o write out your
report for the paper? I wouldn't, Marion. I would go to the meeting. I
am going."

"No," said Marion in answer to the question, and smiling at the thought.
How strange it would seem to her to spend _this_ Sabbath evening thus.
How many had she so spent!

"I am glad to-morrow is the last day," she said, sinking into a chair;
"I want to go home."

And Flossy and Ruth looked at each other, and sighed. How well these
girls understood one another! Why can't people be frank and speak so
that they can be understood?

Suppose Marion had said: "No, I am _not_ going to write my report, I am
going to pray." Suppose she had said; "Yes, I want to go home to
_practice_."

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

It is a troublesome fact that, even when people are very much
interested, and very eager over important themes, commonplace and
comparatively trivial duties, will intrude, and insist upon being done
at that moment. For instance, our girls were obliged to spend the whole
of Monday morning in packing their trunks and satchels, returning their
furniture, settling for their tents, and the like; in short, breaking up
housekeeping and getting ready to go back to the civilized world. Flossy
and Ruth dispatched their part at the hotel promptly and came over to
the grounds to help the others. They discussed the meeting while they
worked.

"If we hadn't been idiots," Marion said, "we should have attended that
normal class and been graduating, this morning, instead of being down
here, at work at our trunks and unknown to fame."

"Well, you wouldn't go," Ruth answered. "Don't you know you declared
that was too much like work, and you hadn't an idea of learning
anything?"

"Oh, yes," said Marion. "I remember a great many things I have said,
that I would quite as soon forget."

By dint of eager bustling from one point to another, the work was
accomplished by noon, and all the girls were ready for the afternoon
service, which all seemed equally eager to attend. When they reached the
stand they looked about them in surprise and dismay.

"Everybody is gone!" said Flossy, "only look! There are ever so many
unoccupied seats!"

Marion laughed.

"And ever so many that are occupied," she said. "My child, you have
been so used to counting audiences by the thousands, that sixteen or
seventeen hundred people look rather commonplace to you. However, there
are more than that number here, I think."

It so