without discussing the question whether he was saved or not.

"Susan Posey, child, what is your trouble?"

Poor Susan was in the state of unstable equilibrium which the least touch
upsets, and fell to crying. It took her some time to get down the waves
of emotion so that speech would live upon them. At last it ventured
out,--showing at intervals, like the boat rising on the billow, sinking
into the hollow, and climbing again into notice.

"O Mr. Grid-ley--I can't--I can't--tell you or--any-body--what 's the
mat-mat-matter. My heart will br-br-break."

"No, no, no, child," said Mr. Gridley, sympathetically stirred a little
himself by the sight of Susan in tears and sobbing and catching her
breath, "that mustn't be, Susan Posey. Come off the steps, Susan Posey,
and stop dusting the books,--I can finish them,--and tell me all abort
your troubles. I will try 'to help you out of them, and I have begun to
think I know how to help young people pretty well. I have had some
experience at it."

But Susan cried and sobbed all the more uncontrollably and convulsively.
Master Gridley thought he had better lead her at once to what he felt
pretty sure was the source of her grief, and that, when she had had her
cry out, she would probably make the hole in the ice he had broken big
enough in a very few minutes.

"I think something has gone wrong between you and your friend, the young
gentleman with whom you are in intimate relations, my child, and I think
you had better talk freely with me, for I can perhaps give you a little
counsel that will be of service."

Susan cried herself quiet at last. "There's nobody in the world like
you, Mr. Gridley," she said, "and I've been wanting to tell you something
ever so long. My friend--Mr. Clem--Clement Lindsay does n't care for me
as he used to,--I know he does n't. He hasn't written to me for--I don't
know but it's a month. And O Mr. Gridley! he's such a great man, and I
am such a simple person,--I can't help thinking--he would be happier with
somebody else than poor little Susan Posey!"

This last touch of self-pity overcame her, as it is so apt to do those
who indulge in that delightful misery, and she broke up badly, as a
horse-fancier would say, so that it was some little time before she
recovered her conversational road-gait.

"O Mr. Gridley," she began again, at length, "if I only dared to tell him
what I think,--that perhaps it would be happier for us both--if we could