kind and
thoughtful of us. Your sabbath-school class sent you their New
Year's gift yesterday; I know you will value it. Old Aunt Cutts
is knitting you a pair of blue stockings; the dear old lady is
taking so much comfort out of the work, that she has made them
large enough for you to put both of your little feet into one;
and Kate Sanders brought me her white feather to ask me if, now
you had to dress stylish, I didn't think you could make use of
it. I thanked her, and told her that you were wearing a hat so
small I was sure the feather was too large for it. I think it
was quite a relief to her, for that soiled and bedraggled
feather is to her still, 'the apple of her eye.'

"So, my dear parish child, you have a great burden of
responsibility to carry; but your mother knows how easily and
how honorably it will be borne."

Marion read this letter with a variety of feelings. It had never been
the home way to make her religious character a separate and distinct
thing. It dominated the whole home-life. Do right, _do right_! She had
almost never been told, do not do wrong, but always do right, and this
meant simply and only, be a Christian. It was such a noble way to step
upward from the beginning; not easy, oh, no, far from that, so often
doing wrong in spite of precept and example, so often hesitating,
until the delay weakened the power of doing right; yet so often, with
hope and prayer to aid her, planting her foot firmly on the upper
rung, singing as she went.

Since she had been in school her life had been so changed, such
different temptations to do wrong, such different helps to do right,
that she had thought little of her influence upon her companions. The
letter of her mother was almost a shock, as, for the first time, it
brought up to her what she felt had been her neglect.

All these months here, and what had she ever done or said that would
tell for Jesus? Three room-mates; had she ever tried, from the first
of her coming among them, to help them into a Christian life? To be
sure they had their set times for private devotions, time required by
the rules, when every pupil was expected to read her Bible, if nothing
more. That they had all done, and Dorothy had "entered into her
closet, and shut her door." There could be no doubt that she had
prayed to her Father which is in secret, and her Father which seeth in
secret had rewarded her openly; for, often, when she came back among
t