e laborers from whose
toils our wealth comes; and we owe them something."

"Well! you pay them something, don't you?"

"I mean morally. We owe our efforts to instruct their children, and to
elevate and guide them. Lillie, I feel that it is wrong for us to use
wealth merely as a means of self-gratification. We ought to labor for
those who labor for us. We ought to deny ourselves, and make some
sacrifices of ease for their good."

"You dear old preachy creature!" said Lillie. "How good you must be!
But, really, I haven't the smallest vocation to be a missionary,--not
the smallest. I can't think of any thing that would induce me to take
a long, hot ride in the sun, and to sit in that stived-up room with
those common creatures."

John looked grave. "Lillie," he said, "you shouldn't speak of any of
your fellow-beings in that heartless way."

"Well now, if you are going to scold me, I'm sure I don't want to go.
I'm sure, if everybody that stays at home, and has comfortable times,
Sundays, instead of going out on missions, is heartless, there are a
good many heartless people in the world."

"I beg your pardon, my darling. I didn't mean, dear, that _you_ were
heartless, but that what you said _sounded_ so. I knew you didn't
really mean it. I didn't ask you, dear, to go to _work_,--only to be
company for me."

"And I ask you to stay at home, and be company for _me_. I'm sure it
is lonesome enough here, and you are off on business almost all your
days; and you might stay with me Sundays. You could hire some poor,
pious young man to do all the work over there. There are plenty of
them, dear knows, that it would be a real charity to help, and that
could preach and pray better than you can, I know. I don't think a man
that is busy all the week ought to work Sundays. It is breaking the
Sabbath."

"But, Lillie, I am _interested_ in my Sunday school. I know all my
people, and they know me; and no one else in the world could do for
them what I could."

"Well, I should think you might be interested in _me_: nobody else can
do for me what you can, and I want you to stay with me. That's just
the way with you men: you don't care any thing about us after you get
us."

"Now, Lillie, darling, you know that isn't so."

"It's just so. You care more for your old missionary work, now,
than you do for me. I'm sure I never knew that I'd married a
home-missionary."

"Darling, please, now, don't laugh at me, and try to make me selfish