the Gospel for the day. It was Refreshing Sunday, so it was not a difficult one; the children were ready with the answers till the application came, and then Jessie had again to help them, which she did by reading the printed answers and making them repeat them after her, word for word. While she was doing this with Mary Smithers, who certainly was dulness itself, at one end of the class, there was a whispering at the other, and she saw two children trying on each other's gloves, and she quickly put an end to that, and went on with another question and answer. The moment her eye was off Susan Bray and Lily Bell, however, they began comparing some gay cards. Jessie turned on them: "You are playing with those things. Give them to me."

Lily Bell began to cry, and Susan pertly said, "It's our markers, teacher."

"I don't care. I won't have you idle. Give them to me, this instant."

Just then the church bell began to ring, and there was a general moving; but Jessie would not be beaten, and caused the two cards to be given up to her. The girls both cried with all their might while she was marking the class down, and, as they no doubt intended, Miss Manners came to see what was the matter.

"Please, ma'am, teacher has taken away our markers, and we shan't know where our Psalms is."

"They were playing with them," said Jessie.

"We wasn't. We was finding our Psalms," said Susan.

"You should not have done so while Miss Hollis was teaching," said Miss Manners. "I hope, if she is good enough to give them back to you, that you will attend better in the afternoon."

Jessie felt it all a little flat and disappointing, all the more so that Amy Lee joined her, and talked all the way to church about the children, who had all passed through her hands when she was a pupil teacher, telling all their little tiresome ways. It seemed to rub off all the gloss, and to change her scheme of feeding the young lambs for the Great Shepherd's sake into a mere struggle with tiresome, fidgety children.

Still her hopes and her spirits rose again at church. She had her expounding of the Sower on her mind, and hoped yet to deliver it when she went to afternoon school; but there proved to be the Catechism and a whole set of hymns to be said, and questions to be asked about them. These questions did not come very readily to such an unpractised tongue as hers, and she thought she could lead off into the discourse she had thought out over the Bible. But she had hardly gone through twenty words before she saw a squabble going on between Lily Bell and Mary Smithers, and she had no sooner separated them, and taken up the thread of her discourse about grace being sown and watered in our hearts, than Susan Bray popped up up with "Please, teacher, it's time to read to us—Its Miss Angelina," pointing to a little gay story-book.

"You should not be rude, and interrupt," said Jessie; whereupon Susan pouted, the two idlest began to play with each other's fingers, and, as soon as she paused to take breath, Lily Bell jumped up, and brought her the book open.

She had to give up the point, and begin to read something that did not seem to her nearly so improving as her own discourse, as it was all about a doll left behind upon a heath; but the children listened to it eagerly.

Was this all the good she was to do by sacrificing all her time on Sunday? Like Grace, she felt much inclined to give it up, and all the more when Florence Cray came into the work-room the next morning, laughing and saying—

"Well, the impudence of some folk! There was that there little Bray! I hear that she should say that Miss Hollis was put to teach her, and she warn't agoing to care for one as wasn't a lady."

"I can make her mind me fast enough," said Amy.

"O, you are bred to be a teacher," said Florence; "that doesn't count. Nobody else should trouble themselves with the tiresome little ungrateful things. I'm sure I wouldn't; but then I don't set up for goodness, nor want to be thought better than other folk."

Jessie had known that something of this kind would be said, and was prepared for it; but the child's speech vexed her sorely. However, she said—

"I'm not going to be beat by a chit like that," and at that moment Miss Lee came in, and that kind of chatter ceased.

But Jessie's cheeks burned over her work, and she thought how foolish she had been to let her fancy for doing good, and trying to live up to the sermon, lead her where she was allowed to do nothing, but get herself teased and insulted, right and left.

Should she give up? That would look so silly. Yes, but would it not serve Miss Manners right for giving her such stupid, unspiritual kind of teaching to do, and also serve the children right for their pertness and ingratitude?

No, she could not give up in this way. She had begun, and she must go on, at least till she had some reason for giving up respectably and civilly—only she wished she had known how unlike it was to what she had expected before she had undertaken it!

Then she was sensible of a certain odd, uppish, self-asserting feeling within her. She used to have it in old times, but she had learnt to distrust it, and to know that it generally came when she was in a bad way.

Was she thinking of pleasing herself, or of offering a little work to please God, and try to let the good seed turn to good fruit? Ah! but was it all a mistake? Was becoming a mark for Susan Bray to worry, doing any good at all?

CHAPTER IV.

TEACHER AMY.

It was a pleasant sight for Amy when poor little Edwin Smithers's pale face brightened up, as she opened his door.

He was not like the rough little monkey she had known at the infant school, who had only seemed to want to learn as little, and to play as many tricks, as he could. In the hospital, the attention kind people had paid him had quickened up his understanding, and mended his manners. He had been petted and amused there, and the being left alone in the dull cottage was a sad trial to him. His mother had regular work, and so had his elder brother, but this kept them out all day from eight till five, except that Mrs. Smithers kept Friday to do her own washing in. She was obliged to be away even at dinner time, as her work lay far from home, and she gave her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Rowe, a shilling a week to keep up the fire, look in on the sick boy, and give him his dinner.

She was unlucky in her neighbour. Many women would have gladly given far more kind service for no pay at all, but they were too far off, and Mrs. Rowe made it a rule to "do nothing for nothing."

His brother and sisters came in for a little while at twelve, their dinner time, but they wanted to go out to play, and had no notion of amusing him; indeed he was glad when they went away; Charlie clumped about so, and made such a noise, and little Jenny would take away his picture books or the toys that had been given him in the hospital.

Then Polly would call her a naughty girl, and snatch them from her, and so his little wooden horse lost its head, and his railway train was uncoupled, and one wheel pulled off; and when old Mrs. Rowe found him crying, all she said was, "Dear! dear! don't ye fret now, don't ye!" and when that did not make him stop crying, she said he was a bad boy to make such a work about nothing. When she was a girl,