ideas badly enough. Two or three of them are members of the church, I am sure. That Allie March is, but she has no ideas on any subject; you can see that in the grammar class."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER II.

FLOSSY "BEGINS."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Have you Bibles?" she asked them.

"No."

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

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

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

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

Flossy laughed.

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

What an awkward way they