y supposed. Flossy Shipley had
been in many religious meetings, but she had really never in her life
before been among a large gathering of cultured people, who were eager
and excited and happy, and the cause for that eagerness and that
happiness been found in the religion of Jesus Christ. I do not say that
there had never been such meetings before, nor that there have not been
many of them. I simply say that it was a new revelation to Flossy, and
she had been to the church prayer-meeting at home several times. Whether
that church may have been peculiar or not I do not say, but Flossy had
certainly failed to get the idea that prayer-meetings were blessed
places; that the people who went there from week to week found their joy
and their rest and their comfort there. She began to have an unutterable
sense of want and longing creeping over her; she stole shy glances at
Marion to see if she felt this, but Marion was absorbed just then in
catching the speaker's last sentence and writing it down. Her face
expressed nothing but business earnestness. Speech-making concluded,
there came the "covenant service."

"I wonder what that is supposed to be?" whispered Marion. "It sounds
like something dreadfully solemn. I hope they are not going to have any
scenes. Revivals are not fashionable except in the winter."

"Marion, _don't_!" Flossy said, in an earnest undertone. The gay, and
what for the first time struck her as the sacrilegious words, chilled
her. And for almost the first time in her life she uttered an
unhesitating remonstrance. Something in the tone surprised Marion, and
she looked curiously down at her little companion, but said not another
word.

The covenant service was the simplest of all services; in fact, only the
singing of a familiar hymn and the offering of a prayer. But the hymn
was read first, in such solemn, tender, pleading tones as it seemed to
Flossy she had never heard before; and the singing rolled around that
great tent like the voices of the ten thousand who sing before the
throne--at least to Flossy's heart it seemed like that. The prayer that
followed was the simplest of all prayers as to words, and the briefest
public prayer she ever remembered to have heard, and it made her feel as
nothing in life had ever done before. She did not understand the cause
for her emotion; she was not acquainted with the Spirit of God; she did
not know that he was speaking to her softened heart, and calling her
gently