My new friend had given me free permission to come and see her whenever I found myself able. Saturday afternoon we always had to ourselves in the school; and the next Saturday found me at Miss Cardigan’s door again as soon as my friends and room-mates were well out of my way. Miss Cardigan was not at home, the servant said, but she would be in presently. I was just as well pleased. I took off my cap, and carrying it in my hand I went back through the rooms to the greenhouse. All still and fresh and sweet, it seemed more delightful than ever, because I knew there was nobody near. Some new flowers were out. An azalea was in splendid beauty, and a white French rose, very large and fair, was just blossoming, and with the red roses and the hyacinths and the violets and the daphné and the geraniums, made a wonderful sweet place of the little greenhouse. I lost myself in delight again; but this time the delight did not issue in homesickness. The flowers had another message for me to-day. I did not heed it at first, busy with examining and drinking in the fragrance and the loveliness about me; but even as I looked and drank, the flowers began to whisper to me. With their wealth of perfume, with all their various, glorious beauty, one and another leaned towards me or bent over me with the question “Daisy, are you afraid? Daisy, are you afraid? The good God who has made us so rich, do you think he will leave you poor? He loves you, Daisy. You needn’t be a bit afraid but that HE is enough, even if the world does not know you. He is rich enough for you as well as for us.”

I heard no voice, but surely I heard that whisper, plain enough. The roses seemed to kiss me with it. The sweet azalea repeated it. The hyacinths stood witnesses of it. The gay tulips and amaryllis held up a banner before me on which it was blazoned.

I was so ashamed, and sorry, and glad, all at once, that I fell down on my knees there, on the stone matted floor, and gave up the world from my heart and for ever, and stretched out my hands for the wealth that does not perish and the blessing that has no sorrow with it.

I was afraid to stay long on my knees; but I could hardly get my eyes dry again, I was so glad and so sorry. I remember I was wiping a tear or two away when Miss Cardigan came in. She greeted me kindly.

“There’s a new rose out, did ye see it?” she said; “and this blue hyacinth has opened its flowers. Isn’t that bonny?”

“What is bonny, ma’am?” I asked.

Miss Cardigan laughed, the heartiest, sonsiest low laugh.

“There’s a many things the Lord has made bonny,” she said. “I thank Him for it. Look at these violets they’re bonny; and this sweet red rose.” She broke it off the tree and gave it to me. “It’s bad that it shames your cheeks so. What’s the matter wi’ ’em, my bairn?”

Miss Cardigan’s soft finger touched my cheek as she spoke; and the voice and tone of the question were so gently, tenderly kind that it was pleasant to answer. I said I had not been very strong.

“Nor just weel in your mind. No, no. Well, what did the flowers say to you to-day, my dear? Eh? They told you something?”

“Oh yes!” I said.

“Did they tell you that ’the Lord is good; a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in Him?’”

“Oh yes,” I said, looking up at her in surprise. “How did you know?”

For all answer, Miss Cardigan folded her two arms tight about me and kissed me with earnest good will.

“But they told me something else,” I said, struggling to command myself; “they told me that I had not ‘trusted in Him.’”

“Ah, my bairn!” she said. “But the Lord is good.”

There was so much both of understanding and sympathy in her tones, that I had a great deal of trouble to control myself. I felt unspeakably happy too, that I had found a friend that could understand. I was silent, and Miss Cardigan looked at me.

“Is it all right, noo?” she asked.

“Except me, ” I said with my eyes swimming.

“Ah, well!” she said. “You’ve seen the sky all black and covered with the thick clouds that’s like our sins: but, ’I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins.’ You know how it is when the wind comes and clears the clouds all off, and you can look up through the blue, till it seems as if your eye would win into heaven itself. Keep the sky clear, my darling, so that you can always see up straight to God, with never the fleck of a cloud between. But do you ken what will clear the clouds away?”

And I looked up now with a smile and answered, “’The precious blood of Christ’” for the two texts had been close together in one of the pages of my little book not long before.

Miss Cardigan clapped her hands together softly and laughed. “Ye’ve got it!” she said. “Ye have gotten the pearl of great price. And where did ye find it, my dear?”

“I had a friend, that taught me in a Sunday-school, four years ago, ” I said.

“Ah, there weren’t so many Sunday-schools in my day,” said Miss Cardigan. “And ye have found, maybe, that this other sort of a school, that ye have gotten to now, isn’t helpful altogether? Is it a rough road, my bairn?”

“It is my own fault,” I said, looking at her gratefully. The tender voice went right into my heart.

“Well, noo, ye’ll just stop and have tea with me here; and whenever the way is rough, ye’ll come over to my flowers and rest yourself. And rest me too; it does me a world o’ good to see a young face. So take off your coat, my dear, and let us sit down and be comfortable.”

I was afraid at first that I could not; I had no liberty to be absent at tea-time. But Miss Cardigan assured me I should be home in good season; the school tea was at seven, and her own was always served at six. So very gladly, with an inexpressible sense of freedom and peace, I took off my coat and gloves, and followed my kind friend back to the parlour where her fire was burning. For although it was late in April, the day was cool and raw; and the fire one saw nowhere else was delightful in Miss Cardigan’s parlour.

Every minute of that afternoon was as bright as the fire glow. I sat in the midst of that, on an ottoman, and Miss Cardigan, busy between her two tables, made me very much interested in her story of some distressed families for whom she was working. She asked me very little about my own affairs; nothing that the most delicate good breeding did not warrant; but she found out that my father and mother were at a great distance from me, and I almost alone, and she gave me the freedom of her house. I was to come there whenever I could and liked; whenever I wanted to “rest my feet,” as she said; especially I might spend as much of every Sunday with her as I could get leave for. And she made this first afternoon so pleasant to me with her gentle beguiling talk, that the permission to come often was like the entrance into a whole world of comfort. She had plenty to talk about; plenty to tell, of the poor people to whom she and others were ministering; of plans and methods to do them good; all which somehow she made exceedingly interesting. There was just a little accent to her words, which made them, in their peculiarity, all the more sweet to me; but she spoke good English; the “noo” which slipped out now and then, with one or two other like words, came only, I found, at times when the fountain of feeling was more full than ordinary, and so flowed over into the disused old channel. And her face was so fresh, rosy, round and sweet, withal strong and sound, that it was a perpetual pleasure to me.

As she told her stories of New York needy and suffering, I mentally added my poor people at Magnolia, and began to wonder with myself, was all the world so? Were these two spots but samples of the whole? I got into a brown study, and was waked out of it by Miss Cardigan’s “What is it, my dear?”

“Ma’am?” I said.

“Ye are studying some deep question,” she said, smiling. “Maybe it’s too big for you.”

“So it is,” said I, sighing. “Is it so everywhere, Miss Cardigan?”

“So how, my bairn?”

“Is there so much trouble everywhere in the world?”

Her face clouded over.

“Jesus said, ’The poor ye have always with you, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good.’”

“But that is what I don’t understand about,” I said. “How much ought one to do, Miss Cardigan?”

There came a ray of infinite brightness over her features; I can hardly describe it; it was warm with love, and bright with pleasure, and I thought sparkled with a little amusement.

“Have you thought upon that?” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “very much.”

“It is a great question!” she said, her face becoming grave again.

“I know,” I said, “of course one ought to do all one can. But what I want to know is, how much one can. How much ought one to spend, for such things?”

“It’s a great question,” Miss Cardigan repeated, more gravely than before. “For when the King comes, to take account of His servants, He will want to know what we have done with every penny. Be sure, He will.”

“Then how can one tell?” said I, hoping earnestly that now I was going to get some help in my troubles. “How can one know? It is very difficult.”

“I’ll no say it’s not difficult,” said Miss Cardigan, whose thoughts seemed to have gone into the recesses of her own mind. “Dear, its nigh our tea-time. Let us go in.”

I followed her, much disappointed, and feeling that if she passed the subject by so, I could not bring it up again. We went through to the inner room; the same from which the glass door opened to the flowers. Here a small table was now spread. This room was cosy. I had hardly seen it before. Low bookcases lined it on every side; and above the bookcases hung maps; maps of the city and of various parts of the world where missionary stations were established. Along with the maps, a few engravings and fine photographs. I remember one of the Colosseum, which I used to study; and a very beautiful engraving of Jerusalem. But the one that fixed my eyes this first evening, perhaps because Miss Cardigan placed me in front of it, was a picture of another sort. It was a good photograph, and had beauty enough besides to hold my eyes. It showed a group of three or four. A boy and girl in front, handsome, careless, and well-to-do, passing along, with wandering eyes. Behind them and disconnected from them by her dress and expression, a tall woman in black robes with a baby on her breast. The hand of the woman was stretched out with a coin which she was about dropping into an iron-bound coffer which stood at the side of the picture. It was “the widow’s mite;” and her face, wan, sad, sweet, yet loving and longing, told the story. The two coins were going into the box with all her heart.

“You know what it is?” said my hostess.

“I see, ma’am,” I replied; “it is written under.”

“That box is the Lord’s treasury.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, “I know.”

“Do you remember how much that woman gave?”

“Two mites,” I said.

“It was something more than that,” said my hostess. “It was more than anybody else gave that day. Don’t you recollect? It was all her living.”

I looked at Miss Cardigan, and she looked at me. Then my eyes went back to the picture, and to the sad yet sweet and most loving face of the poor woman there.

“Ma’am,” said I, “do you think people that are rich ought to give all they have?”

“I only know, my Lord was pleased with her,” said Miss Cardigan softly; “and I always think I should like to have Him pleased with me too.”

I was silent, looking at the picture and thinking.

“You know what made that poor widow give her two mites?” Miss Cardigan asked presently.

“I suppose she wanted to give them,” I said.

“Ay,” said my hostess, turning away, “she loved the Lord’s glory beyond her own comfort. Come, my love, and let us have some tea. She gave all she had, Miss Daisy, and the Lord liked it; do ye think you and me can do less?”

“But that is what I do not understand,” I said, following Miss Cardigan to the little tea-table, and watching with great comfort the bright unruffled face which promised to be such a help to me.

“Now you’ll sit down there,” said my hostess, “where you can see my flowers while I can see you. It’s poor work eating, if we cannot look at something or hear something at the same time; and maybe we’ll do the two things. And ye’ll have a bit of honey here it is. And Lotty will bring us up a bit of hot toast or is bread the better, my dear? Now ye’re at home; and maybe you’ll come over and drink tea with me whenever you can run away from over there. I’ll have Lotty set a place for you. And then, when ye think of the empty place, you will know you had better come over and fill it. See you could bring your study book and study here in this quiet little corner by the flowers.”

I gave my very glad thanks. I knew that I could often do this.

“And now for the ‘not understanding,’” said Miss Cardigan, when tea was half over. “How was it, my dear?”

“I have been puzzled,” I said, “about giving how much one ought to give, and how much one ought to spend I mean for oneself.”

“Well,” said Miss Cardigan brightly, “we have fixed that. The poor woman gave all her living.”

“But one must spend some money for oneself,” I said. “One must have bonnets and cloaks and dresses.”

“And houses, and books, and pictures,” said Miss Cardigan, looking around her. “My lamb, let us go to the Bible again. That says, ’whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.’ So I suppose we must buy cloaks and bonnets on the same principle.”

I turned this over in my mind. Had I done this, when I was choosing my chinchilla cap and grey cloak? A little ray of infinite brightness began to steal in upon their quiet colours and despised forms.

“If the rich are to give their all, as well as the poor, it doesn’t say mind you that they are to give it all to the hungry, or all to the destitute; but only, they are to give it all to Christ. Then, He will tell them what to do with it; do ye understand, my dear?”

Miss Cardigan’s eye was watching me, not more kindly than keen. A wise and clear grey eye it was.

“But isn’t it difficult to know sometimes what to do?” I said. “I have been so puzzled to know about dresses. Mamma is away, and I had to decide.”

“It’s no very difficult,” said Miss Cardigan, “if once ye set your face in the right airth as we speak. My dear, there’s a great many sorts of dresses and bonnets and things; and I’d always buy just that bonnet and that gown, in which I thought I could do most work for my Master; and that wouldn’t be the same sort of bonnet for you and for me,” she said with a merry smile. “Now ye’ll have another cup of tea, and ye’ll tell me if my tea’s good.”

It was wonderfully good to me. I felt like a plant dried up for want of water, suddenly set in a spring shower. Refreshment was all around me, without and within. The faces of the flowers looked at me through the glass, and the sweet breath of them came from the open door. The room where I was sitting pleased me mightily, in its comfortable and pretty simplicity; and I had found a friend, even better than my old Maria and Darry at Magnolia. It was not very long before I told all about these to my new counsellor.

For the friendship between us ripened and grew. I often found a chance to fill my place at the dear little tea-table. Sundays I could always be there; and I went there straight from afternoon church, and rested among Miss Cardigan’s books and in her sweet society and in the happy freedom and rest of her house, with an intensity of enjoyment which words can but feebly tell. So in time I came to tell her all my troubles and the perplexities which had filled me; I was willing to talk to Miss Cardigan about things that I would have breathed to no other ear upon earth. She was so removed from all the sphere of my past or present life, so utterly disconnected from all the persons and things with which I had had to do, it was like telling about them to a being of another planet. Yet she was not so removed but that her sympathies and her judgment could be living and full grown for my help; all ready to take hold of the facts and to enter into the circumstances, and to give me precious comfort and counsel. Miss Cardigan and I came to be very dear to each other.

All this took time. Nobody noticed at first, or seemed to notice, my visits to the “house with the flowers,” as the girls called it. I believe, in my plain dress, I was not thought of importance enough to be watched. I went and came very comfortably; and the weeks that remained before the summer vacation slipped away in quiet order.

Just before the vacation, my aunt came home from Europe. With her came the end of my obscurity. She brought me, from my mother, a great supply of all sorts of pretty French dresses hats, gloves, and varieties chosen by my mother as pretty and elegant, and simple too, as they could be; but once putting them on, I could never be unnoticed by my schoolmates any more. I knew it, with a certain feeling that was not displeasure. Was it pride? Was it anything more than my pleasure in all pretty things? I thought it was something more. And I determined that I would not put on any of them till school was broken up. If it was pride, I was ashamed of it. But besides French dresses, my aunt brought me a better thing; a promise from my father.

“He said I was to tell you, Daisy my dear, and I hope you will be a good child and take it as you ought but dear me! how she is growing,” said Mrs. Gary, turning to Mme. Ricard; “I cannot talk about Daisy as a ‘child’ much longer. She’s tall.”

“Not too tall,” said madame.

No, but she is going to be tall. She has a right; her mother is tall, and her father. Daisy, my dear, I do believe you are going to look like your mother. Youll be very handsome if you do. And yet, you look different

“Miss Randolph will not shame anybody belonging to her,” said Mme. Ricard, graciously.

“Well, I suppose not,” said my aunt. “I was going to tell you what your father said, Daisy. He said you know it takes a long while to get to China and back, and if it does him good he will stay a little while there; and then there’s the return voyage, and there may be delays; so altogether it was impossible to say exactly how long he and your mother will be gone. I mean, it was impossible to know certainly that they would be able to come home by next summer; indeed I doubt if your father ever does come home.”

I waited in silence.

“So altogether,” my aunt went on, turning for a moment to Mme. Ricard, “there was a doubt about it; and your father said, he charged me to tell Daisy, that if she will make herself contented that is, supposing they cannot come home next year, you know if she will make herself happy and be patient and bear one or two years more, and stay at school and do the best she can, then, the year after next or the next year he will send for you, your father says, unless they come home themselves they will send for you; and then, your father says, he will give you any request you like to make of him. Ask anything you can think of, that you would like best, and he will do it or get it, whatever it is. He didn’t say like King Herod, ’to the half of his kingdom,’ but I suppose he meant that. And meanwhile, you know you have a guardian now, Daisy, and there is no use for me in your affairs; and having conveyed to you your mother’s gifts and your father’s promises, I suppose there is nothing further for me to do to you.”

I was silent yet, thinking. Two years more would be a dear purchase of any pleasure that might come after. Two years! And four were gone already. It seemed impossible to wait or to bear it. I heard no more of what my aunt was saying, till she turned to me again and asked, “Where are you going to pass the vacation?”

I did not know, for Mrs. Sandford was obliged to be with her sister still, so that I could not go to Melbourne.

“Well, if your new guardian thinks well of it you can consult him if it is necessary and if he does not object, you can be with me if you like. Preston has leave of absence this summer, I believe; and he will be with us.”

It was in effect arranged so. My aunt took me about the country from one watering place to another; from Saratoga to the White Mountains; and Preston’s being with us made it a gay time. Preston had been for two years at West Point; he was grown and improved everybody said; but to me he was just the same. If anything, not improved; the old grace and graciousness of his manner was edged with an occasional hardness or abruptness which did not use to belong to him, and which I did not understand. There seemed to be a latent cause of irritation somewhere.

However, my summer went off smoothly enough. September brought me back to Mme. Ricard’s, and in view of Miss Cardigan’s late roses and budding chrysanthemums. I was not sorry. I had set my heart on doing as much as could be done in these next two years, if two they must be.

I was the first in my room; but before the end of the day they all came pouring in; the two older and the two younger girls. “Here’s somebody already,” exclaimed Miss Macy as she saw me. “Why, Daisy Randolph! is it possible that’s you? Is it Daisy Randolph? What have you done to yourself? How you have improved!”

“She is very much improved,” said Miss Bentley more soberly.

“She has been learning the fashions,” said Miss Lansing, her bright eyes dancing as good-humouredly as ever. “Daisy, now when your hair gets long you’ll look quite nice. That frock is made very well.”

“She is changed,” said Miss St. Clair, with a look I could not quite make out.

“No,” I said; “I hope I am not changed.”

“Your dress is,” said St. Clair.

I thought of Dr. Sandford’s “L’habit, c’est l’homme”. “My mother had this dress made,” I said; “and I ordered the other one; that is all the difference.”

“You’re on the right side of the difference, then,” said Miss St. Clair.

“Has your mother come back, Daisy?” Miss Lansing asked.

“Not yet. She sent me this from Paris.”

“It’s very pretty!” she said, with, I saw, an increase of admiration; but St. Clair gave me another strange look. “How much prettier Paris things are than American!” Lansing went on. “I wish I could have all my dresses from Paris. Why, Daisy, you’ve grown handsome.”

“Nonsense!” said Miss Macy; “she always was, only you didn’t see it.”

“Style is more than a face,” said Miss St. Clair cavalierly. Somehow I felt that this little lady was not in a good mood awards me. I boded mischief; for being nearly of an age, we were together in most of our classes, studied the same things, and recited at the same times. There was an opportunity for clashing.

They soon ran off, all four, to see their friends and acquaintances and learn the news of the school. I was left alone, making my arrangement of clothes and things in my drawer and my corner of the closet; and I found that some disturbance, in those few moments, had quite disarranged the thoughts of my heart. They were peaceful enough before. There was some confusion now. I could not at first tell what was uppermost; only that St. Clair’s words were those that most returned to me. “She has changed.” Had I changed? or was I going to change? was I going to enter the lists of fashion with my young companions, and try who would win the race? No doubt my mother could dress me better than almost any of their mothers could dress them; what then? would this be a triumph? or was this the sort of name and notoriety that became and befitted a servant of Jesus? I could not help my dresses being pretty; no, but I could help making much display of them. I could wear my own school plaid when the weather grew cooler; and one or two others of my wardrobe were all I need show. “Style is more than a face.” No doubt. What then? Did I want style and a face too? Was I wishing to confound St. Clair? Was I escaping already from that bond and a mark of a Christian “The world knoweth us not?” I was startled and afraid. I fell down on my knees by the side of my bed, and tried to look at the matter as God looked at it. And the Daisy I thought he would be pleased with, was one who ran no race for worldly supremacy. I resolved she should not. The praise of God, I thought, was far better than the praise of men.

My mind was quite made up when I rose from my knees; but I looked forward to a less quiet school term than the last had been. Something told me that the rest of the girls would take me up now, for good and for evil. My Paris dress set me in a new position, no longer beneath their notice. I was an object of attention. Even that first evening I felt the difference.

“Daisy, when is your mother coming home?” “Oh, she is gone to China; Daisy’s mother is gone to China!” “She’ll bring you lots of queer things, won’t she?” “What a sweet dress!” That didn’t come from China?” “Daisy, who’s head in mathematics, you or St. Clair? I hope you will get before her!”

“Why?” I ventured to ask.

“Oh, you’re the best of the two; everybody knows that. But St. Clair is smart, isn’t she?”

“She thinks she is,” answered another speaker; “she believes she’s at the tip-top of creation; but she never had such a pretty dress on as that in her days; and she knows it and she don’t like it. It’s real fun to see St. Clair beat; she thinks she is so much better than other girls, and she has such a way of twisting that upper lip of hers. Do you know how St. Clair twists her upper lip? Look! she’s doing it now.”

“She’s handsome though, ain’t she?” said Miss Macy. “She’ll be beautiful.”

“No,” said Mlle. Genevieve; “not that. Never that. She will be handsome; but beauty is a thing of the soul. She will not be beautiful. Daisy, are you going to work hard this year?”

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

“I believe you,” she said, taking my face between her two hands and kissing it.

“Whoever saw Mlle. Genevieve do that before!” said Miss Macy, as the other left us. “She is not apt to like the scholars.”

I knew she had always liked me. But everybody had always liked me, I reflected; this time at school was the first of my knowing anything different. And in this there now came a change. Since my wearing and using the Paris things sent to me by my mother, which I dared not fail to use and wear, I noticed that my company was more sought in the school. Also my words were deferred to, in a way they had not been before. I found, and it was not an unpleasant thing, that I had grown to be a person of consequence. Even with the French and English teachers; I observed that they treated me with more consideration. And so I reflected within myself again over Dr. Sandford’s observation, “L’habit, c’est l’homme.” Of course it was a consideration given to my clothes, a consideration also to be given up if I did not wear such clothes. I saw all that. The world knew me, just for the moment.

Well, the smooth way was very pleasant. I had it with everybody for a time.

My little room-mate and classmate St. Clair was perhaps the only exception to the general rule. I never felt that she liked me much. She let me alone, however; until one unlucky day I do not mean to call it unlucky, either when we had, as usual, compositions to write, and the theme given out was “Ruins.” It was a delightful theme to me. I did not always enjoy writing compositions; this one gave me permission to roam in thoughts and imaginations that I liked. I went back to my old Egyptian studies at Magnolia, and wrote my composition about “Karnak.” The subject was full in my memory; I had gone over and over and all through it; I had measured the enormous pillars and great gateways, and studied the sculpture on the walls, and paced up and down the great avenue of sphinxes. Sethos, and Amunoph and Rameses, the second and third, were all known and familiar to me; and I knew just where Shishak had recorded his triumphs over the land of Judea. I wrote my composition with the greatest delight. The only danger was that I might make it too long.

One evening I was using the last of the light, writing in the window recess of the school parlour, when I felt a hand laid on my shoulders.

“You are so hard at work!” said the voice of Mlle. Genevieve.

“Yes, mademoiselle, I like it.”

“Have you got all the books and all that you want?”

“Books, mademoiselle?” I said wondering.

“Yes; have you got all you want?”

“I have not got any books,” I said; “there are none that I want in the school library.”

“Have you never been in madame’s library?”

“No, mademoiselle.”

“Come!”

I jumped up and followed her, up and down stairs and through halls and turnings, till she brought me into a pretty room lined with books from floor to ceiling. Nobody was there. Mademoiselle lit the gas with great energy, and then turned to me, her great black eyes shining.

“Now what do you want, mon enfant? here is everything.”

“Is there anything about Egypt?”

“Egypt! Are you in Egypt? See here look, here is Denon here is Laborde; here are two or three more. Do you like that? Ah! I see by the way your grey eyes grow big Now sit down, and do what you like. Nobody will disturb you. You can come here every evening for the hour before tea.”

Mademoiselle scarce stayed for my thanks, and left me alone. I had not seen either Laborde or Denon in my grandfather’s library at Magnolia; they were after his time. The engravings and illustrations also had not been very many or very fine in his collection of travellers’ books. It was the greatest joy to me to see some of those things in Mme. Ricard’s library, that I had read and dreamed about so long in my head. It was adding eyesight to hearsay. I found a good deal too that I wanted to read, in these later authorities. Evening after evening I was in madame’s library, lost among the halls of the old Egyptian conquerors.

The interest and delight of my work quite filled me, so that the fate of my composition hardly came into my thoughts, or the fact that other people were writing compositions too. And when it was done, I was simply very sorry that it was done. I had not written it for honour or for duty, but for love. I suppose that was the reason why it succeeded. I remember I was anything but satisfied with it myself, as I was reading it aloud for the benefit of my judges. For it was a day of prize compositions; and before the whole school and even some visitors, the writings of the girls were given aloud, each by its author. I thought, as I read mine, how poor it was, and how magnificent my subject demanded that it should be. Under the shade of the great columns, before those fine old sphinxes, my words and myself seemed very small. I sat down in my place again, glad that the reading was over.

But there was a little buzz; then a dead expectant silence; then Mme. Ricard arose. My composition had been the last one. I looked up with the rest, to hear the award that she would speak; and was at first very much confounded to hear my own name called. “Miss Randolph ” It did not occur to me what it was spoken for; I sat still a moment in a maze. Mme. Ricard stood waiting; all the room was in a hush.

“Don’t you hear yourself called?” said a voice behind me. “Why don’t you go?”

I looked round at Miss Macy, who was my adviser, then doubtfully I looked away from her and caught the eyes of Mlle. Genevieve. She nodded and beckoned me to come forward. I did it hastily then, and found myself curtseying in front of the platform where stood madame.

“The prize is yours, Miss Randolph,” she said graciously. “Your paper is approved by all the judges.”

“Quite artistic,” I heard a gentleman say at her elbow.

“And it shows an amount of thorough study and perfect preparation, which I can but hold up as a model to all my young ladies. You deserve this, my dear.”

I was confounded; and a low curtsey was only a natural relief to my feelings. But madame unhappily took it otherwise.

“This is yours,” she said, putting into my hands an elegant little bronze standish; “and if I had another prize to bestow for grace of good manners, I am sure I would have the pleasure of giving you that too.”

I bent again before madame, and got back to my seat as I could. The great business of the day was over, and we soon scattered to our rooms. And I had not been in mine five minutes before the penalties of being distinguished began to come upon me.

“Well, Daisy!” said Miss Lansing, “you’ve got it. How pretty! isn’t it, Macy?”

“It isn’t a bit prettier than it ought to be, for a prize in such a school,” said Miss Macy. “It will do.”

“I’ve seen handsomer prizes,” said Miss Bentley.

“But you’ve got it, more ways than one, Daisy,” Miss Lansing went on. “I declare! Aren’t you a distinguished young lady! Madame, too! why we all used to think we behaved pretty well before company, didn’t we, St. Clair?”

“I hate favour and favouritism!” said that young lady, her upper lip taking the peculiar turn to which my attention had once been called. “Madame likes whatever is French.”

“But Randolph is not French, are you, Randolph?” said Blackeyes, who was good-natured through everything.

“Madame is not French herself,” said Miss Bentley.

“I hate everything at school!” St. Clair went on.

“It’s too bad,” said her friend. “Do you know, Daisy, St. Clair always has the prize for compositions. What made you go and write that long stuff about Rameses? the people didn’t understand it, and so they thought it was fine.”

“I am sure there was a great deal finer writing in Faustina’s composition,” said Miss Bentley.

I knew very well that Miss St. Clair had been accustomed to win this half-yearly prize for good writing. I had expected nothing but that she would win it this time. I had counted neither on my own success nor on the displeasure it would raise. I took my hat and went over to my dear Miss Cardigan; hoping that ill-humour would have worked itself out by bed-time. But I was mistaken.

St Clair and I had been pretty near each other in our classes, though once or twice lately I had got an advantage over her; but we had kept on terms of cool social distance until now. Now the spirit of rivalry was awake. I think it began to stir at my Paris dresses and things; Karnak and Mme. Ricard finished the mischief.

On my first coming to school I had been tempted in my horror at the utter want of privacy to go to bed without prayer; waiting till the rest were all laid down and asleep and the lights out, and then slipping out of bed with great care not to make a noise, and watching that no whisper of my lips should be loud enough to disturb anybody’s slumbers. But I was sure after a while, that this was a cowardly way of doing; and I could not bear the words, “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father.” I determined in the vacation that I would do so no more, cost what it might the contrary. It cost a tremendous struggle. I think, in all my life I have done few harder things, than it was to me then to kneel down by the side of my bed in full blaze of the gaslights and with four curious pairs of eyes around to look on; to say nothing of the four busy tongues wagging about nothing all the time. I remember what a hush fell upon them the first night; while beyond the posture of prayer I could do little. Only unformed or half formed thoughts and petitions struggled in my mind, through a crowd of jostling regrets and wishes and confusions, in which I could hardly distinguish anything. But no explosion followed, of either ridicule or amusement, and I had been suffered from that night to do as I would, not certainly always in silence, but quite unmolested.

I had carried over my standish to Miss Cardigan to ask her to take care of it for me; I had no place to keep it. But Miss Cardigan was not satisfied to see the prize; she wanted to hear the essay read; and was altogether so elated that a little undue elation perhaps crept into my own heart. It was not a good preparation for what was coming.

I went home in good time. In the hall, however, Mlle. Genevieve seized upon me; she had several things to say, and before I got up stairs to my room all the rest of its inmates were in bed. I hoped they were asleep. I heard no sound while I was undressing, nor while I knelt, as usual now, by my bedside. But as I rose from my knees I was startled by a sort of grunt that came from St. Clair’s corner.

“Humph! Dear me! we’re so good, Grace and Devotion, Christian grace, too!”

“Hold your tongue, St. Clair,” said Miss Macy, but not in a way, I thought, to check her; if she could have been checked.

“But it’s too bad, Macy,” said the girl. “We’re all so rough, you know. We don’t know how to behave ourselves; we can’t make curtseys; our mothers never taught us anything, and dancing masters are no good. We ought to go to Egypt. There isn’t anything so truly dignified as a pyramid. There is a great deal of a plomb there!”

“Who talked about a plomb?” said Miss Bentley.

“You have enough of that, at any rate, Faustina,” said Lansing.

“Mrs. St. Clair’s child ought to have that,” said Miss Macy.

“Ah, but it isn’t Christian grace, after all,” persisted Faustina. “You want a cross at the top of a pyramid to make it perfect.”

“Hush, Faustina!” said Miss Macy.

“It’s fair,” said Miss Bentley.

“You had better not talk about Christian grace, girls. That isn’t a matter of opinion.”

“Oh, isn’t it!” cried St. Clair, half rising up in her bed. “What is it, then?”

Nobody answered.

“I say! Macy, what is Christian grace if you know! If you don’t know, I’ll put you in the way to find out.”

“How shall I find out?”

“Will you do it, if I show it you?”

“Yes.”

“Ask Randolph. That’s the first step. Ask her, yes! just ask her, if you want to know. I wish Mme. Ricard was here to hear the answer.”

“Nonsense!” said Macy.

“Ask her! You said you would. Now ask her.”

“What is Christian grace, Daisy?” said Miss Bentley.

I heard, but I would not answer. I hoped the storm would blow over, after a puff or two. But Blackeyes, without any ill-nature, I think, which was not in her, had got into the gale. She slipped out of bed and came to my side, putting her hand on my shoulder and bringing her laughing mouth down near my ear. A very angry impulse moved me before she spoke.

“Daisy!” she said, laughing, in a loud whisper, “come, wake up! you’re not asleep, you know. Wake up and tell us; everybody knows you know; what is Christian grace? Daisy!

She shook me a little.

“If you knew, you would not ask me,” I said in great displeasure. But a delighted shout from all my room-mates answered this unlucky speech, which I had been too excited to make logical.

“Capital!” cried St. Clair. “That’s just it we don’t know; and we only want to find out whether she does. Make her tell, Lansing prick a little pin into her that will bring it out.”

I was struggling between anger and sorrow, feeling very hurt, and at the same time determined not to cry. I kept absolutely still, fighting the fight of silence with myself. Then Lansing, in a fit of thoughtless mischief, finding her shakes and questions vain, actually put in practice St. Clair’s suggestion, and attacked me with a pin from the dressing table. The first prick of it overthrew the last remnant of my patience.

“Miss Lansing!” I exclaimed, rousing up in bed and confronting her. They all shouted again.

“Now we’ll have it!” cried St. Clair. “Keep cool, Blackeyes; let’s hear we’ll have an exposition now. Theme, Christian grace.”

Ah, there rushed through my heart with her words a remembrance of other words a fluttering vision of something “gentle and easy to be entreated” “first pure, then peaceable” “gentleness, goodness, meekness.” But the grip of passion held them all down or kept them all back. After St. Clair’s first burst, the girls were still and waited for what I would say. I was facing Miss Lansing, who had taken her hand from my shoulder.

“Are you not ashamed of yourself?” I said; and I remember I thought how my mother would have spoken to them. “Miss Lansing’s good nature” I went on slowly, “Miss Macy’s kindness Miss Bentley’s independence and Miss St. Clairs good breeding!

“And Miss Randolph’s religion!” echoed the last-named, with a quiet distinctness which went into my heart.

“What about my independence?” said Miss Bentley.

“Now we’ve got enough, girls, lie down and go to sleep,” said Miss Macy. “There’s quite enough of this. There was too much before we began. Stop where you are.”

They did not stop, however, without a good deal of noisy chaffing and arguing, none of which I heard. Only the words, “Miss Randolph’s religion,” rung in my ears. I lay down with them lying like lead on my heart. I went to sleep under them. I woke up early, while all the rest were asleep, and began to study them.

“Miss Randolph’s religion!” If it had been only that, only mine. But the religion I professed was the religion of Christ; the name I was called by was His name, the thing I had brought into discredit was His truth. I hope in all my life I may never know again the heart-pangs that this thought cost me. I studied how to undo the mischief I had done. I could find no way. I had seemed to prove my religion an unsteady, superficial thing; the evidence I had given I could not withdraw; it must stand. I lay thinking, with the heartache, until the rousing bell rang, and the sleepers began to stir from their slumbers. I got up and began to dress with the rest.

“What was it all that happened last night?” said Miss Lansing.

“Advancement in knowledge,” said Miss St. Clair.

“Now, girls don’t begin again,” said Miss Macy.

“Knowledge is a good thing,” said the other, with pins in her mouth. “I intend to take every opportunity that offers of increasing mine; especially I mean to study Egyptians and Christians. I haven’t any Christians among my own family or acquaintance so you see, naturally, Macy, I am curious; and when a good specimen offers

“I am not a good specimen,” I said.

“People are not good judges of themselves, it is said,” the girl went on. “Everybody considers Miss Randolph a sample of what that article ought to be.”

“You don’t use the word right,” remarked Miss Macy. “A sample is taken from what is, not from what ought to be.”

“I don’t care,” was St. Clair’s reply.

“I did not behave like a Christian last night,” I forced myself to say. “I was impatient.”

“Like an impatient Christian then, I suppose,” said St Clair.

I felt myself getting impatient again, with all my sorrow and humiliation of heart. And yet more humbled at the consciousness, I hastened to get out of the room. It was a miserable day, that day of my first school triumphs, and so were several more that followed. I was very busy; I had no time for recollection and prayer; I was in the midst of gratulations and plaudits from my companions and the teachers; and I missed, O how I missed the praise of God. I felt like a traitor. In the heat of the fight I had let my colours come to the ground. I had dishonoured my Captain. Some would say it was a little thing; but I felt then and I know now, there are no little things; I knew I had done harm; how much it was utterly beyond my reach to know.

As soon as I could I seized an opportunity to get to Miss Cardigan. I found her among her flowers, nipping off here a leaf and there a flower that had passed its time; so busy, that for a few moments she did not see that I was different from usual. Then came the question which I had been looking for.

“Daisy, you are not right to-day?”

“I haven’t been right since I got that standish,” I burst forth.

Miss Cardigan looked at me again, and then did what I had not expected; she took my head between her two hands and kissed me. Not loosing her hold, she looked into my face.

“What is it, my pet?”

“Miss Cardigan,” I said, “can any one be a Christian and yet yet

“Do something unworthy a Christian?” she said. “I wot well they can! But then, they are weak Christians.”

I knew that before. But somehow, hearing her say it brought the shame and the sorrow more fresh to the surface. The tears came. Miss Cardigan pulled me into the next room and sat down, drawing me into her arms; and I wept there with her arms about me.

“What then, Daisy?” she asked at length, as if the suspense pained her.

“I acted so, Miss Cardigan,” I said; and I told her all about it.

“So the devil has found a weak spot in your armour,” she said. “You must guard it well, Daisy.”

“How can I?”

“How can you? Keep your shield before it, my bairn. What is your shield for? The Lord has given you a great strong shield, big enough to cover you from head to foot, if your hands know how to manage it.”

“What is that, Miss Cardigan?”

“The shield of faith, dear. Only believe. According to your faith be it unto you.”

“Believe what?” I asked, lifting my head at last.

“Believe that if you are a weak little soldier, your Captain knows all about it; and any fight that you go into for His sake, He will bear you through. I don’t care what. Any fight, Daisy.”

“But I got impatient,” I said, “at the girls’ way of talking.”

“And perhaps you were a wee bit set up in your heart because you got the prize of the day.”

“Proud!” said I.

“Don’t it look like it? Even proud of being a Christian, mayhap.”

“Could I!” I said. “Was I?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time one with as little cause had got puffed up a bit. But heavenly charity ‘is not puffed up.’”

“I know that,” I said and my tears started afresh.

“How shall I help it in future?” I asked after a while, during which my friend had been silent.

“Help it?” she said cheerfully. “You can’t help it but Jesus can.”

“But my impatience, and my pride,” I said, very downcast.

“‘Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; when I fall I shall arise.’ But there is no need you should fall, Daisy. Remember ’the Lord is able to make him stand’ may be said of every one of the Lord’s people.”

“But will He keep me from impatience, and take pride out of my heart? Why, I did not know it was there, Miss Cardigan.”

“Did He say ‘Whatsoever you shall ask in my name, I will do it?’ And when He has written ‘Whatsoever,’ are you going to write it over and put ‘anything not too hard’? Neither you nor me, Daisy?”

“Whatsoever, Miss Cardigan,” I said slowly.

“He said so. Are you going to write it over again?”

“No,” I said. “But then, may one have anything one asks for.”

“Anything in the world if it is not contrary to His will provided we ask in faith, nothing doubting. ’For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.’”

“But how can we know what is according to His will?”

“This is, at any rate,” said Miss Cardigan; “for He has commanded us to be holy as He is holy.”

“But other things?” I said. “How can one ask for everything ’in faith, nothing wavering?’ How can one be sure?”

“Only just this one way, Daisy, my dear,” Miss Cardigan answered; and I remember to this day the accent of her native land which touched every word. “If ye’re wholly the Lord’s wholly, mind, ye’ll not like aught but what the Lord likes; ye’ll know what to ask for, and ye’ll know the Lord will give it to you: that is, if ye want it enough. But a ‘double-minded man is unstable in all his ways;’ and his prayers can’t hit the mark, no more than a gun that’s twisted when it’s going off.”

“Then,” I began and stopped, looking at her with my eyes full of tears.

“Ay,” she said, “just so. There’s no need that you nor me should be under the power of the evil one, for we’re free. The Lord’s words arn’t too good to be true: every one of ’em is as high as heaven; and there isn’t a sin nor an enemy but you and I may be safe from, if we trust the Lord.”

I do not remember any more of the conversation. I only know that the sun rose on my difficulties, and the shadows melted away. I had a happy evening with my dear old friend, and went home quite heart-whole.