to bed.

She had a story or some pleasant talk for them every night; doing her
best to fill mamma's place.

Vi was glad to find her grandpa alone in the library when she came down
again.

"Come, sit on my knee, as your dear mamma used to do at your age," he
said, "and tell me what you have been doing these past weeks while I have
seen so little of you."

"It is so nice," she said as she took the offered seat, and he passed his
arm about her, "so nice to have a grandpa to pet me; especially when I've
no father or mother at home to do it."

"So we are mutually satisfied," he said. "Now what have you to tell me?
any questions to ask? any doubts or perplexities to be cleared away?"

"Grandpa, has anybody been telling you anything?" she asked.

"No, nothing about you."

"Then I'll just tell you all." And she gave him a history of Isadore's
efforts to pervert her, and their effect upon her; also of the
conversation of that afternoon, in which Mr. Daly had answered the
questions of Isadore, that had most perplexed and troubled her.

Mr. Dinsmore was grieved and distressed by Isa's defection from the
evangelical faith, and indignant at her attempt to lead Vi astray also.

"Are you fully satisfied now on all the points?" he asked.

"There are one or two things I should like to ask you about, grandpa,"
she said. "Isa thinks a convent life so beautiful and holy, so shut out
from the world, with all its cares and wickedness, she says; so quiet and
peaceful, so full of devotion and the self-denial the Lord Jesus taught
when he said, 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me.'

"Do you think leaving one's dear home and father and mother, and brothers
and sisters to be shut up for life with strangers, in a convent, was the
cross he meant, grandpa?"

"No, I am perfectly sure it was not; the Bible teaches us to do our duty
in the place where God puts us; it recognizes the family relationships;
teaches the reciprocal duties of kinsmen, parents and children, husbands
and wives, but has not a word to say to monks or nuns.

"It bids us take up the cross God lays upon us, and not one of our own
invention; nor did one of the holy men and women it tells of live the life
of an anchorite. Nor can peace and freedom from temptation and sin be
found in a convent any more than elsewhere; because we carry our evil
natures with us wherever we go."

"No; peace and happiness are to be fou