I was just thinking
of you, and on the eve of asking your father to tell you I was not at
the ball this evening. I was so sorry I could not explain when you
asked me. Your father will tell you all, I know. You thought me very
wicked and willful," said Vallie.

David clasped the little hand held out to greet him, and whispered:

"With your permission I will come to-morrow, and tell you what I did
think and do still."

Bidding her good-night at her father's door, David lingered a moment,
to catch the low answer to his repeated question, "Shall I come?"

Fervently thanking God for the happy termination of the evening, he
hastened to overtake his father--and said:

"Well, father?"

"Well, David! Very well. Go ahead, David, win her, if you can! She is
a rare, good girl."

"Which one, sir?"

"Come, come! David, I am completely bewildered by this evening's
discoveries. Do not bear too hard on me, for falling into a common
error--mistaking the apparent for the real. This night has proved a
test far more thorough than I imagined it possibly could. You may
safely abide by the issue and never fear the stormy sea," answered his
father.

A few months more and Vallie Fairleigh's merry voice and sweet smile
resounds through, and brightens the minister's home.

David Carlton stands to-day among the best-loved and most popular of
the clergy. Attributable most likely to his "wife's influence" (his
father says). I well know she has soothed many an aching heart,
cheered the long, weary hours of the sickroom, won the young from the
path of evil, and now numberless prayers are ascending and begging
God's blessing on the "minister's wife."

* * * * *

IN THE HOSPITAL.

BY FRANCES HENSHAW BADEN.

In the autumn of 1862 my time was constantly employed in the various
hospitals of Washington. At this period of our struggle the Sanitary
Commission was in its infancy, and all attentions of the kind ladies
were joyfully received by surgeons and nurses, as well as by our
noble, suffering boys. Immediately after the wounded from the second
battle of Bull Run were assigned to the different wards in the various
hospitals, I was going my rounds in the "Douglas," and after bestowing
the wines, jellies, custards and books to my old friends, I began to
look up the new patients.

"Sister," I said to the kind Sister of Mercy, whose sweet, patient and
motherly face was bending over a soldier to speak