k him as it
did you, that the Homestead had an easier bargain of it than that good
namesake of yours had ever contemplated. If it paid treble or quadruple
rent, the dear mother would never find it out, nor grow a geranium the
less."

"No, she would not! But after all, the lace apprenticeships are poor
work."

"So they are, but Martin says there would be very little difficulty in
getting a private bill to enable the trustees to apply the sum otherwise
for the benefit of the Avonmouth girls."

"Then if I had written to him, it would have been all right! Oh, my
perverseness!"

"And, Rachel, now that money has been once so intended; suppose it
kept its destination. About L500 would put up a tidy little industrial
school, and you might not object to have a scholarship or two for some
of our little --th Highlander lassies whose fathers won't make orphans
of them for the regular military charities. What, crying, Rachel! Don't
you like it?"

"It is my dream. The very thing I wished and managed so vilely. If
Lovedy were alive! Though perhaps that is not the thing to wish. But I
can't bear taking your--"

"Hush! You can't do worse than separate your own from mine. This is no
part of the means I laid before Mr. Martin by way of proving myself
a responsible individual. I took care of that. Part of this is
prize-money, and the rest was a legacy that a rich old merchant put me
down for in a transport of gratitude because his son was one of the sick
in the bungalow where the shell came. I have had it these three or four
months, and wondered what to do with it."

"This will be very beautiful, very excellent. And we can give the
ground."

"I have thought of another thing. I never heard of an industrial school
where the great want was not food for industry. Now I know the Colonel
and Mr. Mitchell have some notion floating in their minds about getting
a house for convalescents down here, and it strikes me that this might
supply the work in cooking, washing, and so on. I think I might try what
they thought of it."

Rachel could only weep out her shame and thankfulness, and when Alick
reverently added that it was a scheme that would require much thought
and much prayer, the pang struck her to the heart--how little she had
prayed over the F. U. E. E. The prayer of her life had been for action
and usefulness, but when she had seen the shadow in the stream, her
hot and eager haste, her unconscious detachment from all that was
not