n's happiest knowledge.'"

"But I can't feel that you really--really care for me. How can you?"

With a tender gesture, he laid his free hand on hers while he looked
into her downcast face.

"You allude, I suppose, to the sad fact of your birth," he replied
gently, "but after you have become my wife, you will, of course need no
name but mine."

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Mullen, but really I didn't mean you to think--Oh,
there's the mill and Abel looking out of the window. Please, please
don't sit so close to me, and look as if we were discussing your sick
parishioners."

He obeyed her instantly, quite as circumspect as she in his regard for
the proprieties.

"You are excited now, Molly dear, but you will not forbid my hoping that
you will accept my proposal," he remarked persuasively as the gig drew
up to the Revercombs' gate.

"Well, yes, if you'll let me get down now, you may hope, if you wish
to."

Alighting over the wheel before he could draw off his glove and assist
her, she hurried, under Abel's eyes, to the porch, where Blossom
Revercomb stood gazing happily in the direction of Jordan's Journey.

CHAPTER X

THE REVEREND ORLANDO MULLEN PREACHES A SERMON

On the following Sunday, a mild autumn morning, Mr. Mullen preached one
of his most impressive sermons from the text, "_She looketh well to the
ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness_."

Woman, he said in the course of it, was created to look after the ways
of her household in order that man might go out into the world and make
a career. No womanly woman cared to make a career. What the womanly
woman desired was to remain an Incentive, an Ideal, an Inspiration. If
the womanly woman possessed a talent, she did not use it--for this would
unsex her--she sacrificed it in herself in order that she might
return it to the race through her sons. Self-sacrifice--to use a worn
metaphor--self-sacrifice was the breath of the nostrils of the womanly
woman. It was for her power of self-sacrifice that men loved her and
made an Ideal of her. Whatever else woman gave up, she must always
retain her power of self-sacrifice if she expected the heart of her
husband to rejoice in her. The home was founded on sacrifice, and woman
was the pillar and the ornament of the home. There was her sphere, her
purpose, her mission. All things outside of that sphere belonged to man,
except the privilege of ministering to the sick and the afflicted in
other ho