nd No. 15
stood midway between the clanging and the culture.

But Seaton Crescent presented much more than a double row of
boarding-houses. Passing out of its narrow confines, it curved round
one side of the park bordered by a grand row of elms. Here the houses
were mansions, set back in fine old gardens that had smiled there many
a summer before the boarding-houses were built. The last house in the
row, Crescent Court, was of a newer date. It was a pretentious
apartment house, set up on the corner commanding a view of the campus
and the park. Just far enough removed from the boarding-house region
was Crescent Court to be quite beyond the noise of the street-cars and
the shoppers, and consequently its inmates felt themselves far removed
from the work-a-day world.

In one of its front rooms, a little rose-shaded boudoir, luxuriously
furnished, sat a lady. She had been handsome once, but her face now
bore the marks of age--not the beautiful lines of years gracefully
accepted, but the scars of a long battle against their advance. She
wore a gay flowered dressing-gown much too youthful in style, her
slippered toes were stretched out to the crackling fire, and a cup of
fragrant tea was in her hand. Her cosy surroundings did not seem to
contribute much to her comfort, however, for her face had a look of
settled melancholy, and she glanced up frowningly at a girl standing by
the window.

"I sometimes think you are growing positively frivolous, Beth," she
complained. "I don't understand you, in view of the strict religious
training both your aunt and I have given you. When I was your age, all
church-work appealed strongly to me."

The girl looked far across the stretches of the park, now growing
purple and shadowy in the autumn dusk. Her gray, star-like eyes were
big and wistful. She did not see the winding walks, nor the row of
russet elms with the twinkling lights beneath. She saw instead an
old-fashioned kitchen with a sweet-faced woman sitting by the window,
the golden glow of a winter sunset gilding her white hair. There was
an open Bible on her knee, and the girl felt again the power of the
words she spoke concerning the things that are eternal. She breathed a
deep sigh of regret for the brightness of that day so long ago, and
wondered if her companion's accusation was true.

"I didn't mean to be frivolous," she said, turning towards the lady in
the chair. "I do want to be some use in the world. But