etting lost again, and to-day she had
almost fallen back to her former careless state.

Mona looked on from time to time when she could spare a minute from her
work, and at last observed in her most sarcastic manner that "fair words
were easily spoken and light vows swiftly broken."

Minnie flared up in a moment.

"Fair words are easily spoken, as you say, Mona," she retorted, "you
speak of what you know nothing. It may be so. Sharp things cost more, I
dare say, and that is doubtless why they are generally more successful
in their aim."

Mona laughed disagreeably, and enquired with mock politeness, "at what
object Minnie might at present be aiming."

She was about to retort with a bitterness scarcely less penetrating than
Mona's own sharp thrusts, when she suddenly checked herself, and putting
her books which she had now collected under her arm, she walked out
without even waiting for Mabel, lest she should find the temptation to
speak too strong for her. Her heart was very heavy as she walked
homewards, and her eyes _would_ keep filling with tears.

Only last night she had been so happy in her efforts to do good, and
here she was, actually as bad as any of the people she had been
flattering herself she could reform. What _was_ she to do? she asked
herself a hundred times, and then it occurred to her that she must tell
God about it.

She hastened home, and shutting herself into her room poured out all her
sorrow and contrition into the ear of Him who is ever ready to hear and
comfort. When she rose she felt both refreshed and strengthened, and
after a little while something came into her mind which she had, only by
chance, heard the minister say yesterday. She could not tell the exact
words, for she had only a vague remembrance of it, but it was something
about the mistake of allowing anything, however good and right it might
be in itself, to come between us and our present duty.

"That is just the mistake I have fallen into," thought Minnie, "I ought
to have been attending to my lessons, which were clearly of the first
importance at the time, and having gone wrong at the beginning, I
naturally fell into a great many other scrapes. I must remember that
about present duty. I am rather afraid I allowed the same thing to occur
yesterday in church, or I should have been better able to recollect the
words I wanted just now."

On the afternoon of the following day, which happily contained no cause
of regret to Minn