what?"

"Of dressing myself."

"Dressing yourself, you chicken?"

"Yes, Aunt Harry. I see it. If I do not dress for Christ, I do it for
the world."

"Don't go into another extreme now, Dolly."

"No, Aunt Harry. I cannot be wrong, can I, if I do it for Christ?"

"I wonder how many girls of sixteen in the country have such a thought?
And I wonder, how long will you be able to keep it, Dolly?"

"Why not, Aunt Harry?"

"O child! because you have got to meet the world."

"What will the world do to me?" Dolly asked, half laughing in her
simple ignorance.

"When I think what it will do to you, Dolly, I am ready to break my
heart. It will tempt you, child. It will tempt you with beauty, and
with pleasant things; pleasant things that look so harmless! and it
will seek to persuade you with sweet voices and with voices of
authority; and it will show you everybody going one way, and that not
your way."

"But I will follow Christ, Aunt Hal."

"Then you will have to bear reproach."

"I would rather bear the world's reproach, than His."

"If you don't get over-persuaded, child, or deafened with the voices!"

"She will have to do like the little girl in the fairy tale," said Mr.
Eberstein; "stuff cotton in her ears. The little girl in the fairy tale
was going up a hill to get something at the top--what _was_ she going
for, that was at the top of the hill?"

"I know!" cried Dolly. "I remember. She was going for three things. The
Singing bird and the Golden water, and--I forget what the third thing
was."

"Well, you see what that means," Mr. Eberstein went on. "She was going
up the hill for the Golden water at the top; and there were ten
thousand voices in her ears tempting her to look round; and if she
looked, she would be turned to stone. The road was lined with stones,
which had once been pilgrims. You see, Dolly? Her only way was to stop
her ears."

"I see, Uncle Ned."

"What shall Dolly stop her ears with?" asked Mrs. Eberstein.

"These words will do. 'Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do,
do all to the glory of God.'"

There was little more talking, for as the evening drew on, the
heaviness of the parting weighed too hard upon all hearts. The next day
Dolly made the journey to Boston, and from there to her parents' house;
and her childhood's days were over.

CHAPTER VII.

PLAYTHINGS.

Dolly did not know that her childhood was over. Every pulse of her
happy little heart said the contra