----"

"Oh, I never thought of those things," admitted Janice. "There isn't
really anything for young people to do in the Poketown Church, I know.
But outside----"

"And what can be done outside?" asked the minister, and perhaps he
winced a little at the confidence in Janice's voice when she spoke of
the church system which kept the young people at a distance.

"Why, you know, there are the boys. Boys like Marty--my cousin. He goes
to school now, it's true; but he's down town just as much as ever at
night. And there's no good place for the boys to go--to congregate, I
mean."

"Humph! I thought once of opening the church basement to them," murmured
Mr. Middler. "But--but there was opposition. Some thought the boys might
take advantage of our good nature and be ill-behaved."

"So they continue to hang around the hotel sheds and the stores,"
pursued Janice, thoughtfully, without meaning to be critical. "Boys
_will_ get together in a club, or gang. Daddy used to say they were
naturally gregarious, like some birds."

"Yes," said the minister, slowly.

"They ought to have a nice, warm, well-lighted room where they could go,
and play games, and read,--with a circulating library attached. Of
course, a gymnasium would be too much to even _dream_ of, at first! Why!
wouldn't that be fine? And isn't it practical? _Do_ say it is!"

"I do not know whether it is practicable or not, Janice," said the
minister, slowly, yet smiling at her. "But the thought is inspired. You
shall have all the help I can give you. It _ought_ to be in the
church----"

"No. That would scare the boys away," interposed Janice, with finality.

"Why, my dear? You speak as though the church was a bogey!"

"Well--but--dear Mr. Middler! Just ask the boys themselves. How many of
them love to go to church--even to Sunday School? I mean the boys that
hang about the village stores at night."

"It is so--it is so," he admitted, with a sigh.

From this sprang the idea of the Poketown Free Library. It was of slow
growth, and there is much more to be said about it; but Janice found her
personal troubles much easier to bear when she began trying to interest
the people of Poketown in the reading-room idea.

And didn't Mr. Middler bear something of his own away from that visit to
The Overlook--something that glowed in his heart? He preached quite a
different kind of a sermon that next Sunday, and the text was one of the
most helpful and _living_ in all the Ne