ible downstairs and reads every
night. I like everything but doing his mending, and mother says I must
learn to do that. Now, grandma, please go on."

"Well, Marjorie, now I've heard all the news, and Hollis' letter, if
you'll stay with grandmarm I'll run over and see Cynthy! I want to see if
her pickles are as green as mine, and I don't like to leave grandmarm
alone. You must be sure to stay to supper."

"Thank you; I like to stay with grandma."

"But I want hasty pudding to-night, and you won't be home in time to make
it, Hepsie," pleaded the old lady in a tone of real distress.

"Oh, yes, I will, Marjorie will have the kettle boiling and she'll stir
it while I get supper."

Mrs. Rheid stooped to pick up the threads that had fallen on her clean
floor, rolled up her work, took her gingham sun-bonnet from its hook, and
stepped out into the sunshine almost as lightly as Marjorie would have
done.

"Cynthy" was African John's wife, a woman of deep Christian experience,
and Mrs. Rheid's burdened heart was longing to pour itself out to her.

Household matters, the present and future of their children, the news of
the homes around them, and Christian experience, were the sole topics
that these simply country women touched upon.

"Well, deary, what shall I tell you about? I must keep on knitting, for
Hollis must have these stockings at Christmas, so he can tell folks in
New York that his old grandmarm most a hundred knit them for him all
herself. Nobody helped her, she did it all herself. She did it with her
own old fingers and her own blind eyes. I'll drop too many stitches while
I talk, so I'll let you hold it for me. It seems as if it never will get
done," she sighed, dropping it from her fingers.

"Oh, yes," said Marjorie, cheerily, "it's like your life, you know; that
has been long, but it's 'most done.'"

"Yes, I'm most through," sighed the old lady with a long, resigned
breath, "and there's nobody to pick up the stitches I've dropped all
along."

"Won't God?" suggested Marjorie, timidly.

"I don't know, I don't know about things. I've never been good enough to
join the Church. I've been afraid."

"Do you have to be _good_ enough?" asked the little church member in
affright. "I thought God was so good he let us join the Church just as he
lets us go into Heaven--and he makes us good and we try all we can, too."

"That's an easy way to do, to let him make you good. But when the
minister talks to me I tell