a celestial ambassador. His profuse outpourings of prayer took them
higher than any skylark with its quivering wings. His turgid discourses,
where every metaphor seemed to have escaped from a store's price-list,
were to them more fruitful of imaginative results than any poet's song.
His grave visits, when he seemed always to be either washing his hands
or wiping his boots, left in the hearts of the three old maids memories
more roseate than any sunset of the Apennines. Therefore, when Mrs.
Raeburn demanded to know if they were anxious for Jenny to jump to glory
with a tambourine, the religious economy of the three Miss Horners was
upset. On consideration, even jumping to glory without a tambourine
struck them as an indelicate method of reaching Paradise.

"And wherever did you get the notion of adopting Jenny?" continued the
niece. "For I'm sure I never suggested any such thing."

"We got the notion from above, Florence," explained Miss Fanny. "It was
a direct command from our Heavenly Father. I had a vision."

"Your Aunt Fanny," proclaimed the elder sister, "dreamed she was nursing
a white rabbit. Now, we have not eaten rabbits since, on an occasion
when the Reverend Williams was taking a little supper with us, we
unfortunately had a bad one--a high one. There had been nothing to
suggest rabbits, let alone white rabbits, to your Aunt Fanny. So I said:
'Florence is going to have a baby. It must be a warning.' We consulted
the Reverend Williams, who said it was very remarkable, and must mean
the Almighty was calling upon us as he called upon the infant Samuel. We
inquired first if either of your sisters was going to have a baby, also.
Caroline Threadgale wrote an extremely rude letter, and Mabel Purkiss
was even ruder. So, evidently, it is the will of God that we should
adopt your baby girl. We prayed to Him to make it a little girl, because
we are more familiar with little girls, never having had a brother and
our father having died a good while ago now. Well, it is a girl. So
plainly--oh, my dear niece, can't you see how plainly--God commands you
to obey Him?"

Then Miss Horner stood up and looked so tall and severe that her niece
was frightened for a moment, and half expected to see the flutter of an
angel's wing over the foot of the bedstead. She nerved herself, however,
to resist the will of Heaven.

"Dreaming of rabbits hasn't got nothing to do with babies. I forget what
it does mean--burglars, or something, bu