I know it," Marion said, promptly. "If I were only situated as you are,
with nobody but a father and mother, and a brother and a couple of
sisters to ask--people who are of no special consequence to you, and
about whom it will make no personal difference to you whether they go to
church or not--it would be some excuse for not bringing anybody; but a
boarding-house full of men and women, and a room full of school
girls!--consider your privileges, Marion Wilbur."

Eurie laughed.

"Oh, I can get Nell to go," she said. "He nearly always does what I want
him to. But I was thinking how many you have to work among."

"Six people are as good to work among as sixty, until you get them all,"
Marion answered, quickly.

As for Ruth, it was only the darkness that hid her curling lip. She
someway could not help disliking people who, like Nellis Mitchell,
always did what they were asked to do, just to oblige. Also, she dreaded
this new plan. She had no one to ask, no one to influence. So she said
to herself, gloomily, although (knowing that it was untrue) she did not
venture to say it aloud. She gave consent, of course, to the proposition
to try by personal effort to increase the number at prayer-meeting. It
would be absurd to object to it. She did not care to own that she shrunk
from personal effort of this sort; it was a grief to her very soul that
she did so shrink.

"Remember, we stand pledged to try for one new face at the
prayer-meeting," Eurie said, as she bade them good night. "Pledged to
_try_, you understand, Marion, we can at least do that, even if we don't
succeed."

"In the meantime, remember that we have our Bible evening to-morrow,"
Marion returned. "You are to come bristling with texts from your
standpoint; it will not do to forget that."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVII.

THE DISCUSSION.

MARION went about her dingy room brushing off a bit of dust here,
setting a chair straight there, trying in what ways she might to
brighten its homeliness. She was a trifle sore sometimes over the
contrast between that room and the homes of her three friends. Sometimes
she thought it a wonder that they could endure to leave the brightness
and cheer that surrounded their home lives and seek her out.

There were times when she was very much tempted to spend a large portion
of her not too large salary in bestowing little home-looking things on
this corner of the second-rate boarding-house; a rocking-