tic that he opened his
eyes, half expecting to see the Someone--the Something--so evidently
apparent to the girl herself.

Having once opened his eyes, he forgot to close them again. The actual
so pursued him, that he ceased to seek the spiritual presence. The
firelight, playing over the girl's face, threw strange lights, and
shadows half unearthly. She seemed a spirit, of whom no ordinary
restraints of the familiar social life were to be expected.

When her prayer was finished, she rose as simply as she had knelt,
though now two large tears stood on the long fringe of her eyes.

"Good-night, friends!" she said with a confiding glance around. "I
think I shall be able to get the sleep now. God bless you all!"

When she was gone, the hush was unbroken for several minutes. At last
Winifred spoke.

"I don't know how the rest of you feel, but somehow I have a sensation
of being a lay figure in the shop-window of life, and having all of a
sudden seen a real woman go by."

"Jove! what eyes she has!" said Brady, continuing thoughts of his own,
rather than answering Winifred's speech.

"Really," said Ben Bradford, "it wasn't unpleasant at all."

"Unpleasant!" exclaimed his aunt. "Well, I should say not, unless
heaven is unpleasant, and angels, and the Judgment Day, which I
daresay it will be for you, Ben Bradford, unless you mend your ways.
Good-night! I'm going up to see that the child has a hot-water bag to
her feet, and a mustard plaster on her chest. The Salvation Army needs
an efficient ambulance corps."

"Hm!" said Dr. Cricket, as Miss Standish disappeared. "Mary may have
chosen the better part; but I pity the household that's all Marys.
Give me a Martha in mine every time!

"That reminds me," he added briskly, "that I must look after my
patient, and not let him pitch himself into that bed, which has not
been aired for a week; and nobody in this house knows the difference
between damp sheets and dry ones. Do you know, Mr. Brady," he
continued, as he rose from his chair with a little rheumatic hitch, "I
have taken a great shine to that queer friend of yours. I don't know
how it is, but I suspect it is because he is such a contrast to most
folks. It's a comfort to meet a man who keeps his best foot back."

"Oh, Flint is a brick!" said Brady, with enthusiasm. "I have known him
to do the nicest things. There was a fellow once in college--he was
rather pushing socially, and nobody liked him--but he was 'a dig,'"
a