he mere
asking; nay for the mere taking; yet still the devils of stubbornness
and spite would not let go their hold upon her. But finally, as a bitter
blast swept the snow stingingly against her face, she uttered a hoarse
snarl, and glancing about to see that no jeering eye was upon her, the
poor creature crept across the pavement, clambered up the stone steps,
and, pushing open the door, slipped into the nearest vacant seat.

The chairs and benches were unusually well filled. Numbers of women and
children were in the foreground. A few men were also present, sitting
with their bodies hanging forward, their hats tightly clutched between
their knees, their eyes fixed on the floor. The women and children, on
the contrary, followed every movement of the young women on the platform
with furtive eagerness.

The simplicity of attire which Angela and her friends had assumed did
not deceive even the tiniest gutter-child present--these were "ladies,"
and one and all accorded them the same tribute of genuine, if reluctant,
admiration.

Old Marg, after the embarrassment of the first moment, took everything
in with one hawk-like glance--the Christmas greens upon the clean, white
walls, the curtained space in the rear which hid some pleasant mystery,
the men and women on the platform.

At the organ sat a young girl, leaning upon the now silent keys, her
face toward the young man who was speaking. Old Marg could not take her
eyes from this face--white, serious, sweet, set in a halo of pale golden
hair. The sight of it aroused strange feelings in the bosom of the old
outcast. Fascinated, tortured, bewildered, she sat and gazed. It was
long since she had thought of her youth. This girl reminded her of that
forgotten time. Like a violet flung upon a refuse-heap, the thought of
her own innocent girlhood lay for an instant upon the foul mass of
memories accumulated by sixty-miserable years. "_I_ was light-haired,
too!" ran old Marg's thoughts. "Light-haired, an' light-complected, like
her!"

The perfume of that thought breathed across her soul, and was gone.
Still she gazed from under her shaggy brows, and, without meaning to
listen, found herself hearing what the speaker was saying. He was
telling without rhetoric or cant the story of Christ, and with
simplicity and tact presenting the lesson of His life.

"This joy of giving, of sacrificing for others," the young man was
saying in his earnest, musical voice, "so far beyond the joy