drink? and, when she noted that this condition reappeared at
shorter and shorter intervals, might she not well begin to be
frightened, and to feel, what she dared not allow, that she was being
gradually left alone--that Tom had struck into a diverging path, and
they were slowing parting miles from each other?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MARY AND LETTY.

When her landlady announced a visitor, Letty, not having yet one friend
in London, could not think who it should be. When Mary entered, she
sprang to her feet and stood staring: what with being so much in the
house, and seeing so few people, the poor girl had, I think, grown a
little stupid. But, when the fact of Mary's presence cleared itself to
her, she rushed forward with a cry, fell into her arms, and burst out
weeping. Mary held her fast until she had a little come to herself,
then, pushing her gently away to the length of her arms, looked at her.

She was not a sight to make one happy. She was no longer the plump,
fresh girl that used to go singing about; nor was she merely thin and
pale, she looked unhealthy. Things could not be going well with her.
Had her dress been only disordered, that might have been accidental,
but it looked neglected--was not merely dingy, but plainly shabby, and,
to Mary's country eyes, appeared on the wrong side of clean. Presently,
as those eyes got accustomed to the miserable light, they spied in the
skirt of her gown a perfunctory darn, revealing but too evidently that
to Letty there no longer seemed occasion for being particular. The
sadness of it all sunk to Mary's heart: Letty had not found marriage a
grand affair!

But Mary had not come into the world to be sad or to help another to be
sad. Sorrowful we may often have to be, but to indulge in sorrow is
either not to know or to deny God our Saviour. True, her heart ached
for Letty; and the ache immediately laid itself as close to Letty's
ache as it could lie; but that was only the advance-guard of her army
of salvation, the light cavalry of sympathy: the next division was
help; and behind that lay patience, and strength, and hope, and faith,
and joy. This last, modern teachers, having failed to regard it as a
virtue, may well decline to regard as a duty; but he is a poor
Christian indeed in whom joy has not at least a growing share, and Mary
was not a poor Christian--at least, for the time she had been learning,
and as Christians go in the present aeon of their history. Her whole