he used to read to me, so he is not
a dead language to me."

Linnet pulled at the fringe of her white shawl; Will Rheid had brought
that shawl from Ireland a year ago.

"Miss Prudence, _do_ we have right desires, desires for things God likes,
while we are praying?"

"If we feel his presence, if we feel as near to him as Mary sitting at
the feet of Christ, if we thank him for his unbounded goodness, and ask
his forgiveness for our sins with a grateful, purified, and forgiving
heart, how can we desire anything selfish--for our own good only and not
to honor him, anything unholy, anything that it would hurt him to grant;
if our heart is ever one with his heart, our will ever one with his will,
is it not when we are nearest to him, nearest in obeying, or nearest in
praying? Isn't there some new impulse toward the things he loves to give
us every time we go near to him?"

Linnet assented with a slight movement of her head. She understood many
things that she could not translate into words.

"Yesterday I saw in the paper the death of an old friend." They had been
silent for several minutes; Miss Prudence spoke in a musing voice. "She
was a friend in the sense that I had tried to befriend her. She was
unfortunate in her home surroundings, she was something of an invalid and
very deaf beside. She had lost money and was partly dependent upon
relatives. A few of us, Mr. Holmes was one of them, paid her board. She
was not what you girls call 'real bright,' but she was bright enough to
have a heartache every day. Reading her name among the deaths made me
glad of a kindness I grudged her once."

"I don't believe you grudged it," interrupted Marjorie, who had come in
time to lean over the tall back of the chair and rest her hand on Miss
Prudence's shoulder while she listened to what promised to be a "story."

"I did, notwithstanding. One busy morning I opened one of her long,
complaining, badly-written letters; I could scarcely decipher it; she was
so near-sighted, too, poor child, and would not put on glasses. Her
letters were something of a trial to me. I read, almost to my
consternation, 'I have been praying for a letter from you for three
weeks.' Slipping the unsightly sheet back into the envelope, hastily,
rather too hastily, I'm afraid, I said to myself: 'Well, I don't see how
you will get it.' I was busy every hour in those days, I did not have to
rest as often as I do now, and how could I spare the hour her prayer was