ay
and count the seats, but she found that which so arrested her attention
before she was half-way down the central aisle that she forgot all about
it, and there was never any time afterward for that work. I mean to tell
you about that day when I get to it. The grand stand was down here in
front of all these seats, spacious and convenient, the pillars thereof
festooned with flags from many nations. The large piano occupied a
central point; the speaker's desk at its feet, in the central of the
stand; the reporters' tables and chairs just below.

"I ought to have one of those chairs," Marion said, as they passed the
convenient little space railed off from the rest of the audience. "Just
as if I were not a real reporter because I write in plain good English,
instead of racing over the paper and making queer little tracks that
only one person in five thousand can read. If I were not the most
modest and retiring of mortals I would go boldly up and claim a seat."

"What is to be next?" Ruth asked. "Are we supposed to be devoted to all
these meetings? I thought we were only going to one now and then. We
won't be alive in two weeks from now if we pin ourselves down here."

"In the way that we have been doing," chimed in Eurie. "Just think here
we have been to every single meeting they have had yet, except the one
last night and one this morning."

"We are going to skip every one that we possibly can," said Marion. "But
the one that is to come just now is decidedly the one that we can't. The
speaker is Dr. Calkins, of Buffalo. I heard him four years ago, and it
is one of the few sermons that I remember to this day. I always said if
I ever had another chance I should certainly hear him again. I like his
subject this afternoon, too. It is appropriate to my condition."

"What is the subject?" Flossy asked, with a sudden glow of interest.

"It is what a Christian can learn from a heathen. I'm the heathen, and
I presume Dr Calkins is the Christian. So he is to see what he can learn
from me, I take it, and naturally I am anxious to know. Flossy isn't
interested in that; I can see it from her face. She knows she isn't a
heathen--she is a good proper little Christian. But it is your duty, my
dear, to find what you can learn from me."

"What can he possibly make of such a subject as that?" Ruth asked,
curiously. "I don't believe I want to hear him. Is he so very talented,
Marion?"

"I don't know. Haven't the least idea whether he