he effort her sister was making at
self-control.

Phillida lay awake that night long after the normal Agatha, with never
an aspiration of the lofty sort, slept the blessed sleep of the
heedless. And while the feeble glow of the banked-down fire in the grate
draped the objects in the room with grotesque shadows, she went over
again the bead-roll of faith in the eleventh of Hebrews and heard again
the response of her conscience to the solemn appeal of Mrs. Frankland,
and prayed for an increase of faith, and went to sleep at last
reflecting on the faith like a germinant mustard grain that should
upheave the very mountains and cast them into the midst of the sea.

XVII.

A FAITH CURE.

The next day the cold wave had begun to let go a little, and there were
omens of a coming storm. The forenoon Phillida gave to domestic industry
of one sort and another, but in the afternoon she put on her overshoes
against icy pavements, and set out for a visit to Wilhelmina
Schulenberg, remembering how lonesome the invalid must be in wintry
weather. There were few loiterers on the sidewalks on such a day, but
Phillida was pretty sure of a recognition from somebody by the time she
reached Avenue A, for her sympathetic kindness had made friends for her
beyond those with whom she came into immediate contact as a
Sunday-school teacher.

"O Miss Callender," said a thinly clad girl of thirteen, with chattering
teeth, and arms folded against her body for warmth, rocking from one
foot to the other, as she stood in the door of a tenement house, "this
is hard weather for poor folks, ain't it?" And then, unable longer to
face the penetrating rawness of the east wind, she turned and ran up the
stairs.

Phillida's meditations as she walked were occupied with what Mrs.
Frankland had said the day before. She reflected that if she herself
only possessed the necessary faith she might bring healing to many
suffering people. Why not to Wilhelmina? With this thought there came a
drawing back--that instinctive resistance of human nature to anything
out of the conventional and mediocre; a resistance that in a time of
excitement often saves us from absurdity at the expense of reducing us
to commonplace. But in Phillida this conservatism was counteracted by a
quick imagination in alliance with a passion for moral excellence, both
warmed by the fire of youth; and in all ventures youth counts for much.

"Dat is coot; you gomes to see Mina wunst more