wife was a
sweet-faced woman who called her "my dear" and invited her to come and
see her, and when she began to teach the lesson Betty found to her
amazement that it was interesting. She spoke of God in much the same
familiar way that "Ma" had done, only with a gentler refinement, and
made the girls very sure that whatever anybody else believed, Mrs.
Thornley was a very intimate friend of Jesus Christ. Betty loved her at
once, but so shy was she that the minister's wife never dreamed it, and
remarked to her husband Sunday night after church, when they were having
their little, quiet Sabbath talk together, that she was afraid she was
going to have a hard time winning that little new girl that had come to
live with Mrs. Carson.

"Somehow I can't get away from the thought that she comes from
aristocracy somewhere," she added. "It's the way she turns her head, or
lifts her eyes or the quiet assurance with which she answers. And she
smiles, Charles, never grins like the rest. She is delicious, but
somehow I find myself wondering if I have remembered to black my shoes
and whether my hat is on straight, when she looks at me."

"Well, maybe she's the daughter of some black sheep who has gone down a
peg, and our Father has sent her here for you to help her back again,"
said her husband with an adorable look at his helper. "If anyone can do
it you can."

"I'm not so sure," she said, shaking her head. "She maybe doesn't need
me. She has Mrs. Carson, remember, and she is a host in herself. If
anybody can lead her to Christ she can, plain as she is."

"Undoubtedly you were meant to help, too, dear, or she would not have
been sent to you."

His wife smiled brilliantly a look of thorough understanding: "Oh, I
know. I'm not going to shirk any but I wish I knew more about her. She
is so sad and quiet, I can't seem to get at her."

Even at that moment Betty lay in her little cot bed under the roof
thinking about the minister's wife and what she had said about Christ
being always near, ready to show what to do, if one had the listening
heart and the ready spirit. Would Christ tell her what to do, she
wondered, now right here, if she were to ask him? Would He show her
whether to stay in this place or seek further to hide herself from the
world? Would He show her how to earn her living and make her life right
and sweet as it ought to be.

Then she closed her eyes and whispered softly under the sheltering
bedclothes, "O Christ, if