coat. S'pose we call and see him on our way home?"

I complied with her request, and found the tailor's establishment a very
humble affair on the Mill Road. Mrs. Blake negotiated with him entirely,
but he always directed his remarks to me.

"If I hadn't a family of my own to support these hard times, I'd do it
for nothing," he assured me, over and over; "but I'll do it for half
price. My time, you know, is all the money I have, and one must look out
first for their own."

I found he was a prosy, weak-minded creature, who, although time was so
precious, would have stood talking to me of its great value by the hour,
if I had patience to listen. I thanked him for his offer, but assured him
I would pay his usual price for the work. Mrs. Blake, however, stipulated
that she and her neighbors would relieve him of all but the coat, and I
could see he was not pleased with her interference. This matter settled,
I hastened home, very uncertain how Mr. Winthrop would regard so much of
my time being spent on the Mill Road, if he should discover I had been
there twice that day. When I got home Mrs. Flaxman told me he had asked
for me each time that I was there, but he did not say anything to me.

CHAPTER XV.

A PLEASANT SURPRISE.

"It would do you good to come to our meeting some Sunday, just to see Mr.
Bowen's face," Mrs. Blake remarked to me one day, some time after the
tailor and women folk had completed very satisfactorily their work.

"I would like to go for other reasons than that. One is to hear your
minister pray once more, and also to hear him preach."

"Can't you come next Sunday morning?"

"Our service is at the same hour. I do not think Mr. Winthrop would like
me to leave our own church. He is very particular about such things."

"I don't see why he should; for he don't set much store by religion."

"He may give me permission to come some time."

"I wish he would come too. Our meetings are so good now. Daniel has
perfessed religion."

She spoke in such subdued fashion I looked at her in surprise, thinking
she might soon follow his example. I think she was waiting for me to say
something; but I felt myself so ignorant on this great subject, I knew
not what to say.

"I've wished often of late that I'd never been born. Where I'm to go to
once the breath leaves my body, is an awful thought." She burst into a
fit of bitter weeping that frightened me.

"Christ is very merciful," I faltered, not knowing