ch a thing when the servants are in the room. It confuses them,
and makes us all uncomfortable."

Gibbie heard with obedient ear, but took the words as containing
express permission to wait upon the company in the absence of other
ministration. When therefore the servants finally disappeared, as
was the custom there in small households, immediately after placing
the dessert, Gibbie got up, and, much to the amusement of the
guests, waited on them as quite a matter of course. But they would
have wondered could they have looked into the heart of the boy, and
beheld the spirit in which the thing was done, the soil in which was
hid the root of the service; for to him the whole thing was sacred
as an altar-rite to the priest who ministers. Round and round the
table, deft and noiseless, he went, altogether aware of the pleasure
of the thing, not at all of its oddity--which, however, had he
understood it perfectly, he would not in the least have minded.

All this may, both in Gibbie and the narrative, seem trifling, but I
more than doubt whether, until our small services are sweet with
divine affection, our great ones, if such we are capable of, will
ever have the true Christian flavour about them. And then such
eagerness to pounce upon every smallest opportunity of doing the
will of the Master, could not fail to further proficiency in the
service throughout.

Presently the ladies rose, and when they had left the room, the host
asked Gibbie to ring the bell. He obeyed with alacrity, and a
servant appeared. She placed the utensils for making and drinking
toddy, after Scotch custom, upon the table. A shadow fell upon the
soul of Gibbie: for the first time since he ran from the city, he
saw the well-known appointments of midnight orgy, associated in his
mind with all the horrors from which he had fled. The memory of old
nights in the street, as he watched for his father, and then helped
him home; of his father's last prayer, drinking and imploring; of
his white, motionless face the next morning; of the row at Lucky
Croale's, and poor black Sambo's gaping throat--all these terrible
things came back upon him, as he stood staring at the tumblers and
the wine glasses and the steaming kettle.

"What is the girl thinking of!" exclaimed the minister, who had been
talking to his next neighbour, when he heard the door close behind
the servant. "She has actually forgotten the whisky!--Sir Gilbert,"
he went on, with a glance