house door and emerged into the street
again, she was not completely mistress of herself, but just in
the state when she would be very affable or very quarrelsome, as
circumstances should seem to point.

And as she put her foot upon the threshold, Pattie, wheeling little
Maud, and with her heart full of Tom, came along the pavement.

Now Pattie was a staunch little abstainer; all the more staunch
because of her childhood's memories. Memories of nights when, piteous
and shivering, she had waited outside a public-house door, to lead
home her poor sorrowful mother, bound indeed by Satan these many
years, by the chain of strong drink. Memories of days when on bended
knee she had pleaded with that mother to give up the drink, and had
been answered by a shake of the head, and a murmured, "I can't, child,
I can't! I would if I could."

And Pattie had known of no remedy, no saving power, till she knew Tom,
and Tom had said, "Pray for her, my girl. Christ can save her!"

So Pattie had prayed, not understanding how help could come, but
because Tom believed in it, and, strange answer as it seemed, an
illness had fallen upon her mother and she had been taken away to the
Workhouse Infirmary.

Pattie remembered to this day the very saucepan she was washing when
she realized that _this_ was the answer to her prayer, that her poor
mother had been saved from herself, and taken to a place where she
would be cared for, and kept from the terrible snare of drink.

"And now," Tom had said when she told him, "we must teach her about
the love of Jesus."

So month after month since then, Tom had gone regularly to the
Infirmary and read the gospel's message to Pattie's mother, for she
was still there and never likely to come out, and the poor woman had
come to look for him and to love him as her own son. Pattie wondered
sometimes whether he still went, but on the one occasion that she had
seen her mother since she gave Tom up, she had been too proud to ask.

Pattie never saw a woman come out of a public-house without an
involuntary shiver at her heart, and now here, before her very eyes,
came Tom's own sister, Jim Adams's wife!

Pattie recognised her in an instant, and she recognised Pattie, and
though Pattie would only too willingly have passed on, Jane stood in
her path and barred the way.

"Well! Pattie Paul," said she insolently. "I want to know what you
mean by it."

"I don't know what _you_ mean," said Pattie, trying to pass