y only be done in one way; by going and doing
likewise.

This talk of theirs gives one link; it shows you how easily and
naturally they came to have to do with the Ingrahams; how they
belonged in one sphere and drew to one centre; how simply things
happen, after all, when they have any business to happen.

Somebody speaks of the ascent of a lofty church spire, as giving
such a wonderful glimpse of the unity of a great city; showing its
converging movements, its net-work of connection,--its human
currents swayed and turned by intelligible drifts of purpose; all
which, when one is down among them, seem but whirls of a confusing
and distracting medley; a heaping and a rushing together of many
things and much conflicting action; where the wonder is that it
stays together at all, or that one part plays and fits in with any
other to harmony of service. If we could climb high enough, and see
deep enough, to read a spiritual panorama in like manner, we should
look into the mystery of the intent that builds the worlds and works
with "birth and death and infinite motion" to evolve the wonders of
all human and angelic history. We should only marvel, then, at what
we, with our little bit of wayward free will, hinder; not at what
God gently and mightily forecasts and brings to pass.

To find another link, we must go away and look in elsewhere.

CHAPTER X.

FILLMER AND BYLLES.

It was a hot morning in the heart of summer. The girls, coming in to
their work, after breakfasts of sour rolls, cheap, raw, bitter
coffee and blue milk, with a greasy relish, perhaps, of sausage,
bacon, fried potatoes, or whatever else was economical and
untouchable,--with the world itself frying in the fervid blaze of a
sun rampant for fifteen hours a day,--saw in the windows early
peaches, cool salads, and fresh berries; yellow and red bananas in
mellow, heavy clusters; morning bouquets lying daintily on wet
mosses; pale, beryl-green, transparent hothouse grapes hanging their
globes of sweet, refrigerant juices before toil-parched,
unsatisfied, feverish lips.

Let us hope that it did them good; it is all we can do now about it.

Up in the work-room of a great dress-making establishment were heaps
of delicate cambric, Victoria lawn, piques, muslins, piles of
frillings, Hamburg edgings, insertions, bands. Machines were
tripping and buzzing; cutters were clipping at the tables; the
forewoman was moving about, directing here, hurrying there,