into the frame, "Faint,
yet pursuing." These four pictures are all presents to the "girls," as I
find I still call them; and, on the easel, Miss Peters had put her copy
of "The Tribute Money." There were other pictures in the room; but these
five unconsciously told its story.

The five "girls" were always all together at Christmas; but, in
practice, each of them lived here only two-fifths of her time. "We make
that a rule," said Ellen laughing. "If anybody comes for anybody when
there are only two here, those two are engaged to each other; and we
stay. Not but what they can come and stay here if we cannot go to them."
In practice, if any of us in the immense circles which these saints had
befriended were in a scrape,--as, if a mother was called away from home,
and there were some children left, or if scarlet fever got into a house,
or if the children had nobody to go to Mt. Desert with them, or if the
new house were to be set in order, and nobody knew how,--in any of the
trials of well-ordered families, why, we rode over to the Saints' Rest
to see if we could not induce one of the five to come and put things
through. So that, in practice, there were seldom more than two on the
spot there.

But we do not get to the Christmas dinner. There were covers for four
and twenty; and all the children besides were in a room upstairs,
presided over by Maria Munro, who was in her element there. Then our
party of twenty-four included men and women of a thousand romances, who
had learned and had shown the nobility of service. One or two of us were
invited as novices, in the hope perhaps that we might learn.

Scarcely was the soup served when the door-bell rang. Nothing else ever
made Huldah look nervous. Bartlett, who was there, said in an aside to
me, that he had seen her more calm when there was volley firing within
hearing of her store-room. Then it rang again. Helen Touro talked more
vehemently; and Mrs. Bartlett at her end, started a great laugh. But,
when it rang the third time, something had to be said; and Huldah asked
one of the girls, who was waiting, if there were no one attending at the
door.

"Yes 'm, Mr. Corbet."

But the bell rang a fourth time, and a fifth.

"Isabel, you can go to the door. Mr. Corbet must have stepped out."

So Isabel went out, but returned with a face as broad as a soup-plate.
"Mr. Corbet is there, ma'am."

Sixth door-bell peal,--seventh, and eighth.

"Mary, I think you had better see if M