e was to be a
children's service in the afternoon, Mrs. Forester was going to beg for
Marjory to be let off writing the morning sermon if she wrote the
afternoon one instead.

"I don't suppose uncle will say yes, though," objected Marjory.

"Oh yes, he will; people always do to mother."

"How different it would be!" sighed Marjory. "I'm sure I could
understand it better if I didn't have to keep thinking about writing it
out."

"And mother's going to ask Dr. Hunter to come to tea, and you will come
home from church with us. Won't it be nice?"

"Yes; but I don't believe he will let me." Blanche's face clouded.
"Oh," she said, disappointment in her tone, "why not?"

"I've never been out anywhere on Sunday."

"But this is different--it isn't like going to a party; and we have such
nice Sundays, and I do want you to come. I love Sundays, and I always
look forward to them; don't you?"

"No," replied Marjory candidly, "not much."

Blanche looked sympathetically at her friend.

"Well, of course yours don't seem to be quite so nice as ours; but
you'll see they'll be different now."

Blanche was right. Mrs. Forester won the day, and to Marjory's intense
satisfaction, as they went in at the churchyard gate her uncle told her
that she need not write the morning sermon if she would do the afternoon
one, and that she was to be allowed to go to tea at Braeside after the
service.

The Heathermuir church was an old one; its pews were of the straight,
high-backed kind, and once inside them their occupants could see little
of their surroundings except the minister, whose desk was raised above
the level of the floor. With no temptations to look about her, and
relieved of her weekly task, Marjory gave her whole attention to Mr.
Mackenzie, trying to understand his meaning instead of mechanically
taxing her memory, parrot-like, with his words. She watched the noble
old face with its lines of kindliness and patience, the eyes now liquid
with pity for the sorrowful wrongdoer, now flashing with indignation as
he spoke of the unrepentant and the careless, then softening again as he
expressed the hope that their hearts might be touched, and the belief
that they too would win forgiveness from a loving Father.

Parts of the sermon were not to be understood by a child such as
Marjory--it was addressed to men and women--yet her eyes never left the
preacher's face, the sweetie had been quite forgotten, and she carried
away with her a m