ugh what anybody wants with men folks
cluttering round, is more than I can understand. But, if you don't want
him, he shan't come. So tell me the truth, child. Yes, or no. Have you
any notion of him for a husband?"

Glory blushed her brightest at these words; but there was no falling of
the eye, or faltering of the voice, as she spoke with answering
straightforwardness and simplicity.

"No ma'am. I don't think I shall ever have a husband."

"No ma'am's enough. The rest you don't know anything about. Most likely
you will."

"I shouldn't want anybody, ma'am, that would be likely to want me."

And Glory walked out into the milk room with the pans she had been
scalding.

It was true. This woman-child would go all through life as she had
begun; discerning always, and reaching spiritually after, that which was
beyond; which in that "kingdom of heaven" was hers already; but which to
earthly having and holding should never come.

God puts such souls, oftener than we think, into such life. These are
His vestals.

Miss Henderson's foot had not grown perfectly strong. She, herself,
said, coolly, that she never expected it to. More than that, she
supposed, now she had begun, she should keep on going to pieces.

"An old life," she said, "is just like old cloth when it begins to tear.
It'll soon go into the ragbag, and then to the mill that grinds all up,
and brings us out new and white again!"

"Glory McWhirk," said she, on another day after, "if you could do just
the thing you would like best to do, what would it be?"

"To-day, ma'am? or any time?" asked Glory, puzzled as to how much her
mistress's question included.

"Ever. If you had a home to live in, say, and money to spend?"

Glory had to wait a moment before she could so grasp such an
extraordinary hypothesis as to reply.

"Well?" said Miss Henderson, with slight impatience.

"If I had--I should like best to find some little children, without any
fathers or mothers, as I was, and dress them up, as you did me, and curl
their hair, and make a real good time for them, every day!"

"You would! Well, that's all. I was curious to know what you'd say. I
guess those beans in the oven want more hot water."

The Rushleighs had come to Lakeside. Every day, nearly, saw Paul, or
Margaret, or both, at Cross Corners.

Faith was often, also, at Lakeside.

Old Mr. Rushleigh treated her with a benignant fatherliness, and looked
upon her with an evident fondness and prid