ere?"

"She's been alone ever since I left her; and I'm thinking that's what
she hadn't ought to be."

Dolly paused. The indication seemed to be, that Rupert was taking up
the notion of duty; duty towards others as well as pleasure for
himself; and a great throb of gladness came up in her heart, along with
the sudden shadow of what was not gladness.

"I think you are quite right, Rupert," she said soberly. "Then you are
purposing to go back to Lynn to take care of her?"

"I set out to see the world and to be something," Rupert went on,
looking thoughtfully out to sea;--"and I've done one o' the two. I've
seen the world. I don' know as I should ever be anything, if I staid in
it. But your talk that day--those days--wouldn't go out of my head; and
I thought I'd give it up, and go home to my old mother."

"I'll tell you what I think, Rupert," said Dolly; "a man is a great
deal more likely to come out right in the end and 'be something,' if he
follows God's plan for him, than if he makes a plan for himself.
Anyhow, I'd rather have that 'Well done,' by and by"---- She stopped.

"How's a man to find out God's plan for him?"

"Just the way you are doing. When work is set before you, take hold of
it. When the Lord has some more for you He'll let you know."

"Then you think this _is_ my work, Miss Dolly, to go home and take care
of her? She wanted me to make a man of myself; and when Mr. Copley made
me his offer, she didn't hold me back. But she cried some!"

"You cannot do another so manly a thing as this, Rupert. I wouldn't let
her cry any more, if I were you."

"No more I ain't a-goin' to," said the young man energetically. "But,
Miss Dolly"----

"What?"

"Do you think it is my duty, because I do one thing, to do t'other? Do
you think I ought to take to shoemaking?"

"Why to shoemaking, Rupert?"

"Well, my father was a shoemaker. They're all shoemakers at Lynn,
pretty much."

"That is no reason why you should be. Your education, the education you
have got since you came over to this side, has fitted you for something
else, if you like something else better."

"That's just what I do!" said Rupert with emphasis. "But I could make a
good living that way--I was brought up to it, you see;--and I s'pose
_she'd_ like me to take up the old business; but I feel like driving an
awl through a board whenever I think of it."

"I wouldn't do it, Rupert, if I could do something I was more fit for.
People always do thin