ll
that; there ain't anything that he doesn't see."

Susannah perceived that there was something behind this. "You're not
vexed, are you?"

Emma continued with more hesitation in her tones. "No, I'm not vexed.
Why should I be? And besides I like you and Mr. Halsey better than any
of the folks, although I couldn't let it be known."

"There's something that you are thinking about."

Emma sighed deeply; her mien faltered; she subsided again into her seat
by the wall and into tears. "It's only that I feel that Joseph's getting
to be such a great man. Why, there's more than a thousand folks now
looking to him all the time to be told what to do, and thousands more
drawing in, and Joseph beginning to wear the kid gloves whenever he goes
on the street."

There was an interval of sighs and suppressed sobs.

"Aren't you glad? I thought you were glad about it."

"I declare papa and mamma were just wild when I ran away and married
Joseph, because they said that he was a low fellow, and poor, and not
good enough for me, and now--and now--I begin to feel that I'm not good
enough for him."

Susannah went over and sat beside her, chiding indignantly. "You know
very well that nobody could be the same help to him that you are, and
you know very well that there's nobody in the world that he thinks so
much of as you." She did not say all she thought. She considered Emma to
be Smith's superior, but that opinion would have given acute pain.

The young church worked upon Smith's principles of thrift, temperance,
and co-operation, and Kirtland rapidly assumed the proportions of a
town. Susannah became the mistress of the children's school. Smith was a
good economist; although he helped the needy, nothing that his converts
could pay for was given to them for nothing. Hence it was that
Susannah's private purse was well filled with tuition fees.

She had already in mind what she would do with this money; she would
write to the booksellers in Boston who fulfilled Ephraim's orders, and
obtain from them some of the books whose names she remembered to have
seen on his shelves. She knew nothing of their contents, she hardly
knew whether she wanted them more for the sake of their contents or for
their familiar appearance, but she thought that if she did not
understand them when reading, she could write to Ephraim and ask for an
explanation. She could not think of any other excuse for writing to him
again. It had taken her a good many months