gs even in prayer-meeting, Judge Erskine
thought, to see the sudden clearing of that tearful face; the sudden
radiant outlook from those wet eyes.

_Would_ he go? Would he _really_ go? Could anything be more _splendid_!

And, verily, Judge Erskine thought, as he beheld her shining face, that
there hardly could. He felt precisely as you do when you have been
unselfish toward a pretty child, who, someway, has won a warm spot in
your heart.

He went to the First Church prayer-meeting for the first time with no
higher motive than that--never mind, he went. Flossy Shipley certainly
was not responsible for the motive of his going; neither did it in any
degree affect the honest, earnest, persistent effort she had made that
day. Her account of it was simple enough, when the girls met afterward
to talk over their efforts.

"Why, you know," she said, "I actually _promised_ to bring some one with
me if I possibly could; so there was nothing for it but to try in every
possible way up to the very last minute of the time I had. But, after
all, I brought the one whom I had not the least idea of asking; he asked
himself."

"Well," Marion said, after a period of amazed silence, "I have made two
discoveries. One is, that people may possibly have tried before this to
enlarge the prayer-meeting; possibly we may not, after all, be the
originators of that brilliant idea; they may have tried, and failed even
as we did; for I have learned that it is not so easy a matter as it at
first appears; it needs a power behind the wills of people to get them
to do even so simple a thing as that. The other important thought is,
there are two ways of keeping a promise; one is to make an attempt and
fail, saying to our contented consciences, 'There! I've done my duty,
and it is no use you see;' and the other is to persist in attempt after
attempt, until the very pertinacity of our faith accomplishes the work
for us. What if we follow the example of our little Flossy after this,
and let a promise mean something?"

"My example!" Flossy said, with wide open eyes. "Why, I only _asked_
people, just as I said I would; but they wouldn't come."

There was one young lady who walked home from that eventful
prayer-meeting with a very unsatisfied conscience. Ruth Erskine could
not get away from the feeling that she was a shirker; all the more so,
because the person who had sat very near her was her father! not brought
there by any invitation from her; it was n