s impulse of the divine help; vehement; eager,
with a human eagerness; yet so patient, till men's hands should
reach out and lay hold of it!

She dreamed out a whole dream of life that might grow up beside this
help; of work that might be done there. She forgot that she was
lingering, and keeping Mr. Kirkbright lingering, behind the others.

"You would have to live here yourself, I should think," she said at
length, speaking out of her vision of the things that might be, and
so--would have to be. She had got drawn in to the contemplation of
the scheme, and had begun to weigh and arrange, involuntarily, its
details, forgetting that she "knew not anything."

Mr. Kirkbright smiled.

"Yes, I see where you are," he said, "I had arrived at precisely the
same point myself. But the 'right people at the other end?' Who
should they be? Who shall send me my villagers,--my workers? Who
shall discriminate for me, and keep things true and unconfused at
the source?"

"Your sister, Mr. Vireo, Luclarion Grapp," Desire repeated,
promptly.

"And yourself?"

"Yes; I and Hazel, all we can. We help them. And now there will be
Miss Argenter. As Hazel said,--'We all of us know the Muffin-man.'
How queer that that ridiculous play should come to mean so much with
us! Luclarion Grapp is actually a muffin-woman, you know?"

"I'm afraid I don't know the Muffin-_man_ literally, except what I
can guess of him by your application," said Mr. Kirkbright,
laughing. "I've no doubt I ought to, and that it would do me good."

"You will have to come to Greenley Street, and find him out. Hazel
and Miss Craydocke manage all the introductions, as having a kind of
proprietorship; 'and quite proper, I'm sure'--Why, where are Miss
Kirkbright and Miss Argenter?"

Coming back to light common speech, she came back also to the
present circumstance; reminded also, perhaps, by her "quite proper"
quotation.

"If I may come to Greenley Street, I may learn a good deal beside
the Muffin-man," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving her his hand to help
her up a steep, slippery place.

Desire foolishly blushed. She knew it, and knew that her hat did not
defend her in the least. She could not take it back now; she had
invited him. But what would he think of her blushing about it?

"You can learn what we all learn. I am only a scholar," she said,
shortly. And then she stood accused before her own truthfulness of
having covered up her blush by a disclaimer that had nothin