIONS.

HERE is Bible for that doctrine too."

"Where?" Flossy asked, turning quickly to Marion.

"In this verse: 'If meat maketh my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world stands.' Don't you see you never can know which brother may be made to offend?"

"And it is even about so useful a thing as food," said Flossy, looking her amazement; she had never heard that verse before in her life. "About just that thing; and nothing so really unnecessary to a complete life as card-playing may be."

"Col. Baker sneers at the inconsistency of people who have nothing to do with cards, and who play croquet," Eurie said this with cheeks a little heightened in color; she had come in contact with Col. Baker on this very question.

Ruth looked up quickly from the paper on which she was scribbling.

"I think myself," she said, "that if it should seem necessary to me to give up cards entirely, consistency would oblige me to include croquet, and all other games of that sort."

"I shouldn't feel obliged to do any such thing," Marion said, promptly; "at least, not until I had become convinced that people played croquet late into the night, in rooms smelling of tobacco and liquor, and were tempted to drink freely of the latter, and pawn their coats, if necessary, to get money enough to carry out the game. You see, there is a difference."

"Yet people can gamble in playing croquet," Eurie said, thoughtfully.

"Oh, yes, and people can gamble with pins, or in tossing up pennies. The point is, they are not in the habit of doing it; and pins suggest no such thing to people in general; neither do croquet balls; while the fact remains that the ordinary use of cards, is to gamble with them; and comparatively few of those who use them habitually confine themselves to quiet home games. People are in danger of making their brothers offend by their use; we all know that."

"If that is true, then just that one verse from the Bible ought to settle the whole question." There was no mistaking the quiet meaning in Flossy's voice; it was as good as saying that the whole question was settled for her. Marion regarded her with evident satisfaction; her manner was all the more fascinating, because she was so entirely unconscious that this way of looking at questions, rather than this firm manner of settling questions, was not common, even among Christians. "Can you show me the verse in your Bible?" she presently asked.

"I can do that same with the greatest pleasure," Marion said, bringing forward a new and shining concordance. "I really meant to have a new dress this fall; I say that, Ruthie, for your special comfort; but the truth is, there was an army of Bible verses that I learned in my youth trooping up to me, and I had such a desire to see the connection, and find out what they were all about, that I was actually obliged to sacrifice the dress and get a concordance. I have lots of comfort with it. Here is the verse, Flossy."

Flossy drew the Bible toward her with a little sigh.

"I wish I knew an army of verses," she said. "Seems to me I don't know any at all." Then she went to reading.

"I know verses enough," Eurie said, "but they seem to be in a great muddle in my brain. I can't remember that any of them were ever explained to me; and it isn't very often that I find a place where any of them will fit in."

"They do fit in, though, and with astonishing closeness, you will find, as you grow used to them. I have been amazed at that feature of the Bible. Some of the verses that occur in the selections for parsing are just wonderful; they seem aimed directly at me. What have you found, Flossy?"

"Wonderful things," said Flossy, flushing and smiling.

"You are reading backward, aren't you? I know those verses; just you let me read them, substituting the object about which we are talking, and see how they will fit. You see, girls, this astonishing man, Paul by name—do you happen to know his history?—more wonderful things happened to him than to any other mortal I verily believe. Well, he was talking about idols, and advising his Christian friends not to eat the food that had been offered to idols; not that it would hurt them, but because—well, you'll see the 'because' as I read. I'll just put in our word, for an illustration, instead of meat. 'But cards commend us not to God: for neither if we play are we the better; neither if we play not, are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak; for if any man see thee which hast knowledge, sit at cards, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to sit at cards also? And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore if cards make my brother to offend, I will play no more cards while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.' Doesn't that fit?"

"Let me look at that," said Eurie, suddenly, drawing the Bible to her. "After all," she said, after a moment, "what right have you to substitute the word cards? It is talking about another matter."

"Now, Eurie Mitchell, you are too bright to make such a remark as that! If the Bible is for our help as well as for Paul's, we have surely the right to substitute the noun that fits our present needs. We have no idols nowadays; at least they are not made out of wood and stone; and the logic of the question is as clear as sunlight. We have only to understand that the matter of playing cards is a snare and a danger to some people, and we see our duty clearly enough, because, how are we ever to be sure that the very person who will be tempted is not within the reach of our influence. What do you think, Flossy? Is the question any clearer to you?"

"Why, yes," Flossy said, slowly, "that eighth verse settles it: 'For meat commendeth us not to God, for neither if we eat are we the better, neither if we eat not are we the worse.' It certainly can do no one any harm if I let cards alone, and it is equally certain that it may do harm if I play them. I should think my duty was clear."

"I wonder what Col. Baker will say to that duty?" queried Eurie, thinking aloud rather than speaking to any one. "He is very much given over to the amusement, if I am not mistaken."

Flossy raised her eyes and fixed them thoughtfully on Eurie's face, while a flush spread all over her own pretty one. Was it possible that she had helped to foster this taste in Col. Baker. How many evenings she had spent with him in this way. Was he very much addicted to the use of cards, she wondered; that is, outside of their own parlor? Eurie seemed to know something about it.

"What makes you think so?" she asked, at last.

"Because I know so. He has a great deal to do with Nell's infatuation. He was the very first one with whom Nell ever played for anything but fun. Flossy Shipley, you surely know that he derives a good deal of his income in that way?"

"I certainly did not know it," Flossy said, with an increasing glow on her cheeks. The glow was caused by wondering how far her own brother, Charlie, had been led by this man.

"Girls," said Marion, concluding that a change of subject would be wise, "wouldn't a Bible reading evening be nice?"

"What kind of an evening can that be?"

Marion laughed.

"Why, a reading together out of the Bible about a certain subject, or subjects, that interested us, and about which we wanted to inform ourselves? Like this, for instance. I presume there are dozens of texts that bear on this very question. It would be nice to go over them together and talk them up."

Flossy's eyes brightened.

"I would like that exceedingly," she said. "I need the help of you all. I know so very little about the Bible. We have musical evenings, and literary evenings; why not Bible evenings? Let's do it."

"Apropos of the subject in hand, before we take up a new one, what do you think of this by way of illustration?" Ruth asked, as she threw down on the table a daintily written epistle. There was an eager grasping after it by this merry trio, and Eurie securing it, read aloud. It was an invitation for the next evening to a select gathering of choice spirits for the purpose of enjoying a social evening at cards.

"What do you propose to do with it?" Marion asked, as Eurie balanced the note on her hand with an amused face; the illustration fitted so remarkably into the talk.

"Decline it," Ruth said, briefly. And then added, as an after-thought, "I never gave the subject any attention in my life. I am, perhaps, not entirely convinced now, only I see as Flossy does, that I shall certainly do no harm by declining; whereas it seems I may possibly do some by accepting; therefore, of course, the way is clear."

She said it with the utmost composure, and it was evident that the idea of such a course being disagreeable to her, or of her considering it a cross to decline, had not occurred to her. She cared nothing at all about these matters, and had only been involved in them as a sort of necessity belonging to society. She was more than willing to be "counted out."

As for Flossy, she drew a little sigh of envy. She would have given much to have been constituted like Ruth Erskine. She knew that the same like invitation would probably come to her, and she knew that she would decline it; but, aside from loss of the pleasure and excitement of the pretty toilet and the pleasant evening among her friends, she foresaw long and wearisome discussions with Col. Baker, with Charlie, with her father; sarcastic remarks from Kitty and her lover, and a long train of annoyances. She dreaded them all; it was so easy to slip along with the current; it was so hard to stem it and insist on going the other way.

As for Marion Wilbur, she envied them both; a chance for them to dash out into a new channel and make some headway, not the everlasting humdrum sameness that filled her life.

Flossy was fascinated with the Bible words, that were so new and fresh to her.

"Those verses cover a great deal of ground," she said, slowly reading them over again. "I can think of a good many things which we call right enough, that, measured by that test, would have to be changed or given up. But, Marion, you spoke of dancing and theatre-going. I can't quite see what the verses have to do with either of those amusements; I mean not as we, and the people in our set, have to do with such things. Do you think every form of dancing is wicked?"

"What wholesale questions you ask, my morsel! And you ask them precisely as though I had been made umpire and you must abide by my decisions, whatever they are. Now, do you know I never believed in dancing? I had some queer, perhaps old-fashioned, notions about it all my life. Even before there was any such thing as a conscientious scruple about it, I should not have danced if I had had a hundred chances to mingle in just the set that you do; so, perhaps, I am not the one of whom to ask that question."

"I should think you were just the one. If you have examined it, and know why you think so, you can surely tell me, and give me a chance to see whether I ought to think as you do or not."

"I need posting, decidedly, on that question," Eurie said, throwing off her earnestness and looking amused. "If there is anyone thing above another that I do thoroughly enjoy, it is dancing; and I give you all fair warning, I don't mean to be coaxed out of it very easily. I shall fight hard for that bit of fun. Marion don't know anything about it, for she never danced; but the rest of you know just what a delicious exercise it is; and I don't believe, when it is indulged in reasonably, and at proper places, there is any harm at all in it. If I am to give it up, you will have to show me strong reasons why I should."

"All this fits right in with my idea," Marion said. "Nothing could be more suitable for our first Bible reading. Let us take an evening for it, and prepare ourselves as well as we can beforehand, and examine into the Bible view of it. Eurie, you will be expected to be armed with all the Scriptural arguments in its favor. I'll try for the other side. Now, Ruth and Flossy, which side will you choose?"

"Neither," Ruth said, promptly. "I am interested in the subject, and shall be glad to be informed as to what the Bible says about it, if any of you are smart enough to find anything that will bear on the subject; but I believe the Bible left that, as well as some other things, to our common sense, and that each of us have to decide the matter for ourselves."

"All right," said Marion, "we'll accept you on the non-committal side. Only, remember you are to try to prove from the Bible that it has left us to decide this matter for ourselves."

"I shall take every side that I find," Flossy said. "What I want to know is, the truth about things."

"Without regard as to whether the truth is so fortunate as to agree with your opinion or not?" said Marion. "You will, probably, be quite as likely to find the truth as any of us. Well, I like the plan; there is work in it, and it will amount to something. When shall it be?"

"Next Friday," said Flossy.

"No," said Ruth; "Friday is the night of Mrs. Garland's lawn party."

"A dancing party," said Eurie. "Good! Let us come together on Thursday evening. If there is a dancing party just ahead, it will make us all the more zealous to prove our sides; I shall be, at least, for I want to go to Mrs. Garland's."

CHAPTER XIII.

LOOKING FOR WORK.

R. DENNIS had just gone into his study to make ready for the evening prayer-meeting, when he heard his door-bell ring. He remembered with a shade of anxiety that his daughter was not yet out of school, and that his sister and housekeeper was not at home. It was more than likely that he would be interrupted.

"What is it, Hannah?" he asked, as that person appeared at his door.

"It is Miss Erskine, sir. I told her that Miss Dennis was out of town, and Miss Grace was at school, and she said it was of no consequence, she wanted to see the minister himself. Will I tell her that you are engaged?"

"No," said Dr. Dennis, promptly. The sensation was still very new, this desire on the part of any of the name of Erskine to see him. His preparation could afford to wait.

Two minutes more and Ruth was in the study. It was a place in which she felt as nearly embarrassed as she ever approached to that feeling. She had a specific purpose in calling, and words arranged wherewith to commence her topic; but they fled from her as if she had been a school girl instead of a finished young lady in society; and she answered the Doctor's kind enquiries as to the health of her father and herself in an absent and constrained manner. At last this good man concluded to help her.

"Is there any thing special that I can do for you to-day?" he asked, with a kindly interest in his tone, that suggested the feeling that he was interested in her plans, whatever they were, and would be glad to help.

"Yes," she said, surprised into frankness by his straightforward way of doing things; "or, at least, I hope you can. Dr. Dennis, ought not every Christian to be at work?"

"Our great Example said; 'I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day.'"

"I know it; that very verse set me to thinking about it. That is what I want help about. There is no work for me to do; at least, I can't find any. I am doing just nothing at all, and I don't in the least know which way to turn. I am not satisfied with this state of things; I can't settle back to my books and my music as I did before I went away; I don't enjoy them as I used to; I mean, they don't absorb me; they seem to be of no earthly use to anyone but myself, and I don't feel absolutely certain that they are of any use to me; anyway, they are not Christian work."

"As to that, you are not to be too certain about it. Wonderful things can be done with music; and when one is given a marked talent for it, as I hear has been the case with you, it is not to be hidden in a napkin."

"I don't know what I can do with music, I am sure," Ruth said, skeptically. "I suppose I must have a good deal of talent in that direction; I have been told so ever since I can remember; but beyond entertaining my friends, I see no other special use for it."

"Do you remember telling me about the songs which Mr. Bliss sang at Chautauqua, and the effect on the audience?"

"Yes," said Ruth, speaking heartily, and her cheeks glowing at the recollection "but he was wonderful!"

"The same work can be done in a smaller way," Dr. Dennis said, smiling. "I hope to show you something of what you may do to help in that way before another winter passes; but, in the meantime, mere entertainment of friends is not a bad motive for keeping up one's music. Then there is the uncertain future ever before us. What if you should be called upon to teach music some day?"

A vision of herself toiling wearily from house to house in all weathers, and at all hours of the day, as she had seen music teachers do, hovered over Ruth Erskine's brain, and so utterly improbable and absurd did the picture seem, when she imagined it as having any reference to her, that she laughed outright.

"I don't believe I shall ever teach music," she said, positively.

"Perhaps not; and yet stranger things than that have happened in this changeful life."

"But, Dr. Dennis," she said, with sudden energy, and showing a touch of annoyance at the turn which the talk was taking, "my trouble is not an inability to employ my time; I do not belong to the class of young ladies who are afflicted with ennui." And a sarcastic curve of her handsome lip made Ruth look very like the Miss Erskine that Dr. Dennis had always known. She despised people who had no resources within themselves. "I can find plenty to do, and I enjoy doing it; but the point is, I seem to be living only for myself, and that doesn't seem right. I want Christian work."

To tell the truth Dr. Dennis was puzzled. There was so much work to do, his hands and heart were always so full and running over, that it seemed strange to him for anyone to come looking for Christian work; the world was teeming with it.

On the other hand he confessed to himself that he was utterly unaccustomed to hearing people ask for work; or, if the facts be told, to having any one do any work.

Years ago he had tried to set the people of the First Church to work; but they had stared at him and misunderstood him, and he confessed to himself that he had given over trying to get work out of most of them. While this experience was refreshing, it was new, and left him for the moment bewildered.

"I understand you," he said, rallying. "There is plenty of Christian work. Do you want to take a class in the Sunday-school? There is a vacancy."

Ruth shook her head with decision.

"That is not at all my forte. I have no faculty for teaching children; I am entirely unused to them, and have no special interest in them, and no sort of idea how they are to be managed. Some people are specially fitted for such work; I know I am not."

"Often we find our work much nearer home than we had planned," Dr. Dennis said, regarding her with a thoughtful air. "How is it with your father, Miss Erskine?"

"My father?" she repeated; and she could hardly have looked more bewildered if her pastor had asked after the welfare of the man in the moon.

"Are you trying to win him over to the Lord's side?"

Utter silence and surprise on Miss Erskine's part. At last she said:

"I hardly ever see my father; we are never alone except when we are on our way to dinner, or to pay formal calls on very formal people. Then we are always in a hurry. I cannot reach my father, Dr. Dennis; he is immersed in business, and has no time nor heart for such matters. I should not in the least know how to approach him if I had a chance; and, indeed, I am sure I could do no good, for he would esteem it an impertinence to be questioned by his daughter as to his thoughts on these matters."

"Yet you have an earnest desire to see him a Christian?"

"Yes," she said, speaking slowly and hesitatingly; "of course I have that. To be very frank, Dr. Dennis, it is a hopeless sort of desire; I don't expect it in the least; my father is peculiarly unapproachable; I know he considers himself sufficient unto himself, if you will allow the expression. In thinking of him, I have felt that a great many years from now, when he is old, and when business cares and responsibilities have in a measure fallen off, and given him time to think of himself, he might then feel his need of a Friend and be won; but I don't even hope for it before that time."

"My dear friend, you have really no right to set a different time from the one that your Master has set," her pastor said, earnestly. "Don't you know that his time is always now? How can you be sure that he will choose to give your father a long life, and leisure in old age to help him to think? Isn't that a terrible risk?"

Ruth Erskine shook her decided head.

"I feel sure that my work is not in that direction," she said. "I could not do it; you do not know my father as well as I do; he would never allow me to approach him. The most I can hope to do will be to hold what he calls my new views so far into the background that he will not positively forbid them to me. He is the only person I think of whom I stand absolutely in awe. Then I couldn't talk with him. His life is a pure, spotless one, convincing by its very morality; so he thinks that there is no need of a Saviour. I do pray for him; I mean to as long as he and I live; but I know I can do nothing else; at least not for many a year."

How was Dr. Dennis to set to work a lady who knew so much that she could not work? This was the thought that puzzled him. But he knew how difficult it was for people to work in channels marked out by others. So he said, encouragingly:

"I can conceive of some of your difficulties in that direction. But you have other friends who are not Christians?"

This being said inquiringly, Ruth, after a moment of hesitation, answered it:

"I have one friend to whom I have tried to talk about this matter, but I have had no success. He is very peculiar in his views and feelings. He agrees to every thing that I say, and admits the wisdom and reasonableness of it all, but he goes no further."

"There are a great many such people," Dr. Dennis said, with a quick sigh. He met many of them himself. "They are the hardest class to reach. Does your friend believe in the power of prayer? I have generally found the safest and shortest way with such to be to use my influence in inducing them to begin to pray. If they admit its power and its reasonableness, it is such a very simple thing to do for a friend that they can hardly refuse."

"I don't think he ever prays," Ruth said, "and I don't believe he would. He would think it hypocritical. He says as much as that half the praying must be mockery."

"Granting that to be the case, does he think he should therefore not offer real prayer? That would be a sad state. Because I have many hypocrites in my family whose words to me are mockery, therefore no one must be a true friend."

"I know," said Ruth, interrupting. "But I don't know how to reach such people. Perhaps he may be your work, Dr. Dennis, but I don't think he is mine. I don't in the least know what to say to him. I refer to Mr. Wayne."

"I know him," Dr. Dennis said, "but he is not inclined to talk with me. I have not the intimacy with him that would lead him to be familiar. I should be very certain, if I were you, that my work did not lie in that direction before I turned from it."

"I am certain," Ruth said, with a little laugh.

"I don't know how to talk to such people. I should feel sure of doing more harm than good."

"But, my dear Miss Erskine, I beg your pardon for the reminder, but since you are thrown much into his society, will it not be necessary for you, as a Christian, to talk more or less about this matter? Should not your talk be shaped in such a way as to influence him if you can?"

"I don't think I understand," Ruth said, doubtfully. "Do you mean that people should talk about religion all the time they are together?"

During this question Dr. Dennis had drawn his Bible toward him and been turning over the leaves.

"Just let me read you a word from the Guide-book on this subject: 'Only let your conversation be as becometh the Gospel of Christ.' 'As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation.' 'Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of person ought ye to be, in all holy conversation and godliness?' What should you conclude as to Christian duty in the matter of daily conversation?"

Ruth made no answer to this question, but sat with earnest, thoughtful look fixed on her pastor's face.

"Who follows that pattern?" she asked, at last.

"My dear friend, is not our concern rather to decide whether you and I shall try to do it in the future?"

Someway this brought the talk to a sudden lull. Ruth seemed to have no more to say.

"There is another way of work that I have been intending to suggest to some of you young ladies," Dr. Dennis said, after a thoughtful silence. "It is something very much neglected in our church—that is the social question. Do you know we have many members who complain that they are never called on, never spoken with, never noticed in any way?"

"I don't know anything about the members," Ruth said. "I don't think I have a personal acquaintance with twenty of them—a calling acquaintance, I mean."

"That is the case with a great many, and it is a state of things that should not exist. The family ought to know each other. I begin to see your work clearer; it is the young ladies, to a large extent, who must remedy this evil. Suppose you take up some of that work, not neglecting the other, of course. 'These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone,' I am afraid will be said to a good many of us. But this is certainly work needing to be done, and work for which you have leisure."

He hoped to see her face brighten, but it did not. Instead she said:

"I hate calling."

"I dare say; calling that is aimless, and in a sense useless. It must be hateful work. But if you start out with an object in view, a something to accomplish that is worth your while, will it not make a great difference?"

Ruth only sighed.

"I have so many calls to make with father," she said, wearily. "It is the worst work I do. They are upon fashionable, frivolous people, who cannot talk about anything. It is worse martyrdom now than it used to be. I think I am peculiarly unfitted for such work, Dr. Dennis."

"But I want you to try a different style of calls. Go alone; not with your father, or with anyone who will trammel your tongue; and go among a class of people who do not expect you, and will be surprised and pleased, and helped, perhaps. Come, let me give you a list of persons whom I would like to have you call on at your earliest opportunity. This is work that I am really longing to see done."

A prisoner about to receive sentence could hardly have looked more gloomy than did Ruth. She was still for a few minutes, then she said:

"Dr. Dennis, do you really think it is a person's duty to do that sort of work for which he or she feels least qualified, and which is the most distasteful?"

"No," said Dr. Dennis, promptly. "My dear Miss Erskine, will you be so kind as to tell me the work for which you feel qualified, and for which you have no distaste?"

Again Ruth hesitated, looked confused, and then laughed. She began to see that she was making a very difficult task for her pastor.

"I don't feel qualified for anything," she said, at last. "And I feel afraid to undertake anything. But at the same time, I think I ought to be at work."

"Now we begin to see the way clearer," he said, smiling, and with encouragement in his voice. "It may seem a strange thing to you, but a sense of unfitness is sometimes one of the very best qualifications for such work. If it is strong enough to drive us to the blessed Friend who has promised to make perfect our weakness in this as in all other efforts, and if we go out armed in His strength we are sure to conquer. Try it. Take this for your motto: 'As ye have opportunity.' And, by the way, do you know the rest of that verse? 'Especially to them who are of the household of faith.' It is members of the household that I want you to call on, remember."

Ruth laughed again, and shook her head. But she took her list and went away. She had no more that she wanted to say just then; but she felt that she had food for thought.

"I may try it," she said, as she went out, holding up her list, "but I feel that I shall blunder, and do more harm than good."

Dr. Dennis looked after her with a face on which there was no smile. "There goes one," he said to himself, "who thinks she is willing to be led, but, on the contrary, she wants to lead. She is saved, but not subdued. I wonder what means the great Master will have to use to lead her to rest in his hands, knowing no way but his?"

CHAPTER XIV

AN UNARMED SOLDIER.

ANY things intervened to keep Ruth Erskine from having much to do with that list which her pastor had given her. She read it over indeed, and realized that she was not familiar with a single name.

"What an idea it will be for me to go blundering through the city, hunting up people whom I shall not know when I find."

This she said as she read it over; then she laid it aside, and made ready to go out to dinner with her father, to meet two judges and their wives and daughters who were stopping in town.

During that day she thought many times of the sentences that had been read to her out of that plain-looking, much-worn Bible on Dr. Dennis' study-table. The only effect they had on her was to make her smile at the thought of the impossibility of anything like a religious conversation in such society as that!

"How they would stare," she said to herself, "if I should ask them about a prayer-meeting! I have half a mind to try it. If father were not within hearing I would, just to see what these finished young ladies would say."

But she did not try it; and the evening passed, as so many evenings had, without an attempt on her part to carry out any of the thoughts which troubled her. She looked forward to one bit of work which she expected to fall to her share, at least she liked to call it work.

That card-party to which she had been invited; she would be expected to attend in company with Mr. Wayne; she meant to decline, and her father would be surprised and a trifle annoyed, for it was at a place where, not liking the people well enough himself to be social, he desired his daughter to atone for his deficiency. But she would steadily refuse. She did not shrink from this effort as Flossy did; on the contrary, she half enjoyed the thought of being a calm and composed martyr.

But, quite to her discomfort, the martyrdom was not permitted; at least it took a different form. Mr. Wayne was obliged to be out of town, and sent profuse regrets, assuming that, of course, it would be a sore disappointment to her.

Her father took sufficient notice of it to make one or two efforts to agreeably supply his place, and failing in that, assured his daughter that rather than have her disappointed, he would have planned to accompany her himself if he had known of Mr. Wayne's absence in time. The actual cross that it would have been to explain to her father that she did not desire to go, and the reasons therefor, she did not take up; but the occurrence served to annoy her.

Two days afterward she was busy all the morning with her dressmaker, getting a special dress ready for a wedding among the upper circles. She had been hurried and worried, and was as nearly out of patience as her calmness ever allowed her to be. Still she remembered that it was the prayer-meeting evening, that she should see Dr. Dennis, and that he would be likely to ask her about the people on that list. She ought to go that afternoon, and try what she could do.

Once since her call on Dr. Dennis she had met him as he was going down Clinton Street, and he had turned and joined her for a few steps, while he said:

"I have been thinking about another friend of yours, that I should be very glad to see influenced in the right direction. His sister is trying, I presume; but other people's sisters some times have an influence. Young Mitchell, the doctor's son, is a young man of real promise; he ought to be on the Lord's side."

"You are mistaken in supposing him to be a friend of mine," Ruth said, with promptness and emphasis. "We have the most distant speaking acquaintance only, and I have a dislike for him amounting to absolute aversion." There was that in Ruth Erskine's voice when she chose to let it appear that said, "My aversion is a very serious and disagreeable thing."

"Yes," the Doctor said, quietly, as one in no degree surprised or disturbed; "yet he has a soul to be saved, and the Lord Jesus Christ died to save him."

There was no denying this; and certainly it would not look well in her to say that she had no desire to have part in his salvation; so she kept silence. But there followed her a disagreeable remembrance of having negatived every proposition whereby the doctor had hoped to set her at work. She decided, disagreeable as it was, to make a vigorous assault on those families, thereby showing him what she could do.

To this end she arrayed herself in immaculate calling attire—with a rustle of silk and a softness of ruffle, and a daintiness of glove that none but the wealthy can assume, and, in short, with that unmistakable air about every thing pertaining to her that marks the lady of fashion. These things were as much a part of Ruth Erskine as her hair and eyes were. Once ready, her dress, perhaps, gave her as little thought as her eyes or hair did. But she looked as though that must have been the sole object of thought and study in order to produce such perfect results.

Her preparation for her new and untried work had been none of the best. As I said, the morning had been given to the cares of the dressmaker and the deceitfulness of trimmings, so much so that her Bible reading even had been omitted, and only the briefest and most hurried of prayers, worthy of the days when prayer was nothing to her but a formal bowing of the head, on proper occasions, had marked her need of help from the Almighty Hand. These thoughts troubled her as she went down the Street. She paused irresolutely before one of the principal bookstores.

"I ought to have some tracts," she said, doubtfully, to herself; "they always take tracts when they go district visiting; I know that from hearing Mrs. Whipple talk; what is this but a district visiting; only Dr. Dennis has put my district all over the city; I wonder if he could have scattered the streets more if he had tried; respectable streets, though, all of them; better than any Mrs. Whipple ever told about."

Then she tried to select her tracts; but when one has utter ignorance of such literature, and a few minutes at a crowded counter in which to make a selection, it is not likely to be very select. She finally gave up any attempt at choice, beyond a few whose titles seemed inviting, chose a package at random, and hastened on her way.

"Mrs. C. Y. Sullivan" was the first name on her list, and, following her directions, she came presently to the street and number. A neat brick house, with a modern air about it and its surroundings; a bird singing in a cage before the open window, and pots of flowers blooming behind tastefully looped white curtains; not at all the sort of a house that Ruth had imagined she would see.

It did not suit her ideas of district visiting, crude though those ideas were. However, she rang the bell. Having commenced the task she was not one to draw back, though she admitted to herself that she never felt more embarrassed in her life. Nor did the embarrassment lessen when she was shown into the pretty, tasteful parlor, where presently Mrs. Sullivan joined her.

"I am Miss Erskine," Ruth said, rising as Mrs. Sullivan, a tall woman of some degree of dignity after a slight bow, waited as if she would know her errand. Unfortunately Ruth had no errand, save that she had come out to do her duty, and make the sort of call that Dr. Dennis expected her to make. Her embarrassment was excessive! What could she do or say next? Why did not Mrs. Sullivan take a chair, instead of standing there and looking at her like an idiot?

"Do you get out to church every Sabbath?" she asked, suddenly, feeling the need of saying something.

Mrs. Sullivan looked as though she thought she had suddenly come in contact with a lunatic.

"Do I get out to church?" she repeated. "That depends on whether I decide to go or not. May I ask why you are interested?"

What had become of Ruth's common sense? Why couldn't she have said, in as natural a way as she would have talked about going to a concert, that she was interested to know whether she enjoyed such a privilege? Why couldn't she have been herself in talking about these matters, as well as at any other time? Does anyone know why such a sense of horrible embarrassment creeps over some people when their conversation takes the least tinge of religion—people who are wonderfully self-possessed on all other themes?

"Well," said Ruth, in haste and confusion, "I merely inquired; I mean no offence, certainly; will you have a tract?" And she hastily seized one from her package, which happened to be entitled, "Why are you not a Christian?"

"Thank you," Mrs. Sullivan said, drawing back, "I am not in special need of reading matter; we keep ourselves supplied with religious literature of a kind that suits our tastes. As to tracts, I always keep a package by me to distribute when I go among the poor. This one would not be particularly appropriate to me, as I trust I am a Christian."

Dear me! how stiff and proper they both were! And in their hearts how indignant they both felt. What about? Could either of them have told?

"I wonder what earthly good that call did?" Ruth asked herself, as with glowing cheeks and rapid steps, she made her way down the street. "What could have been Dr. Dennis' object in sending me there to call? I thought I was to call on the poor. He didn't say any thing about whether they were poor or not, now I think of it; but I supposed, of course, that was what he meant. Why need she have been so disagreeable, anyway? I am sure I didn't insult her."

And I tell you truly that Miss Erskine did not know that she had seemed disagreeable in the extreme to Mrs. Sullivan, and that she was at that moment raging over it in her heart.