ut the 'Lamb,' before," said
Desire, hesitatingly. "It seemed,--I don't know,--putting Him
_down_, somehow; making him tame; taking the grandness away that
made the gentleness any good. But,--'Tenderness;' that is beautiful!
Does it mean so in the other place? About taking away the sins,--do
you think?"

"'The Tenderness of God--the Compassion--that taketh away the sins
of the world?'" Mrs. Froke repeated, half inquiringly. "Jesus
Christ, God's Heart of Love toward man? I think it is so. I think,
child, thee has got thy crumb also, to-day."

But not all yet.

Pretty soon, they heard the front door open, and Uncle Titus come
in. Another step was behind his; and Kenneth Kincaid's voice was
speaking, about some book he had called to take.

Desire's face flushed, and her manner grew suddenly flurried.

"I must go," she said, starting up; yet when she got to the door,
she paused and delayed.

The voices were talking on, in the study; somehow, Desire had last
words also, to say to Mrs. Froke.

She was partly shy about going past that open door, and partly
afraid they might not notice her if she did. Back in her girlish
thought was a secret suggestion that she was pushing at all the time
with a certain self-scorn and denial, that it might happen that she
and Kenneth Kincaid would go out at the same moment; if so, he would
walk up the street with her, and Kenneth Kincaid was one of the few
persons whom Desire Ledwith thoroughly believed in and liked. "There
was no Mig about him," she said. It is hazardous when a girl of
seventeen makes one of her rare exceptions in her estimate of
character in favor of a man of six and twenty.

Yet Desire Ledwith hated "nonsense;" she wouldn't have anybody
sending her bouquets as they did to Agatha and Florence; she had an
utter contempt for lavender pantaloons and waxed moustaches; but for
Kenneth Kincaid, with his honest, clear look at life, and his high
strong purpose, to say friendly things,--tell her a little now and
then of how the world looked to him and what it demanded,--this
lifted her up; this made it seem worth while to speak and to hear.

So she was very glad when Uncle Titus saw her go down the hall,
after she had made up her mind that that way lay her straight path,
and that things contrived were not things worth happening,--and
spoke out her name, so that she had to stop, and turn to the open
doorway and reply; and Kenneth Kincaid came over and held out his
hand to