ay
from the chapels to the churches, like Miss Elisabeth and Master
Christopher there. They didn't read no Commandments in our chapel as
long as Miss Farringdon was alive; I should have liked to see the
minister as would have dared to suggest such a thing. She wouldn't stand
Ritualism, poor Miss Farringdon wouldn't."

"Here we are at home," said Mrs. Bateson, stopping at her own door; "I
must go in and see how the master's getting on."

"And I hope you'll find him better, Mrs. Bateson, I only hope so; but
you never know how things are going to turn out when folks begin to
sicken--especially at Mr. Bateson's age. And he hasn't been looking
himself for a long time. I says to Hankey only a few weeks ago,
'Hankey,' says I, 'it seems to me as if the Lord was thinking on Mr.
Bateson; I hope I may be mistaken, but that's how it appears to me.' And
so it did."

On the afternoon of that very Sunday Christopher took Elisabeth for a
walk in Badgering Woods. The winter was departing, and a faint pink
flush on the bare trees heralded the coming of spring; and Elisabeth,
being made of material which is warranted not to fret for long, began to
feel that life was not altogether dark, and that it was just possible
she might--at the end of many years--actually enjoy things again.
Further, Christopher suited her perfectly--how perfectly she did not
know as yet--and she spent much time with him just then.

Those of us who have ever guessed the acrostics in a weekly paper, have
learned that sometimes we find a solution to one of the lights, and say,
"This will do, if nothing better turns up before post-time on Monday";
and at other times we chance upon an answer which we know at once,
without further research, to be indisputably the right one. It is so
with other things than acrostics: there are friends whom we feel will do
very well for us if nobody--or until somebody--better turns up; and
there are others whom we know to be just the right people for the
particular needs of our souls at that time. They are the right answers
to the questions which have been perplexing us--the correct solutions to
the problems over which we have been puzzling our brains. So it was with
Elisabeth: Christopher was the correct answer to life's current
acrostic; and as long as she was with Christopher she was content.

"Don't you get very tired of people who have never found the fourth
dimension?" she asked him, as they sat upon a stile in Badgering Woods.