ords of praise did not carry the comfort she
intended. Mary's arms were thrown around her neck and a tearful face
hidden on her shoulder, as leaning against her she sobbed, "Oh, Madam
Chartley! I wish you could feel that way about me, but honestly I
haven't stood the test. I can renounce for myself, and not feel bitter,
but I can't renounce for Jack! It makes me _wild_ whenever I think of
all he has to give up. It isn't right! How could God let such an awful
thing happen to him, when he has always lived such a beautiful unselfish
life?"

Drawing her to a seat beside the window, Madam sat with an arm around
her, until the sobs grew quiet, and then began to answer her
question--the same old cry that has gone up from stricken souls ever
since the world began. And Mary, listening, felt the comfort and the
uplift of a strong faith that had learned to go unfaltering through the
sorest trials, knowing that out of the worst of them some compensating
good should be wrested in the end. For months afterwards, whenever that
bitter cry rose to her lips again, she stilled it with the remembrance
of those words. Sometime, somehow, even this terrible calamity should be
made the stepping-stone to better things. How such a thing could come to
pass Mary could not understand, but Madam's faith that such would be so,
comforted her. It was as if one little glimmering star struggled out
through the blackness of the night, and in the light of that she plucked
up courage to push on hopefully through the dark.

That afternoon just as her trunk was being carried out, the 'bus drove
up, bringing back its first instalment of returning pupils. Cornie Dean
was among them, and Elise and A.O. Mary, looking out of the window,
heard the familiar voices, and feeling that their questions and sympathy
would be more than she could bear, caught up her hat and hand-baggage,
and ran over to Betty's room to wait there until time to go.

"No, I can't see any of them, _please_." she begged, when Betty came in
to say how distressed and shocked they all were to hear about Jack, and
to know that she was leaving school. They were all crying over it, and
wanted to see her, if only for a moment.

"No," persisted Mary. "It would just start me all off again to hear one
sympathetic word, and my eyes are like red flannel now. I've already
said good-bye to Madam, and I'm going to slip out without speaking to
another soul."

"You'll have to speak to Hawkins," said Betty.