ing back some joints.

"But, Mother, why didn't you let me know before? Of course I'll help
you."

"The worst of it is, Evelyn, we want a great deal of help."

"Well, never mind; I'm ready to give you a great deal of help... as
much as I can. And here is the Prioress."

The Prioress stood resting, leaning on the door-handle, and Evelyn
was by her side in an instant.

"Thank you, my child, thank you," and she took Evelyn's arm.

"I've heard of your trouble, dear Mother, and am determined to help
you; so you must sit down and tell me about it."

"Reverend Mother ought not to be about," said Mother Philippa. "On
Monday night she was so ill we had to get up to pray for her."

"I'm better to-day. If it hadn't been for this new trouble--" As the
Prioress was about to explain she paused for breath, and Evelyn
said:

"Another time. What does it matter to whom you owe the money? You owe
it to somebody, and he is pressing you for it--isn't that so? Of
course it is, dear Mother. Well, I've come to bring you good news.
You remember my promise to arrange a concert tour as soon as I was
free? Everything has been arranged; we start next Thursday, and with
fair hope of success."

"How good of you!"

"You will succeed, Evelyn; and as Mother Philippa says, it is very
good of you."

The Prioress spoke with hesitation, and Evelyn guessed that the nuns
were thinking of their present necessities.

"I can let you have a hundred pounds easily, and I could let you have
more if it were not--" The pause was sufficiently dramatic to cause
the nuns to press her to go on speaking, saying that they must know
they were not taking money which she needed for herself. "I wasn't
thinking of myself, but of my poor people; they're so dependent upon
me, and I am so dependent upon them, even more than they are upon
me, for without them there would be no interest in my life, and
nothing for me to do except to sit in my drawing-room and look at the
wall paper and play the piano."

"We couldn't think of taking money which belongs to others. We shall
put our confidence in God. No, Evelyn, pray don't say any more."

But Evelyn insisted, saying she would manage in such a way that her
poor people should lack nothing. "Of course they lack a great deal,
but what I mean is, they'll lack nothing they've been in the habit
of receiving from me," and, speaking of their unfailing patience in
adversity, she said: "and their lives are always adversity."