; you're better than any of the fine ladies
in New York. Mr. Millard isn't good enough for you. But I just know he
was taken with you."

"Do you think I'm going to have my head turned by bows and fine speeches
that have been made to five hundred other women?"

"There never was any other woman in New York as fine as you, Phillida."

"Not among your acquaintance, and in your opinion, my dear, seeing you
hardly know any other young woman but me."

"I know more than you think I do. If you had any common sense,
Phillida, you'd make the most of Aunt Harriet, and marry some man that
would furnish you with a horse and a carriage of your own. But you
won't. You're just a goosey. You spend your time on the urchins down in
Mackerelville. The consequence is you'll never get married, and I shall
have you on my hands an old maid who never improved her opportunities."

"What stuff!" laughed Phillida.

"You've got a fine figure--a splendid figure," proceeded the younger,
"and a face that is sweet and charming, if I do say it. It's a dreadful
waste of woman. You wrap your talent in a Sunday-school lesson-paper and
bury it down in Mackerelville."

At this point Mrs. Callender put away her elaborate hand-finished
stocking, saying softly:

"Agatha, why do you tease Phillida so?"

"Because she's such a goose," said the younger sister, stubbornly.

Twenty minutes later Agatha, looking from her bedside in the dark corner
of the room, saw her sister kneeling by a chair near the fireside. The
sight of Phillida at prayer always awed her. Agatha herself was
accustomed to say, before jumping into bed, a conventional little
prayer, very inclusive as to subjects embraced, and very thin in
texture, but Phillida's prayers were different. Agatha regarded the form
of her sister, well developed and yet delicately graceful, now more
graceful than ever as she knelt in her long night-dress, her two hands
folded naturally the one across the other, and her head bowed. As she
arranged the bed, Agatha followed mentally what she imagined to be the
tenor of the prayer--she fancied that Phillida was praying to be saved
from vanity and worldliness; she knew that each of the little urchins in
the mission Sunday-school class was prayed for by name. She turned away
a moment, and then caught sight of Phillida as she unclasped her hands
and rested them on the chair. Agatha knew that when Phillida changed her
position at the close of her prayer it was to recit