in her heart, who was feeling so happy here
to-day--Hazel Radcliffe, the former New York society girl, rejoicing
ecstatically because she was going to marry a poor home missionary and
live in a shanty! How her friends would laugh and sneer, and how Aunt
Maria would lift her hands in horror and say the family was disgraced!
But it did not matter about Aunt Maria. Poor Aunt Maria! She had never
approved of anything that Hazel wanted to do all her life. As for her
brother--and here her face took on a shade of sadness--her brother was
of another world than hers and always had been. People said he was like
his dead mother. Perhaps the grand man of the desert could help her
brother to better things. Perhaps he would come out here to visit them
and catch a vision of another kind of life and take a longing for it as
she had done. He could not fail at least to see the greatness of the man
she had chosen.

There was great comfort to her in this hour to remember that her father
had been interested in her missionary, and had expressed a hope that
she might meet him again some day. She thought her father would have
been pleased at the choice she had made, for he had surely seen the
vision of what was really worth while in life before he died.

Suddenly her eyes turned to the little square table over by the
cupboard. What if she should set it?

She sprang up and suited the action to the thought.

Almost as a child might handle her first pewter set Hazel took the
dishes from the shelves and arranged them on the table. They were pretty
china dishes, with a fine old sprigged pattern of delicate flowers. She
recognized them as belonging to his mother's set, and handled them
reverently. It almost seemed as if that mother's presence was with her
in the room as she prepared the table for her first meal with the
beloved son.

She found a large white towel in the cupboard drawer that she spread on
the rough little table, and set the delicate dishes upon it: two plates,
two cups and saucers, knives and forks--two of everything! How it
thrilled her to think that in a little while she would belong here in
this dear house, a part of it, and that they two would have a right to
sit together at this table through the years. There might come hardships
and disappointments--of course there would. She was no fool! Life was
full of disappointments for everybody, as well as of beautiful
surprises! But come what would she knew by the thrill in her hea