y.'"

"I know it; that very verse set me to thinking about it. That is what I
want help about. There is no work for me to do; at least, I can't find
any. I am doing just nothing at all, and I don't in the least know which
way to turn. I am not satisfied with this state of things; I can't
settle back to my books and my music as I did before I went away; I
don't enjoy them as I used to; I mean, they don't absorb me; they seem
to be of no earthly use to anyone but myself, and I don't feel
absolutely certain that they are of any use to me; anyway, they are not
Christian work."

"As to that, you are not to be too certain about it. Wonderful things
can be done with music; and when one is given a marked talent for it, as
I hear has been the case with you, it is not to be hidden in a napkin."

"I don't know what I can do with music, I am sure," Ruth said,
skeptically. "I suppose I must have a good deal of talent in that
direction; I have been told so ever since I can remember; but beyond
entertaining my friends, I see no other special use for it."

"Do you remember telling me about the songs which Mr. Bliss sang at
Chautauqua, and the effect on the audience?"

"Yes," said Ruth, speaking heartily, and her cheeks glowing at the
recollection "but he was wonderful!"

"The same work can be done in a smaller way," Dr. Dennis said, smiling.
"I hope to show you something of what you may do to help in that way
before another winter passes; but, in the meantime, mere entertainment
of friends is not a bad motive for keeping up one's music. Then there is
the uncertain future ever before us. What if you should be called upon
to teach music some day?"

A vision of herself toiling wearily from house to house in all weathers,
and at all hours of the day, as she had seen music teachers do, hovered
over Ruth Erskine's brain, and so utterly improbable and absurd did the
picture seem, when she imagined it as having any reference to her, that
she laughed outright.

"I don't believe I shall ever teach music," she said, positively.

"Perhaps not; and yet stranger things than that _have_ happened in this
changeful life."

"But, Dr. Dennis," she said, with sudden energy, and showing a touch of
annoyance at the turn which the talk was taking, "my trouble is not an
inability to employ my time; I do not belong to the class of young
ladies who are afflicted with _ennui_." And a sarcastic curve of her
handsome lip made Ruth look very like the Mi