interesting her sister quite
as much as her sister's scholars that Eunice had invited them upon the
present occasion, knowing that the young girl's lively interest in her
class would induce her to be present if its members were, and to her
great joy and thankfulness she was not disappointed. Etta had never
heard her sister pray before, though the Wednesday afternoon meetings
were often thus opened, and it seemed to her something almost awful to
hear the language which she had always associated with a grave minister
and a solemn church service spoken reverently, it is true, but quite
familiarly, by her sister.

Then, too, the question with which the reading closed: "Will _you_ now
thus confess Christ?" How could she answer it? Was she in a fit state
for so solemn an action, she, a butterfly flitting from one avocation to
another, with no thought or aim beyond pleasing herself? She knew she
was not. She had given up the child-habit of "saying her prayers," and
she had never learned really to pray. Until she took that class she had
not, for some years, voluntarily opened her Bible, and now she knew that
all her energetic study of the technicalities of the Holy Word had in it
no grain of desire to please or glorify God. Even her devotion to
Sunday-school teaching, usually supposed to be Christian work, had in it
no leaven of Christianity, being only self-pleasing from end to end.
Etta was sufficiently clear-sighted to see all this. She knew that she
never thought of God. His approval or disapproval was all one to her,
and while she had never denied or openly scoffed at religion, and had no
reason to doubt the truths of its facts and doctrines, she was, so far
as anything practical went, not a Christian at all. What had she to
"confess"? And yet, how strange it would seem if some of those to whom
she stood in the position of teacher, who of necessity looked up to and
imitated her, should become Christians and church members, when she had
never taken the same stand. Stranger still, and worse, if they should be
deterred from what seemed to them a duty by the example of their
Sunday-school teacher. Etta had never been placed in such a dilemma
before, and she heartily wished either that her sister had not invited
her class, or that the class had not accepted the invitation, and that
the girls would never come again, and yet she hardly liked to advise
them not to do so.

"I don't like that kind of a party at all," said Bertie Sa