d then her father commented upon the passage he had read
and, as he said, "applied the Word to our necessities." After a third
hymn, the meeting was declared open, and the old men and women took
turns at praying and talking. Mrs. Kronborg never spoke in meeting. She
told people firmly that she had been brought up to keep silent and let
the men talk, but she gave respectful attention to the others, sitting
with her hands folded in her lap.

The prayer-meeting audience was always small. The young and energetic
members of the congregation came only once or twice a year, "to keep
people from talking." The usual Wednesday night gathering was made up of
old women, with perhaps six or eight old men, and a few sickly girls who
had not much interest in life; two of them, indeed, were already
preparing to die. Thea accepted the mournfulness of the prayer-meetings
as a kind of spiritual discipline, like funerals. She always read late
after she went home and felt a stronger wish than usual to live and to
be happy.

The meetings were conducted in the Sunday-School room, where there were
wooden chairs instead of pews; an old map of Palestine hung on the wall,
and the bracket lamps gave out only a dim light. The old women sat
motionless as Indians in their shawls and bonnets; some of them wore
long black mourning veils. The old men drooped in their chairs. Every
back, every face, every head said "resignation." Often there were long
silences, when you could hear nothing but the crackling of the soft coal
in the stove and the muffled cough of one of the sick girls.

There was one nice old lady,--tall, erect, self-respecting, with a
delicate white face and a soft voice. She never whined, and what she
said was always cheerful, though she spoke so nervously that Thea knew
she dreaded getting up, and that she made a real sacrifice to, as she
said, "testify to the goodness of her Saviour." She was the mother of
the girl who coughed, and Thea used to wonder how she explained things
to herself. There was, indeed, only one woman who talked because she
was, as Mr. Kronborg said, "tonguey." The others were somehow
impressive. They told about the sweet thoughts that came to them while
they were at their work; how, amid their household tasks, they were
suddenly lifted by the sense of a divine Presence. Sometimes they told
of their first conversion, of how in their youth that higher Power had
made itself known to them. Old Mr. Carsen, the carpente