girl, champion and counselor and comfort to her father,
she now set her hand to the work of helping her husband do good to the
people whom he called his children.

"If they are yours, they must be mine, too, Mr. Kinney," she would say,
with a smile half arch, half solemn. "I hope I shan't undo on week-days
what you do on Sundays."

"What I do on Sundays is more'n half your work too, Draxy," the Elder
would make reply; and it was very true. Draxy's quicker brain and finer
sense, and in some ways superior culture, were fast moulding the Elder's
habits of thought and speech to an extent of which she never dreamed.
Reuben's income was now far in advance of their simple wants, and
newspapers, magazines, and new books continually found their way to the
parsonage. Draxy had only to mention anything she desired to see, and
Reuben forthwith ordered it. So that it insensibly came to pass that the
daily life of the little household was really an intellectual one, and
Elder Kinney's original and vigorous mind expanded fast in the congenial
atmosphere. Yet he lost none of his old quaintness and simplicity of
phrase, none of his fervor. The people listened to his sermons with
wondering interest, and were not slow to ascribe some of the credit of the
new unction to Draxy.

"Th' Elder's getting more'n more like Mis' Kinney every day o' his life,"
they said: "there's some o' her sayin's in every sermon he writes.

"And no wonder," would be added by some more enthusiastic worshipper of
Draxy's. "I guess he's got sense enough to know that she's got more real
book-learnin' in her head than he has, twice over. I shouldn't wonder if
she got to writin' some of his sermons for him out'n out, before long."

Dear Draxy's reverent wifehood would have been grieved and dismayed if she
had known that her efforts to second her husband's appeals to his people
were sometimes so eloquent as to make the Elder's words forgotten. But she
never dreamed of such a thing; she was too simple hearted and humble.

In the early days of the second winter came the Angel of the Annunciation,
bearing a white lily to Draxy. Her joy and gratitude were unspeakable, and
the exquisite purity and elevation of her nature shone out transcendent in
the new experience.

"Now I begin to feel surer that God really trusts me," she said, "since he
is going to let me have a child of my own."

"O my dear friends!" she exclaimed more than once to mothers, "I never
dreamed how