ext afternoon, and found the house and the
rooms and Miss Catherine herself were all exactly what wise Miss
Ashton had said they would be. And the two boarders thought themselves
lucky to have found such a pleasant house for the summer; they were so
considerate, and became favorites with many people beside their
hostess. They brought a great deal of pleasure and good-will to sober
little Brookton, as two cultivated, thoughtful, helpful women may make
any place pleasanter if they choose. Miss Ashton is a help and a
comfort and a pleasure wherever she goes, while Alice West is learning
to be like her more and more every year. Miss Catherine remembered
sometimes with great thankfulness, that it was the loss of her money
for a while that had brought her these friends. Katy Dunning was so
happy to go to live at Miss Spring's after all, and did her very
best,--a patient, steady, willing little creature she was! and I am
sure she never had had so many good times in her life as she did that
summer.

I might tell you so much more about these people, but a story must end
somewhere. You may hope that Miss Catherine's fortunes bettered, and
that she never will have to give up her home; that she can keep Katy
all the time; that Miss Ashton will come back to Brookton the next
year, and the next.

I am sure you will think, in reading all this, just what I have
thought as I told it,--and what Miss Catherine herself felt,--that it
was such a wonderfully linked-together chain. All the time she thought
she was going wrong, that it was a series of mistakes. "I never will
be so miserable again," said she. "It was all ordered for the best;
and may the Lord forgive me for doubting his care and goodness as I
did that day!" It went straight to her heart the next Sunday, when the
old minister said in his sermon, "Dear friends, do not let us forget
what the Psalmist says, that the steps of a good man are ordered by
the Lord. He plans the way we go; and so let us always try to see what
he means in sending us this way or that. Do not let us go astray from
wilfulness, or blame him for the work he gives us to do, or the
burdens he gives us to carry, since he knows best."

So often, in looking back, we find that what seemed the unluckiest day
of the week really proved most fortunate, and what we called bad luck
proved just the other thing. We trace out the good results of what we
thought must make every thing go wrong: we say, "If it had not been