about lined faces--and yourself at eighty. Eighty is a long way off,
Rose-Marie--for you!"

The girl joined, a trifle shamefacedly, in the older woman's laughter.

"I reckon," she agreed, "that I do take myself too seriously! But--well,
there are families that I'm just dying to help--families that I've come
in contact with through the"--again she was forced to a slight
deceit--"through the Settlement House. I'm sure that I could help them if
you'd let me visit them, in their own homes. I'm sure that I'd be able to
reform ever so many people if you'd only let me go out and find them. The
city missionary who spoke once in our church, back home, told of
wonderful things that he'd done--of lives that he'd actually made over.
Of course, I couldn't do the sort of work he did, but I'm sure--if you'd
only give me a chance--" She paused.

The Superintendent was silent for a moment. And then--

"Maybe you're right, dear," she said, "and maybe you're wrong. Maybe I am
cramping your ambitions--maybe I am hampering your mental and spiritual
growth. But then, again, maybe I'm right! And I'm inclined to think that
I am right. I'm inclined to adhere to my point, that it will be better
for you to wait, until you're older, before you go into many
tenements--before you do much reforming outside of the Settlement House.
When you're older and more experienced I'll be glad to let you do
anything--"

She was interrupted by a rap upon the door. It was a gentle rap, but it
was, above all, a masculine one. There was real gladness on her face as
she rose to answer it.

"I didn't expect Billy Blanchard--he thought he had an all-night case,"
she told Rose-Marie. "How nice!"

But Rose-Marie was rising to her feet.

"I don't think that I'll stay," she said hurriedly, "I'm too tired, after
all! I think--"

The Superintendent had paused in her progress to the door. Her voice was
surprisingly firm, of a sudden; firmer than Rose-Marie had ever heard it.

"No, my dear," said the Superintendent, "you're not too tired! You just
don't want to be civil to a very fine boy--who has had a harder day than
either of us. You came to the slums, Rose-Marie, to help people--to show
that you were a Christian. I think that you can show it, to-night, by
forgetting a silly quarrel that happened weeks ago--by forgetting the
words Dr. Blanchard said that he never really meant, inside. If he
thought that these people weren't worth it, do you suppose he'd stay
h