lush of embarrassment. "Mandy told you."

"You've been working a long time on that."

"I thought I might help you if I learned everything you told me," she
answered, timidly. "But I don't suppose I could."

"I can never tell you how much you help me, Polly."

"Do I?" she cried, eagerly.

"I can help more if you will only let me. I can teach a bigger class in
Sunday-school now. I got to the book of Ruth to-day."

"You did?" He pretended to be astonished. He was anxious to encourage
her enthusiasm.

"Um hum!" She answered solemnly. A dreamy look came into her eyes. "Do
you remember the part that you read to me the first day I came?" He
nodded. He was thinking how care-free they were that day. How impossible
such problems as the present one would have seemed then. "I know every
bit of what you read by heart. It's our next Sunday-school lesson."

"So it is."

"Do you think now that it would be best for me to go away?" She looked
up into his troubled face.

"We'll see, we'll see," he murmured, then tried to turn her mind
toward other things. "Come now, let's find out whether you DO know your
Sunday-school lesson. How does it begin?" There was no answer. She had
turned away with trembling lips. "And Ruth said"--he took her two small
hands and drew her face toward him, meaning to prompt her.

"Entreat me not to leave thee," she pleaded. Her eyes met his. His face
was close to hers. The small features before him were quivering with
emotion. She was so frail, so helpless, so easily within his grasp. His
muscles grew tense and his lips closed firmly. He was battling with an
impulse to draw her toward him and comfort her in the shelter of his
strong, brave arms. "They shan't!" he cried, starting toward her.

Polly drew back, overawed. Her soul had heard and seen the things
revealed to each of us only once. She would never again be a child.

Douglas braced himself against the back of the bench.

"What was the rest of the lesson?" he asked in a firm, hard voice.

"I can't say it now," Polly murmured. Her face was averted; her white
lids fluttered and closed.

"Nonsense, of course you can. Come, come, I'll help you." Douglas spoke
sharply. He was almost vexed with her and with himself for the weakness
that was so near overcoming them. "And Ruth said, 'Entreat me not to
leave thee----'"

"'Or to return from following after thee.'" She was struggling to keep
back the tears. "'For whither thou goest, I will go, and w