him in his study, and having a private talk?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Dennis' face grew stern.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was nothing for it but to lead this exquisite bit of flesh and blood, in her dainty summer toilet, before that rough and rollicking class of boys, old enough, some of them, to be called young men, but