age a bit. Tell Mrs. Blythe that she'll have no trouble now
in getting the city ordinance she wanted, providing building inspectors.
This Board of Aldermen is hot for it, now that Stoner is out of the way,
and losing this election is going to cripple his influence through all
this part of the state. It'll help the bill you want to put through the
next session more than you realize. You didn't have any idea how far
your little candle was throwing its beams when you made that speech, did
you, Miss Mary? Well, it's indeed a good deed you did for this naughty
world."

"That's just Orphant Annie's extravagant way of putting things," thought
Mary, as she hung up the receiver. "My part in it wouldn't have amounted
to a row of pins if he hadn't written it up so vividly with all those
scare headlines. But, still, I _did_ start it all," she acknowledged to
herself, "and it's something to have done that."

For a moment she was elated by the sense of power that thrilled her. But
the thought that followed had a queer chilling effect. If she could
start such forces in motion for the betterment of the human beings
around her, had she any right to turn her back on this work which she
knew she was called to, just as definitely as Joan of Arc was called to
_her_ mission?

Phil's coming had made her forget for a little space what she had been
so very sure of for many months, that she had been set apart for some
high destiny, too great to allow her own personal considerations to
interfere. Now, at his call, she was about to forsake her first tryst
and turn to him. In just a little while she would leave it all and give
herself wholly to him. Was it right? Was it right?

That question troubled her oftener as the days went by. Not when his
letters came and his strong personality seemed to fold protectingly
about her while she read, shutting out the doubts which troubled her.
Not when she sat with his picture before her, tracing its outlines over
and over with adoring eyes. Not when she gave herself up to dreams of
the little home he wrote about frequently. The little home she would
know so well how to make into a real hearts' haven. She blessed the old
days of hard times and hard work now, for the valuable lessons they had
taught her.

But "is it right? Is it right to fail in the keeping of my first tryst
for this one of purely selfish pleasure?" she asked herself when she saw
the changes that were being wrought in Diamond Row. Before th