s beginning? I cannot tell you all that
happened that afternoon, for I have told so long a story already. But
you will imagine it was the beginning of an intimacy that gave great
pleasure, and did great good, to both the elder woman and the younger.
It is hard to tell the pleasure which the love and friendship of a
fresh, bright girl like Bessie Thorne, may give an older person. There
is such a satisfaction in being convinced that one is still
interesting and still lovable, though the years that are gone have
each kept some gift or grace, and the possibilities of life seem to
have been realized and decided. There are days of our old age when
there seems so little left in life, that living is a mere formality.
This busy world seems done with the old, however dear their memories
of it, however strong their claims upon it. They are old: their life
now is only waiting and resting. It may be quite right that we
sometimes speak of second childhood, because we must be children
before we are grown; and the life to come must find us, will find us,
ready for service. Our old people have lived in the world so long;
they think they know it so well: but the young man is master of the
trade of living, and the old man only his blundering apprentice.

Miss Sydney's solemnest and most unprepared servant was startled to
find Bessie Thorne and his mistress sitting cosily together before the
dining-room fire. Bessie had a paper full of cut flowers to leave at
the Children's Hospital on her way home. Miss Sydney had given
liberally to the contribution for that object; but she never had
suspected how interesting it was until Bessie told her, and she said
she should like to go some day, and see the building and its occupants
for herself. And the girl told her of other interests that were near
her kind young heart,--not all charitable interests,--and they parted
intimate friends.

"I never felt such a charming certainty of being agreeable," wrote
Bessie that night to a friend of hers. "She seemed so interested in
every thing, and, as I told you, so pleased with my coming to see her.
I have promised to go there very often. She told me in the saddest way
that she had been feeling so old and useless and friendless, and she
was very confidential. Imagine her being confidential with me! She
seemed to me just like myself as I was last year,--you remember,--just
beginning to realize what life ought to be, and trying, in a
frightened, blind kind of