better than knowledge."

"Ah, but one needs knowledge in order to think justly."

"An excellent remark! which--if you will for give me--I was making to
myself a few minutes ago."

"A few minutes ago? About what I said? O, but there I _have_
knowledge," said Lois, smiling.

"You are sure of that?"

"Yes," said Lois, gravely now. "The Bible cannot be mistaken, Mrs.
Barclay."

"But your application of it?"

"How can that be mistaken? The words are plain."

"Pardon me. I was only venturing to think that you could have seen
little, here in Shampuashuh, of the miseries of the world, and so know
little of the difficulty of getting rid of them, or of ministering to
them effectually."

"Not much," Lois agreed. "Yet I have seen so much done by people
without means--I thought, those who _have_ means might do more."

"What have you seen? Do tell me. Here I am ignorant; except in so far
as I know what some large societies accomplish, and fail to accomplish."

"I have not seen much," Lois repeated. "But I know one person, a
farmer's wife, no better off than a great many people here, who has
brought up and educated a dozen girls who were friendless and poor."

"A dozen girls!" Mrs. Barclay echoed.

"I think there have been thirteen. She had no children of her own; she
was comfortably well off; and she took these girls, one after another,
sometimes two or three together; and taught them and trained them, and
fed and clothed them, and sent them to school; and kept them with her
until one by one they married off. They all turned out well."

"I am dumb!" said Mrs. Barclay. "Giving money is one thing; I can
understand that; but taking strangers' children into one's house and
home life--and a _dozen_ strangers' children!"

"I know another woman, not so well off, who does her own work, as most
do here; who goes to nurse any one she hears of that is sick and cannot
afford to get help. She will sit up all night taking care of somebody,
and then at break of the morning go home to make her own fire and get
her own family's breakfast."

"But that is superb!" cried Mrs. Barclay.

"And my father," Lois went on, with a lowered voice,--"he was not very
well off, but he used to keep a certain little sum for lending; to lend
to anybody that might be in great need; and generally, as soon as one
person paid it back another person was in want of it."

"Was it always paid back?"

"Always; except, I think, at two times. Once the man