ndered any life or growth
of His; and let us believe that He sometimes saves and pities what we
have scorned and blamed.

A LATE SUPPER.

The story begins one afternoon in June just after dinner. Miss
Catherine Spring was the heroine; and she lived alone in her house,
which stood on the long village street in Brookton,--up in the country
city people would say,--a town certainly not famous, but pleasant
enough because it was on the outer edge of the mountain region, near
some great hills. One never hears much about Brookton when one is away
from it, but, for all that, life is as important and exciting there as
it is anywhere; and it is like every other town, a miniature world,
with its great people and small people, bad people and good people,
its jealousy and rivalry, kindness and patient heroism.

Miss Spring had finished her dinner that day, and had washed the few
dishes, and put them away. She never could get used to there being so
few, because she had been one of a large family. She had put on the
gray alpaca dress which she wore afternoons at home, and had taken her
sewing, and sat down at one of the front windows in the sitting-room,
which was shaded by a green old lilac-bush. But she did not sew as if
she were much interested in the work, or were in any hurry; and
presently she laid it down altogether, and tapped on the window-sill
with her thimble, looking as if she were lost in not very pleasant
thought. She was a very good woman, and a very pleasant woman; a good
neighbor all the people would tell you; and they would add also, very
comfortably left. But of late she had been somewhat troubled; to tell
the truth, her money affairs had gone wrong, and just now she did not
exactly know what to do. She felt more solitary than she had for a
long time before. Her father, the last of the family except herself,
had been dead for many years; and she had been living alone, growing
more and more contented in the comfortable, prim, white house, after
the first sharp grief of her loneliness had worn away into a more
resigned and familiar sorrow. It is, after all, a great satisfaction
to do as one pleases.

Now, as I have said, she had lost part of her already small income,
and she did not know what to do. The first loss could be borne; but
the second seemed to put housekeeping out of the question, and this
was a dreadful thing to think of. She knew no other way of living,
beside having her own house and her own