lf sound and
right and don't worry about yourself, then you respond to the breath of
the Spirit, like that grass. For the wind bloweth where it listeth...."

He fell into a silence, and Ishmael, stirred out of the crust of
depression which had held him so many days, felt all his heart and high
hopes, his eagerness for life and its possibilities, stirring within him
again. He drew a deep breath and stretched widely, sloughing off mental
sloth in the physical act as young things can. He felt more alive
because more conscious of himself and his surroundings than ever before,
eager and ready to take up the remainder of his time at St. Renny. He
stirred a little by the Parson's side.

Boase brought his thought to an ending with the rest of the quotation:
"So is everyone that is born of the Spirit...."

BOOK II

GROWTH

CHAPTER I

A FAMILY ALBUM

Vassilissa Beggoe stooped to take a final look at herself in the small
mirror, for she was so tall that, in her flowery bonnet that swooped
upwards from her piled chignon, she nearly touched the sloping roof of
her bedroom. She stooped and gave a glow--half smile, half a quickening
of light, over her whole face--at what she saw in the cloudy glass,
which could not materially dim her white and gold splendour. A slight
thickness of modelling here and there, notably in the short nose and
too-rounded chin, blurred the fineness of her beauty and might make for
hardness later on, but now, at twenty-one, Vassie's wonderful skin and
her splendid assurance were too dazzling for criticism to look at her
and live. She gave a pat, more approbation than correction, to a rose on
the bonnet, smoothed the lapels of her Alexandra jacket--so-called after
the newly-made Princess of Wales--and pulled up her gloves under its
pegtop sleeves. Then she turned with a swoop and a swish of her wide
blue taffeta skirts.

"There!" she exclaimed in the studiously clear notes she had not been
able to free from a slight metallic quality; "that's not so bad a sight
to go and meet a little brother, I believe?"

The younger, softer, slighter bit of femininity on the bed gave a gentle
little sound that meant admiration, and clasped a pair of dimpled, not
very clean, little hands together.

"You're beautiful, Vassie, just beautiful. And just like a lady...."

"I am a lady," said Vassie sharply. "How am I not a lady, I should like
to know? Haven't I been four years in a boarding-school, and do