ith a paper in his hand. That important
little paper held comfort or discomfort for ever so many people. Every
one bent forward to listen. It was so still all over the church that you
might have heard a pin drop. The Bishop began with a little speech about
the virtues of patience and contentment, and how important it was that
everybody should be quite satisfied whatever happened to them. Then he
opened the paper.

"Brother Johnson, Middlebury," he read. Middlebury was a favorite
parish, so Brother Johnson looked pleased, and Sister Johnson was
congratulated by the friends who sat near her. "Brother Woodward, Little
Falls; Brother Ashe, Plunxet; Brother Allen, Claxton Corners." And so
on. Some faces grew bright, some sad, as the reading proceeded. At last
"Brother Forcythe, Redding; Brother Martin, Valley Hill," was announced.
A quiver of disappointment went over the church, and a little girl
sitting in the gallery began to cry.

"My dear, my dear," whispered her mother, much distressed at her sobs
and gulps. People looked up from below; but Mary could not stop. She
took her mother's handkerchief and held it tight over her mouth; but the
sobs would come. Her heart was half-broken at the idea of leaving Valley
Hill and going to that horrid Redding, where nobody wanted to go.

Old Mrs. Clapp, from behind, reached over and gave her a bunch of
fennel. But the fennel only made Mary cry harder. In Redding, she was
sure, would be no kind Mrs. Clapp, no "meeting-house seed;" and her sobs
grew thicker at the thought.

"I observe that your little daughter seems to be distressed," said
Bishop Judson, as Mrs. Forcythe led the sobbing Mary down from the
gallery at the end of service. "Children of her age form strong
attachments to places, I am aware. But it is well to break them before
they become unduly strong. Here we have no continuing city, you know."

"Yes," said poor Mrs. Forcythe, with a meek sigh. She had been married
fourteen years, and this was her seventh move.

"Redding--hum--is a desirable place in some respects," went on the
Bishop. "There is a great work to do there,--a great work. It requires a
man of Brother Forcythe's energy to meet it. Mistress Mary here will
doubtless find consolation in the thought that her father's sphere of
usefulness is--h'm--enlarged."

"But we shan't have any garden," faltered Mary, "Tilly Brooks, who was
there before, says it isn't a bit nice. She never saw a flower all the
time she