Interrupted

se suspiciously red eyes, and a certain pitiful droop of the eyelids, Mrs. Foster would hardly have vent

o describe her. I believe descriptions of people never read as the writer intended they

d said that she was foolish. She would never earn her living there in the world; the academy at South Plains was too much run down ever to revive, and there never had been a decent school there anyway, and they

known human kind than was Mrs. Foster. Had they but known it, there were communities which could have afforded to support her for the sake of the power she would have been in their midst. Nay, there were fathers who could have afforded to make her independent for life, so far as the needs of this world were c

ught she was utterly foolish for attempting anything so hopeless, were supplemented by the people who thought she could not be

his family, about his children. Then she heard much of Claire, and grew interested in her, in a manner which seemed strange even to herself. And when at the funeral she first caught a glimpse of the pale face and earnest eyes of the girl who looked only, and with a certain watchful air at her mother, as if she would shield her from every touch that she could, Mrs. Foster had murmured under her breath, "I think this is the girl I want with me." She prayed about it a good deal during the next few days, and grew sure of it, and waited only to make the way plain, so that she could ventu

ought because there is no leader! It stands to reason that I, in my poverty and obscurity, down in that out-of-the-way village,

d when called to leave his great meeting, where it seemed hardly possible to do without him, and go to

it would be much better for her sad-hearted music-teacher to go to church than to remain glooming at home. There were, indeed, very special reasons on that particular evening. The Ansted girls' uncle was going to preach, she had heard, but should she go to this young Christian, of whom she as yet knew bu

Ella Ansted to church that evening? Miss Parsons was suffering with sick headache, and she herself could not leave her. There was no other available chaperone for the young girls, who we

for; the night was not stormy, if it was sullen, and the church was not a great distance away. She had been wont to accommodate people always, but she never felt so little l

m the teacher's lips, and she

rly changed my life is in this respect as in all others. I am my own mistress no lon

old herself that it was much better for the poor child to go; and that she mu

kness as possible. But the uncle! I do not know how to describe to you the difference between him and the dreary reader of the morning! It was not simply the difference in appearance and

almost ludicrous incongruity of the text as measured by the

care with which the men brushed a clear spot for their hats on the dusty seats, and the manner in which the women gathered the

cted it for Claire Benedict's special benefit. It was not what had been done,

that church which lay in his or her power; as fully, as unreservedly, as though that church, and that alone, represented his or her visible connection with the great Head. What solemn words were these, breaking in

r each listener-it is a peculiarity belonging to any real breaking of the bread of life-but Claire Benedict busied hersel

d even this smoking stove and wheezing organ, were nothing to her because she was to stay in South Plains but a few months, and her home was far away in the city, than she had to say that she had nothin

her individual working ground, to be preferred above her chief joy! Nay, the very red curtain that swayed back and forth, blown by the north wind which

his salary only last month. Claire listened, or appeared to, and answered directly put questions with some show of knowledge as to what was being discussed; but for herself, Dr. Ansted had gone out of her thoughts. She liked his voice, and his manner, and his elocutio

d to the victim of sick headache. She had been tender and low-voiced, and deft-handed, and untiring; but during the lulls when there had been comparative quiet, she had bowe

y lay in the hand of God. She did not ask for any special thought to be given to Claire Benedict; faith left that, too, in the hand of the Lord. She only asked that she should be ministered unto, and strengthened for the work, what

. The fire had been remember

a during the afternoon. Not that there had been anything in it about her heaped-up sorrows, or her miserable s

about resolves, or failures. Her uttered words were brief; were, indeed, only these: "Dear Christ, it