d familiar acquaintances!

"It is good to see your face again," that same hearty voice which seemed
to have so much good fellowship in it was saying. "I didn't know you
were to be here; I'm real glad to see you again, and what about the
husband and the dear boy?"

At which point it occurred to Miss Ruth Erskine that she was listening
to conversation not designed for her ears. She moved away suddenly, in
no way comforted or sweetened as to her temper by this episode. Why
should that little bit of an insignificant woman have the honor of such
a cordial greeting from the great man, while he did not even know of
_her_ existence?

To be sure, Dr. Cuyler had baptized and received into church fellowship
and united in marriage the little woman with whom he was talking; but
Ruth, even if she had known these circumstances, was in no mood to
attach much importance to them.

She wandered away from the crowd down by the lake-side. She stopped at
Jerusalem on her way, and poked her parasol listlessly into the sand of
which the hills lying about that city were composed, and thought:

"What silly child's play all this was! How absurd to suppose that people
were going to get new ideas by _playing_ at cities with bits of painted
board and piles of sand! Even if they _could_ get a more distinct notion
of its surroundings, what difference did it make how Jerusalem looked,
or where it stood, or what had become of the buildings?"

This last, as it began dimly to dawn upon her, that it was useless to
deny the fact that even such listless and disdainful staring as she had
vouchsafed to this make-believe city had located it, as it had not been
located before, in her brain.

When she produced the flimsy question, "What difference does it make?"
you can see at once the absurd mood that had gotten possession of her,
and you lose all your desire to argue with any one who feels as foolish
as that. Neither had Ruth any desire to argue with herself; she was
disgusted with her mind for insisting on keeping her up to a strain of
thought.

"A lovely place to rest!" she said, aloud, and indignantly, giving a
more emphatic poke with her parasol, and quite dislodging one of the
buildings in Jerusalem. "One's brain is just kept at high pressure all
the time."

Now, why this young lady's brain should have been in need of rest she
did not take the trouble to explain, even to herself. She sat herself
down presently under one of the trees by the lake-