r, doesn't it?" Mary looked up with a twinkling
smile to say:

"How could it be otherwise with _Philip and Mary on a shilling_?" And
then she showed him the old English shilling which she wore on her
watch-fob, the charm which she had drawn from Eugenia's wedding cake. To
Phil's unbounded amusement she told the story of dropping it into the
contribution plate that Christmas service, and getting lost in the
streets of New York in trying to rescue it from the bank where it had
been taken for deposit.

CHAPTER VII

HER GREAT RENUNCIATION

Mary went back to her work next day, but not to the same old treadmill.
It could never be that again. The thought that Phil was waiting for her,
working to provide a home for her, glorified the most commonplace day,
and came between her and her most disagreeable tasks. It was uppermost
in her mind when she made her visits to the tenements, and often caused
her to pause and ask herself why the gods had picked her out to make her
the most blessed among mortals. What had _she_ done that life should
bestow so much more on her than it had on poor Dena and Elsie Whayne?

Somehow the sharp contrast between her lot and theirs hurt her more each
time that it was forced upon her notice. It began to make her feel
personally responsible, if not for the difference between them, at least
for making that difference less. Why she owed it to them to do anything
to make their lives more livable, she could not tell, but the
obligation to do so weighed upon her more heavily every day.

Maybe if her endeavors had not been so effectual she might not have felt
the obligation so keenly, but she could not fail to see the difference
that her visits made to the families in the Row. Sometimes she counted
over the things she accomplished, as one might count the beads of a
rosary, not from any sense of pride in what she had done, but as a sort
of self-justification; asking herself, since she had done that much,
could more be reasonably expected.

It was through her efforts that Dena was sent to a hospital and some one
provided to take care of the invalid father and demented mother. It was
because she had interested charitable people in their behalf that Elsie
Whayne found a home in the country once more, and old Mrs. Donegan's
eyes had such skilful treatment from a specialist that she was able to
use them again. There were a dozen instances like that, but best of all,
she realized that she was responsi