Among the interested also were a score or more of girls from Marion's room in the great school; and more came every day. Marion's face was shining, and she gathered her brood about her as a mother would the children of her love and longing.

Among them were four of Flossy's boys; and half a dozen boys, friends of theirs, who were not Flossy's, and who yet, someway, joined her train and managed to be "counted in." Among them was Judge Erskine—I mean among those who continued to come to the meetings—coming alone, and being reverent and thoughtful during the services, but going away with bowed head, and making no sign: there was something in the way with Judge Erskine that no one understood.

As for Ruth—how she worked during these days! Not with a glad light in her eyes, such as Marion and Flossy had; not with a satisfied face as if the question of something to do that was worth doing, and that helped her, had been settled, such as Eurie Mitchell wore; rather with a sad feverish impatience to accomplish results; shrinking from nothing, willing to do anything, go anywhere, yet meeting with far less encouragement, and seeing far less fruits, than any of the others. She did not realize that she was working with a sort of desperate intention of overbalancing the mischief of her mistakes by so much work now, that there would be a sort of even balance at the scales. She would have been shocked had she understood her own heart.

Meantime, where was Satan? Content to let this reaping time alone? Oh, bless you, no! Never busier, never more alert, and watchful, and cautious, and skillful than now! It was wonderful, too, how many helpers he found whose names were actually on the roll of the First Church!

There were those who had had in mind all the fall having little entertainments, "just a few friends, you know, nothing like a party; they were sorry to be obliged to have them just now while there were meetings; but Miss Gilmore was in town, and would be here so short a time, they must invite her; it would not be treating her well to take no notice of her visit; and, really, the people whom they proposed to invite were those who did not attend church, so no harm could be done."

These were some of Satan's helpers. There were others who were more outspoken. They "did not believe in special efforts; seasons of excitement; religious dissipations—nothing else. People should be religious at all times, not put it on for special occasions."

It was well enough to have a special season for parties, and a special season for going to the sea-side, and a special season for doing one's dressmaking, and a special season for cleaning house, and a special season for everything under the sun but religious meetings; these should be conducted—at all times. Was that what they meant? Oh, dear, no! They should not be conducted at all. Was that what they meant? Who should tell what they did mean? One lady said:

"The idea of the bell ringing every evening for prayer-meeting! It was too absurd! People must have a little time for recreation; these weeks just before the holidays were always by common consent the time for festivities of all sorts; it was downright folly to expect young people to give up their pleasures and go every evening to meeting."

So she issued her cards for a party, and gathered as many of the young people about her as she could. And this woman was a member of the First Church! And this woman professed to believe in the verse that read, "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God!"

There were others who went to these parties, hushing their consciences meantime by the explanation that the social duties were important ones, and that one whose heart was right could serve God as well having religious conversation at a party, as she could occupying a seat at a prayer-meeting. Perhaps they really believed it. What marvel? Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

The trouble about the sincerity was, that those same persons were not unaware of certain sneering remarks that were being made, to the effect that if church-members could go to parties when there were meetings at their own church, they could surely be excused from the meetings; and they could not have been utterly ignorant of the verse that read plainly, "Let not your good be evil spoken of."

There were still others who compromised matters, taking the meetings for the first hour of the evening and a party for the next three; and the lookers-on said, sneeringly, that there was a strife going on between the soul, the flesh and the devil, and they wondered which would conquer!

So all these classes flourished and worked in their different ways in the First Church; just as they always will work, until that day when the wheat shall be forever separated from the tares. The wonder is why so many blinded eyes must insist that because there are tares, there is therefore no wheat. The Lord said, "Let both grow together until the harvest."

"I don't understand it," Ruth said one day to Marion, as they talked the work over, and tried to lay plans for future helpfulness. "Why do you suppose it is that I seem able to do nothing at all? I try with all my might; my heart is surely in it, and I long with a desire that seems almost as if it would consume me, to see some fruit of my work, and yet I don't. What can be the difficulty?"

"I don't know," Marion said, speaking hesitatingly, as one who would like to say more if she dared. "I don't feel competent to answer that question, and yet, sometimes, I have feared that you might be trying to compromise with the Lord."

"I don't understand you; in what way do you mean? I try to do my duty in every place that I can think of. I am not compromising on any subject, so far as I know. If I am, I will certainly be grateful to anyone who will point it out to me."

"I am not sure that it is sufficiently clear to my own mind to be able to point it out," Marion said, still visibly embarrassed. "But, Ruth, it sometimes seems to me as if you had said to yourself, 'Now I will work so much and pray so much, and then I ought to have rest from the pain that is goading me on, and I ought to be able to feel that I have atoned for past mistakes, and the account against me is squared.'"

Ruth turned from her impatiently.

"You are a strange comforter," she said, almost indignantly. "Do you mean by that to intimate that you think I ought never to look or hope for rest of mind again because I have made one fearful mistake? Do you mean that I ought always to carry with me the sense of the burden?"

"I mean no such thing. You cannot think I so estimate the power of the sacrifice for sin. Ruth, I mean simply this: Nothing that you or I can do can possibly make one sin white, one mistake as though it had not been, give one moment of rest to a troubled heart. But the blood of Jesus Christ can do all this, and it does seem to me that you are ignoring it, and trying to work out your own rest."

Ruth was thoughtful; the look of vexation passed from her face.

"It may be so," she said, after a long silence. "I begin dimly to understand your meaning; but I don't know how to help it, how to feel differently. I surely ought to work, and surely I have a right to expect results."

"In one sense, yes, and in another I don't believe we have. I begin to feel more and more that you and I have got in some way to be made to understand that it is not our way, but the Lord's, that we must be willing to do, or, what is harder, to leave undone, exactly what he says, do or not do. I can't help feeling that you are planning in your own heart just what ought to be done, and then allowing yourself to feel almost indignant and ill-used because the work is not accomplished."

"I don't know how you have succeeded in seeing so deeply into my heart," Ruth said, with a wan smile. "I believe it is so, though I am not sure that I ever saw it before."

"I know why I see it; because it is my temptation as well as yours. You and I are both strong-willed; we have both been used to having our own way; we want to continue to have it; we want to do the right things provided we can have the choosing of them. Flossy, now, with her yielding nature, is willing to be led, as you and I are not. I have to fight against this tendency to carry out my plans and look for my results all the time. The fact is, Ruth, we must learn to work for Christ, and not set up business for ourselves, and still expect him to give the wages."

"Still," said Ruth, "I don't know. There seems to me to be nothing that I am not willing to do. I can't think of anything so hard that I would not unhesitatingly do it. I have changed wonderfully in that respect. A little while ago I was not willing to do anything. Now I am ready for anything that can be done."

"Are you?" Marion asked, with a visible shiver. "Ruth, are you sure? I can't say that; I want to say it, and I pray that I may be able; yet I can think of so many things that I might be called on to do that I shrink from. I have given up trying to do them, and fallen back on the promise, 'My grace is sufficient,' only praying, 'Lord, give me the needed grace for to-day; I will not reach out for to-morrow.' And, Ruth, I feel sure that neither you nor I must try to cover our past errors with present usefulness. Nothing but the blood of Christ can cover any wrong; we must rest on that, and on that alone."

"I believe I only understand in part what you mean. I don't see how you ever reached so far ahead of me in faith and in understanding. But I believe you are farther. Still, I can't think of anything that I am not willing and ready to do. I wish I might be tried; I wish He would give me some work, not of my own planning, that He might see how willing I am to do anything."

This was Ruth's last remark to her friend that evening. Flossy and Eurie both came in, and they went out to the meeting together, Ruth thinking still of the talk they had, and feeling sure that she could do whatever she found, and yet the Master was planning a way for her that very evening, the entrance to which she had never seen, never dreamed of as possible. So many ways he has for leading us! Blessed are those who have come to the experience that makes them willing to be led, even in darkness and blindness, trusting to the Sun of Righteousness for light.



CHAPTER XXIII.

THE STRANGE STORY.

JUDGE ERSKINE was in his library, pacing slowly back and forth, his forehead lined with heavy wrinkles, and his face wearing the expression of one involved in deep and troubled thought. He had just come home from the evening meeting, the last meeting of the series that had held the attention of so many hearts during four weeks of harvest time.

Judge Erskine had been a silent and attentive listener. All through the solemnities of the sermon, that seemed written for his sake, and to point right at him, he had never moved his keen, steady eyes away from the preacher's face. The text of that sermon he was not likely to forget. He had looked it up, and read it, with its connections, the moment he reached the privacy of his library.

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." That was the text. Judge Erskine said it over and over to his own soul. It was true; it fitted his condition as precisely as though it had been written for him. The harvest that would tell for eternity had been reaped all around him. He had looked, and listened, and resolved; and still he stood outside, ungarnered.

Moreover, one portion of the solemn sermon fitted him, also. When Dr. Dennis spoke of those who had let this season pass, unhelped, because they had an inner life that would not bear the gaze of the public, because they were not willing to drag out their past and cast it away from them, Judge Erskine had started and fixed a stern glance on the preacher.

Did he know his secret, that had been hidden away with such persistent care? What scoundrel could have enlightened him? This, only for a moment; then he settled back and realized his folly. Dr. Dennis knew nothing of himself or his past. Then came that other awfully solemn thought—there was One who did? Could it be that his voice had instructed the pastor what special point to make in that sermon, with such emphasis and power? Was the keen eye of the Eternal God pointing his finger, now, at him, and saying; "Thou art the man?"

He knew all this was true; he knew that the work of the past month had greatly moved him; he knew on the evening when the text had been, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian," that he had felt himself almost persuaded; he knew then, as he did now, that but one thing stood in the way of his entire persuasion.

As he walked up and down his library on this evening, he felt fully persuaded in his own mind that the time had arrived when he was being called on persistently for a decision. More than that, he felt that the decision was to be not only for time, but for eternity; that he must settle the question of his future then and there. He had locked the door after him, as he came into the library, with a sort of grim determination to settle the question before he stepped into the outside world again. How would it be settled? He did not know himself. He did not dare to think how it would end; he simply felt that the conflict must end.

Meantime, Ruth was up-stairs on her knees, praying for her father. Her heart felt very heavy. She had prayed for this father with all her soul; prayed, with what she felt was a degree of faith, that this evening, at the meeting, he might settle the question at issue, and settle it forever. She had felt a bitter, and almost an overwhelming, disappointment that the meeting closed and left him just where he had stood for a month.

There seemed nothing left to do. She had not spared her words, her entreaties. She had gotten bravely over her fears of approaching her father. But now it seemed to her that there was nothing left to say. She could still pray, and it was with a half-despairing cry that she fell on her knees, realizing in her very soul that only the power of God could convert her father. Into the midst of this longing, clinging cry for help there came a knock.

"Judge Erskine would like to have you come to the library for a few minutes, if you have not retired."

This was Katie Flinn's message. And Ruth, as she swiftly set about obeying the summons, said:

"Oh, Katie, pray for father!" for among those who, during the last few weeks, had learned to pray was Katie Flinn. Poor Katie, with the simple child-like faith and loving heart which she brought to the service, was destined to be a shining light in a dark world; and the glory thereof would sparkle forever in Flossy Shipley's crown.

Judge Erskine turned as his daughter opened the door, and motioned her to a seat. Then he continued his walk. Something in his face hushed into silence the words that were on her lips; but presently he stopped before her, and his voice startled her with its strangeness.

"My daughter, I have something to tell you, and something to ask you. I shall have to cause you great grief and shame, and I want to begin first by asking you to forgive your father."

Ruth felt her face growing pale. What could he mean? Had she not always looked up to him as above most men, even Christian men?—faultless in his business transactions, blameless in his life? She attempted to speak, and yet felt that she did not know what to say. Apparently he expected no word from her; for he went on hurriedly:

"You have, during these few weeks past, shown a sort of interest in me, that I never saw manifested before. I have reason to think that you have concluded, lately, that the most earnest desire you can have concerning your father, is to see him a Christian man? I can conscientiously tell you that I have felt the necessity for this experience as I never did before; that I realize its importance, and that I want it; yet there is something in the way, something that I must do, and confess, and abide by for the future, that I shrink from more on your account than my own. My child, do you want this thing enough to endure disgrace and humiliation, and a cross, heavy and hopeless, all your life?"

"Father," she said, half rising, and looking at him with a bewildered air, a vague doubt of his sanity, and a half fear of his presence, creeping into her heart, "what can you possibly mean? How can disgrace, or cross-bearing, or trouble of any sort, be connected with you? I cannot understand you."

"I know you can not. You think I am talking wildly, and you are half afraid of me; but I am perfectly sane. I wish, with all my soul, that a certain portion of my life could be called a wild dream of a disordered brain; but it is solemnly true. Ruth, if I come out before the world and avow myself a Christian man, with the determination to abide by the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, it involves my bringing to this house a woman who will have to be recognized as my wife, and a girl who will have to share with you as my daughter; a woman whom you will have to call mother, and a girl who is your sister. Are you equal to that?"

Every trace of blood left Ruth Erskine's face. Her father watched her narrowly, with his hand touching the bell-rope; it seemed as if she must faint; but she motioned his hand away.

"Don't ring," were the first words she said; "I am not going to faint. Father, tell me what you mean."

The actual avowal made, and the fact established that his daughter was able to bear it, and to still keep the story between themselves, seemed to quiet Judge Erskine. His intense and almost uncontrollable excitement subsided; the wild look in his eyes calmed, and, drawing a chair beside his daughter, he began in a low steady voice to tell her the strange story:

"Acts that involve a lifetime of trouble can be told in a few words, Ruth. When your mother died I was almost insane with grief; I can't tell you about that time; I was young and I was gay, and full of plans, and aims, and intentions, in all of which she had been involved. Then came the sudden blank, and it almost unsettled my reason. There was a young woman boarding at the same house where I went, who was kind to me, who befriended me in various ways, and tried to help me to endure my sorrow. She grew to be almost necessary to my endurance of myself. After a little I married her. I did not take this step till I found that my friendship with her, or, rather hers with me, was compromising her in the eyes of others. Let me hurry over it, Ruth. We lived together but a few weeks; then I was obliged to go abroad. Away from old scenes and associations, and plunged into business cares, I gradually recovered my usual tone of mind. But it was not till I came home again that I discovered what a fatal blunder I had made. That young woman had not a single idea in common with my plans and aims in life; she was ignorant, uncultured, and, it seemed to me, unendurable. How I ever allowed myself to be such a fool I do not know. But up to this time, I had at least, not been a villain. I didn't desert her, Ruth; I made a deliberate compromise with her; she was to take her child and go away, hundreds of miles away, where I would not be likely ever to come in contact with her again, and I was to take your mother's child and go where I pleased. Of course I was to support her, and I have done so ever since; that was eighteen years ago; she is still living, and the daughter is living. I have always been careful to keep them supplied with money; I have tried to have done for the girl what money could do; but I have never seen their faces since that time. Now, Ruth, you know the miserable story. There are a hundred details that I could give you, that perhaps would lead you to have more pity for your father, if it did not lead you to despise him more for his weakness. It is hard to be despised by one's child. I tell you truly, Ruth, that the bitterest of this bitterness is the thought of you."

The proud man's lip quivered and his voice trembled, just here.

Poor Ruth Erskine! "I am willing to do anything," she had said to Marion, not two hours before; and here was a thing, the possibility of which she had never dreamed, staring her in the face, waiting to be done, and she felt that she could not do it. Oh, why was it necessary? "Why not let everything be as it has been?" said that wily villain Satan, whispering in her ears. "They were false vows; they are better broken than kept. He does not love her, though he said he did. And how can we ever endure it, the shame, the disgrace, the horrid explanations, our name, the Erskine name, on everybody's lips, common loafers sneering at us? And then to have the family changed; myself to be only a back figure; a mother who is not, and never was my mother, taking my place; and the other one— Oh, it can not be possible that we must endure this! There must be some other way. They are doubtless contented, why could it not remain as it is?"

As if to answer her unspoken thoughts, Judge Erskine suddenly said:

"I have canvassed the entire subject in all its bearings, you may be sure of that. I am living a lie. I am saying my wife is dead, when a woman to whom before God I gave that name is living; I am saying that I have but one child, when there is another to whom I am as certainly father as I am to you. I am leaving them, nay, obliging them, to live a daily lie. I have assured myself to a certainty that one sin can never be atoned for by another sin; there is but one atonement; and the Source of all help says, 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins; and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' I know there is only one way of cleansing, daughter."

"Get thee behind me, Satan." The only perfect life gave that sentence once, not alone for Himself; thank God he has many a time since enabled his weak children of the flesh to repeat it in triumph. The grace came then and there to Ruth Erskine. She rose up from her chair, and going over to her father did what she had never remembered doing in her life before. She bent down and wound both arms around his neck and kissed him. Her voice was low and steady:

"Father, don't let this, or anything earthly, stand between you and Christ. You are not a sinner above all others. It is only the interposing hand of God that has kept me from taking sinful vows upon my lips. Let us do just what is right. Send for them to come home, and I will try to be a daughter and a sister; and I will stand by you, and help you in every possible way. There are harder trials than ours will be, after all."

It was his daughter who finally and utterly broke the proud, haughty heart. Judge Erskine bowed himself before her and sobbed like a child in the bitterness and the humiliation of his soul.

"God bless you," he said, at last, in broken utterance. "There is an Almighty Saviour; I need nothing more than your words to convince me of the truth of that. If love to him can lead your heart to such forgiveness as this, what must his forgiveness be? Ruth, you have saved my soul; I will give up the struggle; I have tried to fight it out; I have tried to say that I could not; for my own sake, and for my own name, it seemed impossible. Then when I got beyond that, and felt that for myself, if I could have rest in the love of Christ, and could feel that he forgave me, I cared for nothing else. Then I said, 'I can not do this, for my child's sake; I can never plunge her into this depth of sin and shame.' Then, my daughter, there came to me a message from God, and of all those that could come to a miserable man like me, it was this: 'He that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.' Then I saw that I must be willing even to lose your love, to make you despise me; and that was the bitterest cup of all. But, thank God, he has spared me this. God bless you, my daughter."

There was something almost terrible to Ruth, in seeing her cold, calm father so moved. She had never realized what awfully solemn things tears were till she saw them on her father's cheeks, and felt them falling hot on her head, from eyes so unused to weeping. The kisses she gave him were very soft and clinging—full of tender, soothing touches. Then father and daughter knelt together, and the long, long struggle with sin and pride and silence was concluded.

Do you think this was a lasting victory for Ruth Erskine? You do not understand the power of "that old serpent, the Devil," if you can not think how he came to her again and again in the silence of her own room, even into the midst of her rejoicings over the newly-washed soul, even while the joy in heaven among the angels was still ringing out over her father, came whispering to her heart to say:

"Oh, I can't, I can't. Think of it! The Erskines! How can we endure it? Is it possible that we must? Perhaps the woman would rather live as she is."

As if that had anything to do with the question of right and wrong! The very next instant Ruth curled her lip sneeringly over her own folly. She never forgot that night, nor how the conflict waged. She tried to imagine herself saying "mother" to one who really had a nominal right to the title. Not that it was an unfamiliar word to her. The old aunt who had occupied the mother's place in the household since Ruth was a wee creature of two years, she had learned almost from the instincts of childhood to call "mamma." And as she grew older and was unused to any other name for Mrs. Wheeler, the widowed aunt, she toned it into the familiar and comfortable word "mother," and had always spoken to and of her in that name.

Yet she knew very well how little the title meant to her. She had loved this old lady with a sort of pitying, patronizing love, realizing even very early in her life that she, herself, had more self-reliance, more executive ability, in her little finger, than was spread all over the placid lady who early learned that "Ruthie" was to do precisely as she pleased.

Such a cipher was this same old lady in the household, that when a long lost son appeared on the surface, during Ruth's absence at Chautauqua, proving, sturdy old Californian as he was, to have a home and place for his mother, and a heart to take her with him, her departure caused scarcely a ripple in the well-ordered household of the Erskines.

She had been its nominal head for eighteen years, but the real head who was absent at Chautauqua, had three or four perfectly trained servants, who knew their young mistress' will so well, that they could execute it in her absence as well as when she was present.

So when Ruth took, in the eyes of everybody, the position that had really been hers so long, it made no sort of change in her plans or ways. And beyond a certain lingering tenderness when she spoke of her by that familiar title, "mother," there was no indication that the woman who had had so constant and intimate connection with her life was remembered.

But this name applied to another, and that other, one whom she had never seen in her life, and who yet was actually to occupy the position of head of the household—her father's wife, in the eyes of society her mother, spoken of as such, herself asked, "How is your mother?" or "What does your mother think of this?" Would anyone dare to use that name to her? No one had so spoken of her aunt. They all knew she was only her aunt, though she chose to pet her by the use of that tender name. Could she bear all these things and a hundred others that would come up?

"Marion," she said the next day as she chanced to meet that young lady on the street, "I have something to tell you. I want to call on you to witness that I shall never again be guilty of that vainglorious absurdity of saying that I am ready for anything. One can never know whether this is true or not; at least I am sure I never can. What I am to say in the future is simply, 'Lord, make me willing to do what there is for me to do this day.' Remember that in a few days you will understand what I mean."

Then she went on. Marion pondered over it. She did not understand it at all. What trial could have come to Ruth that had brought her the knowledge of the weakness of her own heart? She wondered if it had also brought her peace.



CHAPTER XXIV.

LONELINESS.

I SUPPOSE there has never been an earnest worker, an enthusiast on any subject, in this changeful world, but has been a victim at some time to the dismalness of a reaction. The most forlorn little victim that could be imagined was Flossy Shipley on that evening after the meetings, on which her soul had fed so long, were closed.

Everything in nature and in circumstances conspired to sink her into her desolate mood. In the first place it was raining. Now a rain closing in upon a warm and dusty summer day is a positive delight; one can listen to the pattering drops with a sense of eager satisfaction but a rain in midwinter, after a day of sunless mist and fog, almost amounting to rain, when the streets are that mixture of snow and water that can be known only as "slush," when every opening of a door sends in gusts of damp air that chill to one's very bones, this weather is a trial; at least it seemed such to poor little Flossy.

She shivered over the fire in the coal grate. It glowed brightly, and the room was warm and bright, yet to Flossy there was a sense of chill in everything. She was all alone; and the circumstances connected with that loneliness were not calculated to brighten the evening for her. The entire family had gone out to a party, not one of those quiet little entertainments which people had been so careful to explain and apologize for during the meetings, but a grand display of toilet and supper, and expenditure of all kinds.

Mrs. Westervelt, the hostess, being at all times noted for the display of her entertainments, had lavished more than the usual amount of time and money on the present ones, and waited for the meetings to close with the most exemplary patience, in order that she might gain a very few among her guests from those who felt the impropriety of mixing things too much.

To be sure, the society in general which was admitted to Mrs. Westervelt's parlors was not from that class who had any scruples as to what time they attended parties, but there were two or three notable exceptions, and those the lady had been anxious to claim.

Prominent among them had been the Erskines, it never seeming to occur to Mrs. Westervelt's brains that there could be other excuse found for not accepting her invitation save the meetings that Ruth had taken to attending in such a frantic manner. Let me say, in passing, that neither Ruth Erskine nor her father honored the invitation; they had other matters to attend to.

Meantime, Flossy Shipley, had utterly disgusted her mother, and almost offended her father, by giving a peremptory and persistent refusal. Such a storm of talk as there had been over this matter almost exhausted the strength of poor little Flossy, who did not like argument, and who yet could persist in a most unaccountable firm manner when occasion required.

"Such an absurd idea!" her sister Kitty said, flashing contemptuous eyes on her. "I wonder what you think is going to become of you, Flossy? Do you mean to mope at home all the rest of the winter? I assure you that Mrs. Westervelt is not the only one who intends to give a party. We are going to have an unusually gay season to revive us after so much bell-tolling. Don't you mean to appear anywhere? You might as well retire into a convent at once, if that is the case."

"People will be saying of me, as they do of Mrs. Treslam, soon, that I do not allow you to appear in society while Kitty is still a young lady." This Mrs. Shipley said, and her tone, if not as sharp as Kitty's, had a note of grievance in it that was hard to bear.

Then Charlie had taken up the theme: "What is the use in turning mope, Sis? I'm sure you can be as good as you like, and go to a party occasionally."

"I don't mean to mope, Charlie," Flossy said, trying to speak cheerfully, but there were tears in her eyes and a tremulous sound in her voice. "I am truly happier at home than I am at those places; I don't like to go. It is not entirely because I feel I ought not; it is because I don't want to."

"She has risen above such follies," Kitty said, and it is impossible to tell you what a disagreeable inflection there was to her voice. "Mother, I am sorry that the poor child has to associate with such volatile creatures as you and I. She ought to have some kindred spirit."

"I am sure I don't know where she will find any," Mrs. Shipley said, with a sigh, "outside of that trio of girls, who among them have contrived to make a perfect little slave of you. I am sure I don't know who has any influence over you. I used to think you regarded your mother's wishes a trifle, but I find I am mistaken."

"Oh, mother!" Flossy said, and this time the tears began to fall, "why will you talk so? I am sure I try to please you in every way that I can. I did not know that you cared to have me go to parties, unless I wanted to go."

Either the tears or something else made her brother indignant. "What a scene about nothing," he said, irritably. "Why can't you let Flossy go to parties or not, as she pleases? Parties are not such delightful institutions that she need be expected to be in love with them. I should be delighted if I never had to appear at another. Why not let people have their fun in this world where they choose to find it? If Flossy has lately discovered that hers can only be found in prayer-meeting, I am sure it is a harmless enough diversion while the fit lasts."

Mrs. Shipley laughed. Her son could nearly always put her into good humor. Besides, she didn't like to see tears on her baby's face; that was her pet name for Flossy.

"Oh, I don't know that it makes any serious difference," she said; "not enough to spoil your eyes over, Flossy. I don't want you to go out with us unless you want to; only it is rather embarrassing to be constantly arranging regrets for you. Besides, I don't see what it is all coming to. You will be a moping, forsaken creature; old before your time, if this continues."

As for Mr. Shipley, he maintained a haughty silence, neither expressing an opinion on that subject nor on any other, which would involve him in a conversation with Flossy. She knew that he was more seriously displeased with her than were any of the others; not so much about the parties as about other and graver matters.

Col. Baker was the son of Mr. Shipley's old friend. For this reason, and for several others, Mr. Shipley was very fond of him. It had long been in accordance with his plans, that Flossy should become, at some future time, Mrs. Col. Baker, and that the estates of the two families should be thus united.

While he was not at all the sort of man who would have interfered to push such an arrangement against the preferences of the parties concerned, he had looked on with great and increasing satisfaction, while the plans of the young people evidently tended strongly in that direction.

That his daughter, after an absence from home of only two weeks, should have come in contact with that which seemed to change all her tastes and views and plans, in regard to other matters, but which had actually caused her to turn, with a steady and increasing determination, away from the friend who had been her acknowledged protector and attendant ever since she was a child, was a matter that he did not understand nor approve.

"I am not a tyrant," he would say sullenly, when Mrs. Shipley and himself talked the matter over; when she, with the characteristics of a mother, even while her child annoyed and vexed her, yet struggled to speak a word for her when a third person came in to blame. "I never ordered Flossy to be so exceedingly intimate with Col. Baker that their names have been coupled together ever since she was a baby. I never insisted on her accepting his attentions on all occasions. It was her own free will. I own that I was pleased with the inclination she displayed, and did what I could to make the way pleasant for her, but the thing is not of my planning. What I am displeased with is this sudden change. There is no reason for it and no sense in it. It is just a mere baby performance, a girlish freak, very unpleasant for him and very disagreeable for us. The child ought not to be upheld in it."

So they did their best not to uphold her, and succeeded among them in making her life very disagreeable to her.

The matter had culminated on the evening before the party in question. Col. Baker, despite the persistent and patient efforts on Flossy's part to show him the folly of his course, had insisted on obliging her to speak a decided negative to his earnestly pressed question. The result was, an unusually unpleasant domestic scene, and a general air of gloom and unhappiness.

Mr. Shipley had not ordered his daughter to marry Col. Baker. He would have been shocked beyond measure at such a proceeding on the part of a father. But he made her so unhappy, with a sense of his disappointment and disapproval, that more than once she sighed wearily, and wished in her sad little heart that all this living was over.

Finally, they all went off to Mrs. Westervelt's party, and left her alone. She had never felt so much alone in her life. The blessed meetings, which had been such a wealth of delight and helpfulness to her heart, were closed. The sweet, and holy, and elevating influences that had surrounded her outer life for so long were withdrawn. She missed them bitterly.

It almost seemed to her as if everything were withdrawn from her. Father, and mother, sister, and even her warm-hearted brother, were all more or less annoyed at her course. Charlie had been betrayed into more positive sharpness than this favorite sister had ever felt from him before. He felt that his friend Col. Baker had been ill-treated.

There was a very sore spot about this matter for Flossy. The truth was, she could not help seeing that in a sense her father was right; she had brought it on herself; not lately, not since her utter change of views and aims, but long before that. With what satisfaction had she allowed her name to be coupled familiarly with that of Col. Baker; how much she had enjoyed his exclusive attentions; not that she really and heartily liked him, with a liking that made her willing to think of him as belonging to her forever; she had chosen, rather, not to allow herself to think of any such time; she had contented herself with saying that she was too young to think of such things; that she was not obliged to settle that question till the time came.

But, mind you, all the time she chose to allow, and enjoy, and encourage by her smiles and her evident pleasure in them, very special attentions, that gave other people liberty to speak of them almost as one. To call it by a very plain name, which Flossy hated, and which made her cheek glow as she forced herself to say it of herself, she had been flirting with Col. Baker. It isn't a nice word; I don't wonder that she hated it. Yet so long as young ladies continue to be guilty of the sort of conduct that can only be described by that unpleasant and coarse sounding word, I am afraid it will be used.

All that was over now, at least it was over as much as Flossy could make it; but there remained an uncomfortable sense that she had wronged a man who honestly loved her; not intentionally—no decent woman does that—but thoughtlessly; so many silly girls do that. She had lost her influence over him now; rather, she had been obliged to put herself in a position to lose all influence. She might have been his true, faithful friend now, and helped him up to a higher manhood, only by her former folly she had put it out of her power. These were not pleasant reflections. Then there was no denying that she felt very desolate.

"A forlorn friendless creature," her mother had said she would become, or words to that effect. The thought lingered with her. She looked over her list of friends; there was always those three girls, growing dearer by every day of association; yet their lives necessarily ran much apart; it would naturally grow more and more so as the future came to them. Then, too, she was equally intimate with each of them; they were all equally dear to her.

Now a woman can not have three friends who shall all fill that one place in her heart which she finds. She thought of her home ties; strong they certainly were; growing stronger every day. There were few things that she did not feel willing to do for her father; but the one thing that he wanted just now was that she should marry Col. Baker; she could not do that even to please him.

He would recover from that state of feeling, of course; but would not other kindred states of feeling constantly arise, both with him and with her mother? Could she not foresee a constant difference of opinion on almost every imaginable topic? Then there was her sister Kitty. Could any two lives run more widely apart than hers and Kitty's were likely to? Had they a single taste in common?

As for Charlie, Flossy turned from that subject; it was too sore and too tender a spot to be probed. She trembled for Charlie; he was walking in slippery places; the descent was growing easier; she felt that rather than saw it; and, she felt, too, that his friend Col. Baker was the leader; and she felt, too, that her intimacy with Col. Baker had greatly strengthened his.

No wonder that the spot was a sore one. Grouping all these things together and brooding over them, with no sound breaking the silence save the ceaseless drip, drip of the rain, and the whirls of defiant wind, sitting there in her loneliness, the large arm-chair in which she crouched being drawn up before that glowing fire, is it any wonder that the firelight revealed the fact that great silent tears were slowly following each other down Flossy's round smooth cheek? She felt like a pitiful, lonely, forsaken baby.

It was not that she was utterly miserable; she recognized even then the thought that she had an almighty, everlasting, unchanging Friend. She rejoiced even then at the thought, not as she might have rejoiced, not as it was her privilege to do, but I mean she knew that all these trials, and mistakes, and burdens, were but for a moment. She knew that to-morrow, when the sun shone again, she would be able to come out from behind these clouds and grasp some of the brightness of her life, and endure with patience the little annoyances that were to be borne; remembering that she was still very young, and that there was a chance for a great deal of brightness for her, even on this side.

But, in the meantime, her intensely human heart craved human companionship and sympathy; craved it to such a degree, that if it had not been for the rain and the darkness, and the growing lateness of the hour, she would have gone out then after one of those three girls to share her mood with her.

Into the midst of this state of dismal journeying into the valley of gloom there pealed the sound of the bell. It did not startle her; the callers in their circle would be sure to be engaged at the party, and to suppose that she was. Besides, it was hardly an evening for ordinary callers—something as important as a party was, would be expected to call out people to-night. It was some one with a business message for father, she presumed; and she did not arouse from her curled-up position among the cushions of that great chair.

Half listening, half giving attention to her own thoughts, she was conscious that a servant came to answer the bell, that the front door opened and shut, that there was a question asked and answered in the hall. Then she gave over attending to the matter. If she were needed the girl knew she was in the library. Yes, she was to be summoned for something, to receive the message probably, for the library door quietly unclosed.

"What is it, Katie?" she asked, in a sort of muffled undertone, to hide the traces of disturbance in her voice, and not turning her head in that direction; she knew there were tears on her cheeks.

"Suppose it should not be Katie, may any one else come in and tell you what it is?" This was the sentence wherewith she was answered. What a sudden springing up there was from that chair! Even the tears were forgotten; and what a singular ring there was to Flossy's voice as she whirled round to full view of the intruder, and said, "Oh, Mr. Roberts!"

Now, dear friends of this little lonely Flossy, are you so stupid that you need to be told that in less than half an hour from that moment she believed that there could never again come to her an absolutely lonely hour? That whatever might come between them, whether of life or of death, there would be that for each to remember that would make it impossible ever to be desolate again. For there is no desolation of heart to those who part at night to meet again in the morning; there may be loneliness and a reaching out after, and sometimes an unutterable longing for the morning, but to those who are sure, sure beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the eternal morning will dawn, and dawn for them, there is never again a desolation.



CHAPTER XXV.

THE ADDED NAME.

THAT same evening was fraught with memorable associations to others beside Flossy Shipley. It began in gloom and unusual depression even to bright-faced Marion. The day had been a hard one in school. Those of the scholars who had been constant attendants at the meetings felt the inevitable sense of loneliness and loss that must follow the close of such unusual means of help.

I have actually heard some Christian people advance this fact, that there was a reaction of loneliness after such meetings closed, as a good reason why they were unwise efforts, demoralizing in their results. It is a curious fact, that such reasoners are never found to advocate the entire separation of family friends on the plea that a reunion followed by a separation is demoralizing in its results because it leaves an added sense of loneliness.

It is, perhaps, to be questioned whether loneliness is, after all, demoralizing in its effects. Be that as it may, many of the scholars felt it. Then there were some among their number who had persistently shunned the meetings and their influences, who, now that the opportunity was passed, felt those stings of conscience that are sure to follow enlightened minds, who have persisted in going a wrong road.

Also there were those who had been almost persuaded, and who yet, so far as their salvation was concerned, were no nearer it that day than though they had never thought of the matter, for almost never saves a soul. All these influences combined served to make depression the predominant feeling. Marion struggled with it, and tried to be cheerful before her pupils, but sank into gravity and unusual sadness at every interval between the busy hours of the day.

Late in the afternoon she had a conversation with one of the girls which did not serve to encourage her heart. It was the drawing hour. Large numbers of the young ladies in her room had gone to the studio with the drawing master; those few who remained were engaged in copying their exercises for the next morning's class. Marion was at leisure, her only duty being to render assistance in the matter of copying wherever a raised hand indicated that help was needed.

Answering one of these calls she found herself at the extreme end of the large room, quite near to Grace Dennis' desk, and in passing she noticed that Gracie, while her book was before her and her pen in hand, was not writing at all, but that her left hand was shading a face that looked sad and pale, and covering eyes that might have tears in them. After fulfilling her duty to the needy scholar she turned back to Grace.

"What is it?" she said, softly, taking the vacant seat by Grace's side, and touching tenderly the crown of hair that covered the drooping head. Grace looked up quickly with a gleam of sunshine, through which shone a tear.

"It is a fit of the blues, I am almost afraid. I am very much ashamed of myself; I don't feel so very often, Miss Wilbur. I think the feeling must be what the girls call blues; I am not sure."

"Do you feel in any degree sure what has caused such a remarkable disease to attack you?" Marion asked, in a low, tender, yet cheery and a half-amused tone.

The words made Gracie laugh, but the tenderness in the tone seemed to start another tear.

"You will be amused at me, Miss Wilbur, or ashamed of me, I don't know which. I am ashamed of myself, but I do feel so forlorn and lonely."

"Lonely!" Marion echoed, with a little start. She realized that she herself knew in its fulness what that feeling was, but for Gracie Dennis, treasured as she was in an atmosphere of fatherly love, it was hard to understand it. "If I had my dear father I don't think I should feel lonely," she said gently.

"I know," Grace answered; "he is the dearest father a girl ever had, but there is only a little bit of him mine, Miss Wilbur. I don't mean that either; I am not selfish. I know he loves me with all his heart, but I mean his time is so very much occupied that he can only give me very little bits now and then. It has to be so; it is not his fault. I would not have him any different, even in this; but then if I had a sister, don't you see how different it would be? or even a brother, or," and here Gracie's head dropped low, and her voice quivered. "Miss Wilbur, if I had a mother, one who loved me, and would sympathize with me and help me, I think I would be the happiest girl in all the world."

There was every appearance that, with a few more words of tender sympathy, this young girl would lose all her self-control and be that which she so much shrank from, an object of general wonderment and conversation. Marion felt that she must bestow her sympathy sparingly.

"I dare say you would give yourself over to a hearty struggle not to hate her outright," she said, in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone. The sobs which were shaking the young girl beside her were suddenly checked. Presently Gracie looked up, a gleam half of mirth, half of defiance in her handsome eyes. "I mean a real mother," she said.

"Haven't you one? Doesn't she love her darling and watch over and wait for her coming?" The voice had taken on its tenderness again. Then, after a moment, Marion added:

"It is hard to realize, I know, but I believe it, and I look toward that thought with all my soul. You remember, Gracie, that I have nothing but that to feed on, no earthly friend to help me realize it."

Grace stole a soft hand into her teacher's. "I wish you would love me very much," she said, brightly. "I wish you would let me love you. Do you know you help me every time you speak to me? and you do it in such strange ways, not at all in the direction that I am looking for help. I do thank you so much."

"Then suppose you prove it to me, by showing what an immaculate copy of your exercise you can hand in to-morrow. Don't you know it is by just such common-place matters as that, that people are permitted to show their love and gratitude and all those delightful things? That is what glorifies work."

Another clinging pressure of hands and teacher and pupil went about their duties. But though Marion had helped Gracie she had not helped herself, except that in a tired sort of way she realized that it was a great pleasure to be able to help anybody—most of all, this favorite pupil. Still the dreariness did not lessen. It went home with her to her dingy boarding-house, followed her to the gloomy dining-room and the uninviting supper-table.

The most that was the trouble with Marion Wilbur was, that she was tired in body and brain. If people only realized it, a great many mental troubles and trials result from overworked bodies and nerves. Still, it must be confessed that there were few, if any, outside influences that were calculated to cheer Marion Wilbur's life.

You are to remember how very much alone she was. There were no letters to be watched for in the daily mails, no hopeful looking forward if one failed to come, no cheery saying to one's heart, "Never mind, it will surely come to-morrow." This state is infinitely better than the hopeless glance one bestows upon the postman, realizing he is nothing to them.

No friends—father and mother gone so long ago! That of one there was no recollection at all, of the other, tender childhood memories, sweet and lasting and incomparably precious, but only memories. No sister, no brother, no cousins that had taken the place to her of sisters; only that old uncle and aunt, who were such staid and common and plodding people, that sometimes the very thought of them tired this girl so full of life and energy.

Girl I call her, but she had passed the days of her girlhood. Few knew it; it was wonderful how young and fresh her heart had kept. That being the case, of course her face had taken the same impress. It was hard for Ruth Erskine to realize that her friend Marion was really thirteen years older than herself. There were times when Marion herself felt younger than Ruth did.

But the years were there, and in her times of depression, Marion realized it. So many of them recorded, and yet no friends to whom she had a right, feeling sure that nothing in human experience this side of death would be likely to come in and take her away from them. The very supper-table at that boarding-house was sufficient to add to her sense of desolation.

It is a pitiful fact that we are such dependent creatures that even the crooked laying of a cloth, and the coffee-stains and milk-stains and gravy-stains thereon, can add to our sense of friendlessness. Then, what is there particularly consoling or cheering in a cup of weak tea and a bit of bread a trifle sour, spread over by butter more than a trifle strong; even though it is helped down by some very dry bits of chipped beef? This was Marion's supper.

The boarders were, some of them, cross, some of them simply silent and hurried, all of them damp, for they were every one workers out in the damp, dreary world; the most of them, in fact, I may say all of them, were very tired; yet many of them had work to do that very evening. Marion ate her supper in silence, too; at least she bit at her bread and tried to swallow her simpering tea.

When her heart was bright and her plans for the evening definite and satisfactory, she could manage the sour bread and strong butter even, with something like a relish, but there was no use in trying them to-night. She even tormented herself with the planning of a dainty supper, accompanied by exquisite table arrangements such as she would manage for a sister, say, if she had one—a sister who had been in school all day and was wet and hungry and tired, if she had the room, and the table, and the china, and the materials out of which to construct the supper. She was reasonable enough to see that there were many ifs in the way, but the picture did not make the present supper relish.

She struggled to rally her weary powers. She asked the clerk next her if it had been a busy day, and she told the sewing-girl at her left about a lovely bouquet of flowers that one of the girls brought to school, and that she had meant to bring home to her, if it was presented. To be sure it was not. But the intention was the same, and the heart of the sewing-girl was cheered.

Finally Marion gave over trying to swallow the supper, and assuring herself with the determination to go early to bed, and so escape faintness, she went up three flights of stairs to her room.

"When I am rich and a woman of leisure, I will build a house that shall have pleasant rooms and good bread and butter, and I will board school-teachers and sewing-girls and clerks for a song." This she said aloud.

Then she set about making a bit of blaze, or a great deal of smoke in the little imp of a stove. The stove was small and cracked and rusty, and could smoke like a furnace. What a contrast to the glowing coal-grate where Flossy at this hour toasted her pretty cheeks. Yet Marion, in her way, was less dismal than Flossy in hers.

It was not in Marion's nature to shed any tears; instead, she hummed a few notes of a glorious old tune triumphant in every note, trying this to rob herself of gloom and cheat herself into the belief that she was not very lonely, and that her life did not stretch out before her as a desolate thing. She did not mean to give herself up to glooming, though she did hover over the little stove and lean her cheek on her hand and look at nothing in particular for a few minutes. What she said when she rallied from the silence was simply:

"What an abominable smoke you can make to be sure, Marion Wilbur, when you try. Hardly any one can compete with you in that line, at least."

Then she drew her school reports toward her, intending to make them out for the week thus far, but she scribbled on the fly-leaf with her pencil instead. She wrote her own name, "Marion J. Wilbur," a pretty enough name. She smiled tenderly over the initial of "J"—nobody knew what that was for.

Suppose the girls knew that it stood for "Josiah," her father's name; that he had named her, after the mother was buried, Marion—that after the mother, Josiah—that after the father, Wilbur—the dear name that belonged to them both; in this way fancying in his gentle heart that he linked this child to them both in a way that would be dear to her to remember.

It was dear; she loved him for it; she thoroughly understood the feeling, but hardly any one else would. So she thought she had never given them a chance to smile over the queer name her father had given. She could smile herself, but she wanted no one else to do so.

Then she wrote "Grace L. Dennis." What a pretty name that was. She knew what the "L" was for—Lawrence, the family name—Grace's mother's name. Her mother, too, had died when she was a wee baby. Gracie remembered her, though, and by that memory so much more did she miss her.

Marion knew how that was by her remembrance of her father. All the same she would not have that blotted out, by so much richer was Gracie than herself, and then that living, loving father. Marion smiled over the folly of Grace Dennis considering her life a lonely one. "Yet, I presume she feels it, poor darling," she said aloud, and with a sigh. It was true that every heart knew its own bitterness.

Then she said, "I really must go to work at these reports. I wonder what the girls are doing this evening? Eurie is nursing her mother, I suppose. Blessed Eurie! mother and father both within the fold, brought there by Eurie's faithful life. Mrs. Mitchell told me so, herself. What a sparkle that will make in Eurie's crown. I wonder what Ruth meant this morning? Poor child! she has trouble too; different from mine. Why as to that, I really haven't any. Ruth ought to 'count her marcies,' though, as old Dinah says. She has a great deal that I haven't. Yes, indeed, she has! I suppose little Flossy is going through tribulation over that tiresome party. I wonder why one-half of the world have to exist by tormenting the other half? Now, Marion Wilbur, stop scribbling names and go to work."

Steady scratching from the old steel pen a few minutes, then a knock and a message: "Dr. Dennis wanted to see her a few minutes, if she had leisure."

"Dr. Dennis!" she said, rising quickly and pushing away her papers. "Oh, dear me! where is that class-book of mine? He wants those names, I dare say, and I haven't them ready. I might have been copying them while I was mooning my time away here."

The first words she said to him as she went down to the stuffy boarding-house parlor were, "I haven't them ready, Dr. Dennis; I'm real sorry, and it's my fault, too. I had time to copy them, and I just didn't do it."

"I haven't come for them," he said smiling and holding out his hand! "How do you do?"

"Oh, quite well. Didn't you come for them? I am glad, for I felt ashamed. Dr. Dennis, don't you see how well one woman can do the work of twenty? Don't you like the way the primary class is managed? Oh, by the way, you want that book, don't you? I meant to send it home by Gracie."

"I don't want it," he said, laughing this time. "Are you resolved that I may not call on you without a good and tangible reason? If that be the case, I certainly have one. I want you to sit down here, while I tell you all about it."

"I'm not in the mood for a scolding," she said, trying to speak gayly, though there was a curious little tremble to her voice. "I have been away down in the valley of gloom to-day. I believe I am a little demoralized. Dr. Dennis, I think I need a prayer-meeting every evening; I could be happier then, I know."

"A Christian ought to be able to have one," he said, quickly. "Two souls ought to be able to come together in communion with the Master every evening. There is a great deal of wasted happiness in this world. I want to talk to you about that very thing."

Dr. Dennis was not given to making long calls on his parishioners; there were too many of them, and he had too little time; but he made an unprecedentedly long one on Marion Wilbur.

When she went back to her room that night, the fire was gone out utterly; not even a smoke remained. She lighted her smoky little lamp—there was no gas in the third story—and looked at her watch with an amazed air; she had not imagined that it could be nearly 11 o'clock! Then she pushed the reports into a drawer and turned the key; no use to attempt reports for that evening. As she picked up her class-book, the scribbling on the fly-leaf caught her eye again. She smiled a rare, rich, happy smile; then swiftly she drew her pencil and added one more name to the line. "Marion Wilbur—Marion J. Wilbur," it read. There was just room on the line for another word; then it read—"Marion J. Wilbur Dennis!" To be sure, she took her rubber quickly from her pocket and obliterated every trace of that last. But what of it? There are words and deeds that can not so easily be obliterated; and Marion, as she laid her grateful head on her fluffy little pillow that night, was thankful it was so, and felt no desire to erase them.

Desolate? Not she; God was very gracious. The brightness that she felt sure she could throw around some lives, she knew would have a reflex brightness for her. Then, queerly enough, the very next thing she thought of, was that dainty supper she planned for herself, that she could have prepared for a school-teacher, wet, hungry and tired. Why not for a school-girl? If she had no sister to do it for, why not for a daughter? "Dear little Gracie!" she said. Then she went to sleep.

Meantime, during that eventful evening Ruth sat in her room, alone, busy with grave and solemn thoughts. Her father was already many miles away. He had gone to see his wife and daughter. Eurie at that same hour was bending anxiously over a sick mother, trying to catch the feebly-whispered direction, with such a heavy, heavy pain at her heart. But the same patient, wise, all-powerful Father was watching over and directing the ways of each of his four girls.



CHAPTER XXVI.

LEARNERS.

ALTHOUGH the sense of desolation was gone from Flossy Shipley, she was not without something to be troubled over. As to that, when one sets out to be troubled, one can nearly always find an excuse.

Flossy lay awake over hers for hours that night. Mr. Roberts was given to keeping more proper hours than those in which party goers indulge. So it happened that the library was vacant when the family returned, the gas turned low, and the grate carefully supplied with coal to give them a warm greeting. But the easy chairs before the bright fire told no tales of all the pleasant and helpful words that had been spoken there that evening.

So far as the family knew, Flossy had spent her evening in solitude. But they would come to know it; would have to be introduced to Mr. Roberts; there would have to be a prompt explanation of their interest in each other. Flossy meant to have no delays, nor chances for mistakes, this time.

The momentous question was, how would her father receive the message, what word would he have for the stranger? She could almost have wished that his coming had been delayed for a few weeks more, until the sore sullen feeling over disappointed plans had had time to quiet. But as it was, since Mr. Roberts was to be in the city and she was to see him, she would have no pretense of his being merely a chance acquaintance of her Chautauqua life, making friendly calls; at least her father should know that they both meant more than that. Whether he would ignore the claims they made, and choose to treat Mr. Roberts as a stranger, Flossy did not know; it seemed more than likely that he would.

As to that, she could not help owning to herself that he would have very plausible reasons for so doing. What was she supposed to know about Mr. Evan Roberts? Closely questioned, she would have to admit that she had never heard of his existence till those golden Chautauqua days; that although she walked and talked much with him during those two weeks, there had been so much to talk about, such vital interests that pressed upon them, so many things for her to learn, that they had spent no time at all in talking about each other's past.

She remembered now, that strangely enough she had no idea even at this moment what his business was, except that from some casual remark she judged that he was familiar with mercantile life; he might have some money or he might be very poor, she had not the least idea which it was; he might be of an old and honored family, or his father might have been a blacksmith, and his mother even now a washer-woman. She admitted to herself that she knew nothing at all about it; and she was obliged also to admit that so far as she herself was concerned she did not care.

But Mr. Shipley was very different. Most assuredly he would care. How could he understand why she should be able to feel such perfect trust in this stranger? If she should try to tell him of those wonderful prayers she had heard from Mr. Robert's lips, what would such evidence be to him? If she should try to tell him how by this man, she had been led into the light of love and trust that glowed brighter and stronger with every day, how little information it would give him! What an utter mystery would such language be to him!

As she thought of all these puzzling things, what wonder that she turned her pillow many times in search of a spot to rest, and gave a great many long-drawn sighs?

It so happened that Mr. Roberts, while he had not troubled himself to enlighten Flossy as to his position, and prospects, had by no means supposed that her father would be as indifferent to these small matters as she was; he had come armed with credentials, and introductions. Overwhelming ones they were to Mr. Shipley. He waited for no introductions nor explanations to come from Flossy.

Instead, the very next morning, at the earliest hour that business etiquette would allow, he sought Mr. Shipley at his business office, presented his card and letters, and made known his desire to transact mercantile business with him in the name of his firm. And the rich man, Mr. Shipley, arose and bowed before him.

Was he not a representative? nay, a junior partner of the firm of Bostwick, Smythe, Roberts & Co.? Names world-renowned among mercantile men. Could human ambition reach higher than to have flattering offers of business from that great House? than to be actually sought out by this young partner, singled from among all the merchant princes of the city, as the one to be taken into business confidence!

Mr. Shipley's ambitious dreams reached no more dizzy height than this.

Mr. Roberts was invited, urged to accept the hospitalities of his home, to make the acquaintance of his family, to command his horses, his carriage, his servants, in short, to become one of their family so long as he could be prevailed upon to remain in the city.

But Mr. Roberts had more communications to make; he frankly announced that he was already acquainted with his family, at least with that portion of it, which was of enough importance to include all the rest; of course, he did not say this to the father, and yet his manner implied it, as he meant it should. Mr. Roberts was frank by nature; he no more believed in concealments of any sort, than did Flossy.

Then and there, he told the story that the two easy chairs in the library knew about. He even apologized earnestly for seeking the daughter first. It had not been his intention; he had meant to call on the family; but they were absent, and he found Miss Flossy alone. And—well, if Mr. Shipley had been particular, as assuredly he would have been, if Mr. Roberts had not been of the firm of Bostwick, Smythe, Roberts & Co. it might have been embarrassing to have explained the very precipitate result of his call.

But, as it was, Mr. Shipley was so amazed and so bewildered, and so overwhelmed, with delighted pride, that he would almost have forgiven the announcement that Mr. Roberts was already his son-in-law, without leave or license from him. As it was, all the caution had to be on Mr. Robert's side. He asked that letters might be sent to his brother-in-law, Mr. Smythe, to his father, Mr. James Roberts, proving, not his financial standing, the unmistakable knowledge of the private affairs of the firm that had established him there, but of his moral character, and his standing in the Christian world.

Do you believe that Mr. Shipley felt the necessity? Not he! Had he not been willing more than that, anxious that his daughter's fortune should be linked with Col. Baker's? Did he not know what was Col. Baker's standing in the moral and Christian world? After all, is it any wonder, when there are such fathers that many daughters make shipwreck of their lives? As for Mr. Roberts, he was almost indignant:

"The man would actually sell her, if by that means he could be recognized in business by our house."

If it had been any other young man than himself, who was in question, how his indignation would have blazed at such proceedings! But since it was himself, he decided to accept the situation.

As for Flossy, she did not look at the matter in that light; when she found that all the perplexities and clouds had been so suddenly and so strangely smoothed and cleared from before her way, she thought of those hours of wakeful anxiety that she had wasted the night before; and of how, finally, she had made her heart settle back on the watchful care and love of the Father who was so wise and so powerful, and in the quiet of her own room, she smiled, as she said aloud:

"'Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.' How much pleasanter it would have been to have committed it in the first place, before I wearied my heart with worrying over what I could not lift my finger to make different!"

So in less time than it has taken me to tell it, the rough places smoothed suddenly before Flossy Shipley's feet. She was free now, to go to parties, or to prayer-meetings, or to stay at home according to her own fancy, for was she not the promised wife of a partner of the firm of Bostwick, Smythe, Roberts & Co.?

It transpired that Mr. Roberts had come to make a somewhat extended stay in the city, to look after certain business affairs connected with the firm, and also to look after certain business interests of the great Master, whose work he labored at with untiring persistence, always placing it above all other plans, and working at it with a zeal that showed his heart was there.

Flossy, during these days, took great strides as a learner in Christian work. Among other things, she was let into the mysteries of some of the great and systematic charities of the city, and found what wonderful things God's wealth could do, placed in the hands of careful and conscientious stewards. She had thought at first that it made no difference at all to her, whether Mr. Roberts had to work for his daily bread, or whether he had means at his disposal; but very early in her acquaintance with him she learned to thank God, that great wealth had been placed in his hands, and so, was to be at her disposal, and that she was learning how to use it.

Some of her new experiences had their embarrassing side. Mr. Roberts had been but a few days in the city, when he had certain proteges which circumstance had thrown in his way, in whom he became deeply interested. One of these, he engaged to take Flossy to visit.

"They are very poor," he had said to her, supposing that thereby he enlightened her.

Now Flossy had small knowledge in that direction. There was a certain old lady living at the extreme east end who had once been a servant in their family, and Flossy's nurse. In her, Flossy was much interested, and had been often to see her. She kept house in a bit of a room that was always shining with cleanliness; her floor was covered with bright rag carpeting; her bed was spread with a gay covered quilt, and her little cook stove glistened, and the bright teakettle sputtered cheerily. This was Flossy's idea of poverty.

Therefore, when she arrayed herself for a wintry walk with Mr. Roberts, there was to her mind no incongruity between the rich black silk, the velvet cloak, the elegant laces, and costly furs, and the "very poor family" she was about to visit. Why should there be? She had trailed that same silk over old Auntie Green's bright colored rag carpet a good many times without experiencing any discomfort therefrom.

As for Mr. Roberts, he regarded her with a half amused smile which she did not observe, and said nothing. Probably he had an idea that she would soon be wiser than she was then.

"It is too far to walk," he said, as they reached a point where street cars diverged in many directions; so he hailed a passing car, and during the talk that followed, Flossy was conveyed to a portion of the city she not only had never seen before, but that she did not know existed.

She looked about her in dismay as she stepped down from the car, and during the short rapid walk that followed, had all she could do to rescue her silken robes from contact with awful filth, and to keep her dainty handkerchief applied to her poor little nose. Rapidly and silently they made their way to a long, high building, whose filthy outside stairs they descended and found themselves in a cellar the like of which Flossy had never dreamed of.

A dreadful pile of straw covered over by a tattered and horribly dirty rag that had once been a quilt, on this bed lay a child not yet ten years old, whose deathly pale face and glassy eyes told the story of hopeless sickness. No pillow on which to lay the poor little head with its tangled masses of yellow hair, nothing anywhere that told of care bestowed or necessary wants attended to. Over in another corner on another filthy heap of straw and rags, lay the mother, sick too; with the same absence of anything like decency in everything that pertained to her.

Utter dismay seized upon Flossy. Could it be possible that human beings, beings with souls, for whose souls her blessed Saviour died, were left to such awful desolation of poverty as this! Mr. Roberts promptly turned upside down an old tub that was used to doing duty as a chair, and seated her thereon, while he went forward to the woman.

"Have you had your dinner to-day?" was the first question he asked.

"Yes, I have; and thank you kindly, too," she added gratefully. "The woman took the money and bought meat as you told her, and made a broth, and I and the little girl had some; it was good. The little girl took quite a few spoonfuls of it and said it tasted good; it did me more good to hear her say that, than it did to eat mine," the poor mother said, and a wistful motherly look went over to the heap of rags in the corner.

"I am glad that she could eat it," he said simply. Then he further told that he had been arranging for some things to be brought to make both of them more comfortable; they would be here soon, could the woman who made the broth come in and attend to them?

The sick woman shook her head. She was gone for the day: would not be back till dark, then would have to get her children's supper, and do her washing that very night. "She's awful poor," the woman added with a heavy sigh. "We are all of us that; if I could get up again, I could do something for my little girl I most know I could, but, as it is—" And then there was that hopeless sigh.

Meantime Flossy, after sitting with a distressed and irresolute face for a few minutes, had suddenly risen from her tub and gone over to the little girl. Bending beside her they had talked together in a low voice, and as Mr. Roberts turned to see if she had endured the scene as long as her nerves would admit, she turned towards him and there was more decision in her voice than he had ever heard before.

"Mr. Roberts, can you find some clean water for this basin, and haven't you a large handkerchief with you? This poor child must have her face washed. She says her head aches very badly; that will help it. And Mr. Roberts, can't you go out immediately to the store and get some clothes for this bed, and a pillow, don't they have such things in stores?"

"I have seen to that," he said; "there will be some bed clothing here, and other necessaries very soon; but how can we manage to have the beds made up? I have ordered bedsteads and mattresses, and bed clothing has been prepared; but I have failed thus far in getting anyone to help arrange them?"

"Can't you set up a bedstead?" asked Miss Flossy.

"Why, I think I could," he answered her meekly.

"Very well, then, I can make the beds. As for the child, she must have a bath and a clean dress before she is ready for any bed. I can tell you just what to do, Mr. Roberts; you must go down to the east end, No. 217 South Benedict Street and find my old Auntie Green, and tell her that she is needed here just as soon as she can get here; tell her I want her; it will be all right then. In the meantime, this child's face must be washed and her hair combed. I see there is a kettle behind that stove, could you manage to fill it with water, and then could you make a better fire? Then, I can stay here and do a good many things while you are gone."

While our little Flossy was talking, she was removing her lavendar kid gloves, and pinning up out of sight her lace ruffles. Then she produced from some one of the bewildering and dainty pockets that trimmed her dress, a plain, hemstitched handkerchief, which she unceremoniously dropped into the tin basin, and announced herself all ready for the water.

"But, Flossy," said her embarrassed attendant in dismay, "you can't do these things, you know; wouldn't it be better to come with me, and we will go after this Auntie Green and tell her just what to do, and furnish the means to do it with. You know you are not used to anything of this kind."

"I know it," she said quietly. "I never knew there was anything like this in the world; I am bowed in the very dust with shame and dismay. There is very little that I know how to do, but I can wash this poor, neglected child's face. Go right away, please; there is no time to lose I am sure."

What swift deft fingers she had to be sure. He could not help stopping for a moment in his bewilderment to watch her; then he went, and meekly and swiftly did her bidding. There was much done during that afternoon. Mr. Roberts quietly sinking into the errand man who was useful, chiefly because he could promptly do as he was told; and he felt with every additional direction and with every passing moment an increased respect for the executive abilities of the little girl, whom he had looked forward to rousing by degrees to a sense of the importance of this work, and gradually to a participation in other than the money charities of the day.

When they went away from that door, as they ascended the filthy stairs again, she said:

"What an awful thought that human beings exist in such places as this, and that I did not know it and have done nothing for them!" She was certainly not exhausted, not overcome with the stench and the filth, though there was water dripping at that moment from her rich silk dress. She noticed it, and as she brushed off the drops, she said:

"Evan, if you knew, I wonder that you did not tell me to wear my Chautauqua dress. I shall know better next time. I must have that poor little girl cured; there are ever so many things to do, oh Evan, you must teach me how."

"You need no teacher," he said softly, almost reverently, "other than the divine Teacher whom you have had. I am become a learner."



CHAPTER XXVII.

FLOSSY'S PARTY.

MARION on her way from school, had stopped in to learn, if she could, what shadow had fallen over Ruth. But before anything like confidence had been reached, Flossy Shipley, came, full of life and eagerness.

"I am so glad to find two of you together," she said, "it expedites matters so much. Who do you think can be going to give a party next?"

"A party!" said Marion, "I am sure I don't know. I am prepared for any sort of news on that subject; one would think there had been a party famine for years, and lost time was to be made up, to see the manner in which one entertainment crowds after another, since the meetings closed. It is a mercy that I am never invited, it would take all my leisure, and a great deal of note paper to prepare regrets. Who is it?"

"I haven't the least idea that you could guess, so I am going to tell you; it's just myself."

Both of her listeners looked incredulous.

"I am," she said, gleefully. "I am at work on the arrangements now as hard as I can be; and Marion Wilbur, you needn't go to talking about note paper and regrets; you are to come. I shall have to give up Eurie, and I am sorry too, she would have helped along so much; but of course she cannot leave her mother."

"How is her mother?" asked both girls at once.

"Oh, better; Nellis says the doctor feels very hopeful, now; but of course, Eurie doesn't leave her, and cannot for a long time. Nellis Mitchell is a splendid fellow. How strange it is that his interest in religious matters should have commenced with that letter which Eurie sent him from Chautauqua, before she had much interest herself."

"Nobody supposed that he had, I am sure," Ruth said; "I thought him the most indifferent of mortals."

"So did I, and would never have thought to pray for him at all, if Eurie had not asked me to, specially. Did you know he led the young people's meeting last evening? Did splendidly, Grace Dennis said. By the way, isn't Grace Dennis lovely? Marion, don't you think she is the most interesting young lady in your room?"

"I think you don't enlighten us much in regard to that party," Marion said, her cheeks growing red under that last question.

"I ought to be on my way; my tea will be colder than usual if I don't hasten; what scheme have you now, Flossy, and what do you want to do with it?"

"Ever so many things; you know my boys? Well, they are really young men; and anyone can see how they have improved. Some of them have real good homes, to be sure; but the most of them are friendless sort of boys. Now, I want to get them acquainted; not with the frippery people who would have nothing to do with them, but with some of our real splendid boys and girls who will enjoy helping them. I'm going to have the nicest little party I ever had in my life; I mean to have some of the very best people there; then I shall have some of the silly ones, of course; partly because I can't help it, and partly because I want to show them what a nice time reasonable beings can have together, if they choose. Nellis Mitchell is enlisted to help me in ever so many ways, and Mr. Roberts will do what he can, but you know he is a stranger. My great dependence is on you two. I want you to see to it, that my boys don't feel lonely or out of place one single minute during the entire evening."

"But I am afraid I shall feel lonely, and out of place," Marion said; "you know I am never invited to parties."

Flossy laughed.

"Wouldn't it be a strange sight to see you feeling out of place?" she asked, gaily. "Marion, I can't conceive of a place to which you wouldn't do credit."

Whereupon Marion arose and made a low courtesy.

"Thank you," she said, in mock gravity. "I never had a compliment before in my life; I shall certainly come; there is nothing like a little flattery to win people."

"Don't be nonsensical," pleaded Flossy; "I am really in earnest. Ruth, I may depend upon you? I know you are not going to entertainments this winter, but mine is to be a small one, compared with the others; and you know it will be unlike any that we have had at our house."

Ruth hesitated.

"When is it to be?" she asked, her cheeks glowing over her own thoughts. "I shall be engaged on Friday evening of next week."

"It is to be on Wednesday."

"Then I will come. And if I play, Marion, will you sing to entertain the unusual guests?"

"Of course," Marion said, promptly. "I never sang in company in my life; but do you suppose there is anything I will not do for Flossy's guests, after what she has just said? Only, Flossy, I shall have to wear my black cashmere."

"Wear your brown calico, if you choose; you look royal in it," Flossy said, turning a beaming face on Marion. She had heard her sing, she knew what a rare musical treat it would be to those boys of hers. So this was Flossy's last departure from the beaten track.

Those who are familiar with the imperative laws and lines which circumscribe the fashionable world will realize just how marked a departure it was. It was a remarkable party. The very highest and most sought after of the fashionable world were there, a few of them, and John Warden was there in his new business suit of grey, looking and feeling like a man.

Flossy's boys were all present, and those who knew of them and their associations and advantages, marvelled much at their ease of manner and perfect propriety of behaviour. How could they have learned so much? Flossy did not know, herself, but the boys did.

Her exquisite grace of manner, her perfect observance of all the rules and courtesies of polite society in her intercourse with them, had produced its legitimate fruit; had instinctively inclined them to be able to treat her with the same sort of grace which she freely and everywhere bestowed on them.

Had she not met them on the street, in the very heart of Broadway when she was walking with some of her fashionable friends? Had she not taken pains to recognize them with a specially cordial bow, and if near enough, with a deliberate speaking of their names, being sure to slightly emphasize the unusual prefix "Mr."

These and a hundred other kindred trifles, so small that they are not noted among the qualifications for Sabbath-school teachers, so powerful for good, that they often turn the current of a human life, had been carefully regarded by Flossy, and to-night she was triumphant over her success. She had not only helped her boys to be true to their convictions of right and dignity, not only to take on true manliness of decision in regard to the all important question of personal religion, she had helped them to be gentlemen. There is many a faithful teacher to whom, thinking of these minor matters, it might be said:

"These ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone."

From first to last, Flossy's party was a success. To Ruth and Marion it was a study, developing certain curious features which they never forgot. Marion had her own private bit of interest that not another present, save Gracie Dennis knew about. She was not a party goer. Even so small a gathering as this, was new to her. She looked upon all these people with a keen interest; many of them she was meeting for the first time. That is, she was being introduced to them, and receiving their kindly greetings; for Flossy had succeeded in gathering only those, who whatever they might think of her choice of guests, were much too well bred to exhibit other than pleasure while they were her guests.