as an Irish quarter--if any man or boy
jostled "Our Sister" ever so lightly.

"Our Sister" used to smile at the fond credulity and blind worship of
these poor creatures. She was quite unconscious that her pale,
beautiful face, bending over them in sickness, was often mistaken for
the face of an angel. "Will there be more like you up yonder?"
exclaimed one poor girl, a Magdalene dying, thank God, at the foot of
the Cross; "if so, I'll be fine and glad to go."

"What do they do without you up there, honey?" asked another, an old
negro woman whose life had been as black as her skin; "they will be
wanting you bery much, I'm thinking;" and little Tim, dying of his
broken bones, whispered as "Our Sister" kissed him, "I am wishing you
could die first, Sister, and then it would be first-rate, seeing you
along with the gentry at the Gate;" for, to Tim's ignorant mind, the
gentry of heaven were somewhat formidable. "And what must I say to
them, plase your honor? when they come up and says 'Good-morning,
Tim;' but if Sister were along of them she would say, 'It is only Tim,
and he never learned manners nohow.'"

Raby would come down sometimes, bringing his wife with him, and talk
to Margaret about her work.

"You are very happy, dear," he said one day to her; "I have often
listened to your voice, and somehow it sounds satisfied."

"Yes," she returned, quietly, "quite satisfied. Does that sound
strange, Raby? Oh, how little we know what is good for us. Once I
thought Hugh's love was everything, but I see now I was wrong. I
suppose I should have been like other women if I had married him; but
I should not have tasted the joy I know now. Oh, how I love my
children--dirty, degraded, sinful as they are; how I love to spend
myself in their service. God has been good to us, and given us both
what He knew we wanted," and Raby's low "Amen" was sufficient answer.

There was one who would willingly have shared Margaret's work, and
that was Evelyn Selby; but her place was in the world's battle-field,
and she kept to her post bravely.

Fern, in her perfect happiness, often thought tenderly of the girl to
whose noble generosity she owed it all; but for some years she and
Evelyn saw little of each other. Fern often heard of her visits to the
cottage where her mother and Fluff lived. She and Mrs. Trafford had
become great friends. When Evelyn could snatch an hour from her
numerous engagements, she liked to visit the orphanage where Mrs.