found plenty to do. He could live
frugally. To help his still poorer fellow creatures in suffering, to
restore them to strength and teach them to be useful members of
society, or to comfort them and make the path easier over the river to
the other country; this was his highest aim.

Miss Armitage was almost dumb with surprise. She raised her hand in
entreaty.

"Oh, don't! don't," she cried. "It is quite impossible; it cannot be.
I like you very much, but I am not in love. And then----"

"Then what?" with eager eyes and incisive voice.

"You had a birthday last week. I heard you telling it. You are
thirty-one."

"Well--" There was a proud smile on his manly face.

"And when my birthday comes, I shall be thirty-six. When you are
sixty, rich in experience, famous, a real man among men, I shall be
quite an old woman. No, I shouldn't do it for your sake."

"As if a few years made any difference! Why you could discount seven
years at least. Have you been loved so much that you can throw away a
man's honest, honorable, tender love that will last all his life, that
wear it as you like, in any stress, you can never wear out."

"Oh," she cried. "You have spoiled a splendid friendship. I liked you
so much, I have no love to give in return."

"Then let us be friends again. I would rather have you for a friend
than any other woman for a wife. I simply will not give you up."

So the pendulum went on swinging evenly between the two points, when
Cinderella entered both lives.

And now it was Sunday morning and the chimes were pealing--"Oh, come
all ye faithful." Marilla listened with a throb of joy, though she did
not know the words they were saying in sweetest melody. Miss Armitage
came and stood by the cot with a cordial good morning.

Marilla stretched out her hand and glanced up with an entreating sort
of smile.

"Was I very bad last night?" she asked in a wistful tone.

"Bad? Why--what was it?"

"I've been thinking it over. Oh, I didn't want to go back to Mrs.
Borden. It is so lovely and quiet and beautiful here. But it _is_
right. I am her bound-out girl, and I _was_ glad to go there. You
wouldn't like me to be always looking for what was nice and pleasant
and shirking other things, would you?"

"Dear." She stooped and kissed her. She had been going over some
arguments fitted for a child's understanding, and she was afraid of a
rather painful time. And the worst to her was the fact that she had
come to love t