think it would be VERY wrong if I
talked to him just a little--do you?"

Gradually it came over her that she was chilly; she dragged a comforter
from her bed and resumed her kneeling posture by the window and her
communings with Jesus and her conscience. Then she discovered she was
going off to sleep, so she sprang to her feet and jumped back into
bed. A great change had come over her spirit; no longer was there any
restlessness, bitterness, or ugly rebellion; no; nothing but peace
ineffable. Smiling softly, she slept.

The next morning brought confusion to the Merriam household for father
was catching the 8:37 to Macon City on a business trip, Aunt Nettie was
going along with him to do some shopping, mother was in bed with one
of her headaches, and Missy had an inexplicably sore throat. This last
calamity was attributed, in a hurried conclave in mother's darkened
room, to Missy's being out in the snow-storm the night before. Missy
knew there was another contributory cause, but she couldn't easily have
explained her vigil at the window.

"I didn't want her to go to church in the first place," mother lamented.

"Well, she won't go any more," said father darkly. Missy's heart sank;
she looked at him with mutely pleading eyes.

"And you needn't look at me like that," he added firmly. "It won't do
you the least good."

Missy's heart sank deeper. How could she hope to exert a proper
religious influence if she didn't attend services regularly herself? But
father looked terribly adamantine.

"I think you'd better stay home from school today," he continued, "it's
still pretty blustery."

So Missy found herself spending the day comparatively alone in a
preternaturally quiet house--noisy little brother off at school, Aunt
Nettie's busy tongue absent, Marguerite, the hired girl, doing the
laundry down in the basement. And mother's being sick, as always is
the case when a mother is sick, seemed to add an extra heaviness to
the pervasive stillness. The blustery day invited reading, but Missy
couldn't find anything in the house she hadn't already read; and she
couldn't go to the Public Library because of her throat. And couldn't
practice because of mother's head. Time dragged on her hands, and Satan
found the mischief--though Missy devoutly believed that it was the Lord
answering her prayer.

She was idling at the front-parlour window when she saw Picker's
delivery wagon stop at the gate. She hurried back to the kitchen,