e start of one
another. And so we have honours, and prizes, and distinctions. Take all
that away, and how would you do, Mr. Eberstein?"

Mr. Eberstein was looking fondly into a pair of young eyes that were
fixedly gazing at him. So looking, he spoke,

"There is another sort of '_Well done!_' which I would like my Dolly
and Miss Christina to try for. If they are in earnest in trying for
that, they will study!" said Mr. Eberstein.

Mrs. Thayer thought, apparently, that it was no use talking on the
subject with a visionary man; and she turned to something else. The
party left the dinner-table, and Dolly took her new acquaintance
upstairs to show her the treasure contained in Mrs. Eberstein's old
bookcase.

"Mr. Eberstein is rather a strange man, isn't he?" said Miss Christina
on the way.

"No," said Dolly. "I don't think he is. What makes you say so?"

"I never heard any one talk like that before."

"Perhaps," said Dolly, stopping short on the landing place and looking
at her companion. Then she seemed to change her manner of attack. "Who
do you want to please most?" she said.

"With my studies? Why, mamma, of course."

"I would rather please the Lord Jesus," said Dolly.

"But I was talking about _school work_," retorted the other. "You don't
suppose _He_ cares about our lessons?"

"I guess He does," said Dolly. They were still standing on the landing
place, looking into each other's eyes.

"But that's impossible. Think!--French lessons, and English lessons,
and music and dancing, and all of it. That couldn't be, you know."

"Do you love Jesus?" said Dolly.

"Love him? I do not know," said Christina colouring. "I am a member of
the church, if that is what you mean."

Dolly began slowly to go up the remaining stairs. "I think we ought to
study to please Him," she said.

"I don't see how it should please him," said the other a little out of
humour. "I don't see how He should care about such little things."

"Why not?" said Dolly. "If your mother cares, and my mother cares.
Jesus loves us better than they do, and I guess He cares more than they
do."

Christina was silenced now, as her mother had been, and followed Dolly
thinking there were a _pair_ of uncomfortably strange people in the
house. The next minute Dolly was not strange at all, but as much a
child as any of her fellows. She had unlocked the precious bookcase,
and with the zeal of a connoisseur and the glee of a discoverer she was
enlarging u