almost ready for bed when there was a little sound
at the door, pushed open by Elizabeth, who stood there in her plain,
scant nightgown with a distraught expression, as if she had seen a
ghost.

"Oh, Aunt Betty or Doris, _can_ you remember the text and what the
sermon was about? We always say it to mother after tea Sabbath evening,
and she'll be sure to ask me to-morrow morning. And I can't think! I
never scarcely do forget. Oh, what shall I do!"

Her distress was so genuine that Betty folded her in her arms. Elizabeth
began to cry at the tender touch.

"There, little Bessy, don't cry. Let me see--I remember I was preaching
another sermon to myself. It was--'Do this and ye shall live.' And
instead of all the hard things he put in, I thought of the kindly things
father was always doing, and Uncle Win, and mother, and the pleasant
things instead of the severe laws. And when he reached his lastly he
said no one could keep all the laws, and because they could not the
Saviour came and died, but he seemed to preach as if the old laws were
still in force, and that the Saviour's death really had not changed
anything. That was in the morning. And the afternoon was the miracle of
the loaves and fishes."

"Yes--I could recall that. But I was sure mother would ask me the one I
had forgotten. It always happens that way. Oh, I am so glad. Dear Aunt
Betty! And if I was sometimes called Bessy, as you called me just now,
or Betty, or anything besides the everlasting 'Lisbeth. Oh, Doris, how
happy you must be----"

"There, dear," said Betty soothingly, "don't cry so. I will write out
what I can recall on a slip of paper and you can look it over in the
morning. I just wish you could come and make me a visit, and go over to
Uncle Win's. Yes, Doris _is_ a happy little girl."

"But I have everything in the world," said Doris with a long breath. "I
am afraid I could not be so happy here. Oh, can't we take Elizabeth home
with us? Betty, coax her mother."

"It wouldn't do a bit of good. You can't coax mother. And there is
always so much work in the summer. I am afraid she wouldn't like
it--even if you asked her."

"But James came, and little Ruth----"

"They were too young to work. Oh, it would be like going to heaven!"

"It may be sometime, little Bessy. You can dream over it."

"Good-night. Would you kiss me, Doris?"

The happy girl kissed her a dozen times instead of once. But her deep
eyes were full of tears as she turned to