d on Monday at four a Christmas
tree for the children. Perhaps they would like to go?

Miss Craven's eyes kindled a little and she looked at Helen, as if she
might answer for her.

"We shall be very glad to," was Helen's ready reply.

The eyes thanked her timidly.

Afterward they assembled in the drawing room and sang Christmas hymns to
the accompaniment of the grand piano. Two of the young ladies recited.

"I don't believe I've ever had such a nice time in my life," Juliet
Craven said with her good-night. "You don't know how sincerely I thank
you."

To be thanked for a little courtesy like that! Helen stood before the
glass, thinking.

"I wonder," she said to the reflection, "if you could have had that much
courage with the rest of the girls about? It was very easy to-day, and
it is what ought to be done oftener. I wonder why they all took me up
so cordially, and why they should have surmised so many wrong things
about her. I dare say her father and mother were ordinarily nice people,
and I am glad there is nothing disgraceful about them. There are quite a
good many queer old people in the world--I'm sure Roxy tells things
about her old great-aunt and laughs over them, that do not sound kindly,
if they are amusing. I wish old people always _were_ agreeable," and she
sighed. "But young people are not either," and she smiled with a
revulsion of mood. "I am glad, too, that she isn't any older. Nineteen.
There are not more than a half dozen girls in the school as old as that.
What a pity one can't be turned back!"

Helen thought she had never enjoyed a Sunday more. Most of the girls
went with Mrs. Aldred in the morning, and Mr. Danforth was certainly in
a Christmas frame of mind. They had luncheon around the large table
across the end of the dining room, and afterward a talk of the Jews and
Romans at the time of the coming of Christ. Helen had never thought much
of sacred and serious subjects, but her heart seemed to expand and glow
with a fervor she had hitherto known nothing about. If education
widened one's view, should not religion do something for it also?

The evening service moved her still more deeply. And she went to sleep
with the music of four lives floating through her brain:

"Yet in thy dark street shineth
The everlasting Light,
The hopes and fears of all the years,
Are met in thee to-night."

The children's Christmas tree was another pleasure. And when Helen
returned there was a bo