s on?" he demanded.

Sister Soulsby's large eyes beamed down upon him in reply, at first in
open merriment, then more soberly, till their regard was almost pensive.

"Let us talk of something else," she said. "All that is past and gone.
It has nothing to do with you, anyway. I've got some advice to give you
about keeping up this grip you've got on your people."

The young minister had risen to his feet while she spoke. He put his
hands in his pockets, and with rounded shoulders began slowly pacing the
room. After a turn or two he came to the desk, and leaned against it.

"I doubt if it's worth while going into that," he said, in the solemn
tone of one who feels that an irrevocable thing is being uttered. She
waited to hear more, apparently. "I think I shall go away--give up the
ministry," he added.

Sister Soulsby's eyes revealed no such shock of consternation as he,
unconsciously, had looked for. They remained quite calm; and when she
spoke, they deepened, to fit her speech, with what he read to be a
gaze of affectionate melancholy--one might say pity. She shook her head
slowly.

"No--don't let any one else hear you say that," she replied. "My poor
young friend, it's no good to even think it. The real wisdom is to
school yourself to move along smoothly, and not fret, and get the best
of what's going. I've known others who felt as you do--of course there
are times when every young man of brains and high notions feels that
way--but there's no help for it. Those who tried to get out only broke
themselves. Those who stayed in, and made the best of it--well, one of
them will be a bishop in another ten years."

Theron had started walking again. "But the moral degradation of it!"
he snapped out at her over his shoulder. "I'd rather earn the meanest
living, at an honest trade, and be free from it."

"That may all be," responded Sister Soulsby. "But it isn't a question of
what you'd rather do. It's what you can do. How could you earn a living?
What trade or business do you suppose you could take up now, and get a
living out of? Not one, my man, not one."

Theron stopped and stared at her. This view of his capabilities came
upon him with the force and effect of a blow.

"I don't discover, myself," he began stumblingly, "that I'm so
conspicuously inferior to the men I see about me who do make livings,
and very good ones, too."

"Of course you're not," she replied with easy promptness; "you're
greatly the other way, o