so much plum pies and torn dresses should step right into her path.
Then unconsciously she repeated:

"Content to fill a _little_ space
If _Thou_ art glorified."

_Could_ He be glorified, though, by such very little things? Yet
hadn't she wanted to gain an influence over Alfred and Julia, and
wasn't this her first opportunity; besides there was that verse:
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do--." At that point her thoughts took
shape in words.

"Well, sir, we'll see whether mother is the only woman in this world
after all. You tramp down cellar and bring me up that stone jar on the
second shelf, and we'll have those pies in the oven in a twinkling;
and that little woman in the corner, with two tears rolling down her
cheeks, may bring her white dress and my work-box and thimble, and put
two irons on the stove, and my word for it you shall both be ready by
three o'clock, spry and span, pies and all."

By three o'clock on the afternoon in question Ester was thoroughly
tired, but little plum pies by the dozen were cuddling among snowy
napkins in the willow basket, and Alfred's face was radiant as he
expressed his satisfaction, after this fashion:

"You're just jolly, Ester! I didn't know you could be so good. Won't
the boys chuckle over these pies, though? Ester, there's just seven
more than mother ever made me."

"Very well," answered Ester, gayly; "then there will be just seven
more chuckles this time than usual."

Julia expressed her thoughts in a way more like her. She surveyed
her skillfully-mended and beautifully smooth white dress with smiling
eyes; and as Ester tied the blue sash in a dainty knot, and stepped
back to see that all was as it should be, she was suddenly confronted
with this question:

"Ester, what does make you so nice to-day; you didn't ever used to be
so?"

How the blood rushed into Ester's cheeks as she struggled with her
desire to either laugh or cry, she hardly knew which. These were very
little things which she had done, and it was shameful that, in all the
years of her elder sisterhood, she had never sacrificed even so little
of her own pleasure before; yet it was true, and it made her feel like
crying--and yet there was rather a ludicrous side to the question, to
think that all her beautiful plans for the day had culminated in plum
pies and ironing. She stooped and kissed Julia on the rosy cheek, and
answered gently, moved by some inward impulse:

"I am trying to do all my wo