ty,
and disturb her new, assured sense of wisdom. Suddenly she'd find
herself all mixed up, confused as to what actually was and wasn't.

But she never worried long over that. Life was too complex to permit
much time for worry over anything; too full and compelling in every
minute of the long, long hours which yet seemed not long enough to hold
the new experiences and emotions which ceaselessly flooded in upon her.

The emotion she felt this Sunday was utterly new. It was not contentment
nor enjoyment merely, nor just happiness. For, in the morning as mother
dressed her in her embroidered white "best" dress, and as she walked
through the June sunshine to the Presbyterian church, trying to remember
not to skip, she had been quite happy. And she had still felt happy
during the Sunday-school lesson, while Miss Simpson explained how our
Lord multiplied the loaves and fishes so as to feed the multitude. How
wonderful it must have been to be alive when our Lord walked and talked
among men!

Her feeling of peaceful contentment intensified a little when they all
stood up to sing,

"Let me be a little sunbeam for Jesus--" and she seemed, then, to feel a
subtle sort of glow, as from an actual sunbeam, warming her whole being.

But the marvellous new feeling did not definitely begin till after
Sunday-school was over, when she was helping Miss Simpson collect the
song-books. Not the big, thick hymn-books used for the church service,
but smaller ones, with pasteboard backs and different tunes. Melissa
would have preferred the Sunday-school to use the big, cloth-covered
hymnals. Somehow they looked more religious; just as their tunes, with
slow, long-drawn cadences, somehow sounded more religious than the
Sunday-school's cheerful tunes. Why this should be so Melissa didn't
know; there were many things she didn't yet understand about religion.
But she asked no questions; experience had taught her that the most
serious questions may be strangely turned into food for laughter by
grown-ups.

It was when she carried the song-books into the choir-room to stack them
on some chairs, that she noticed the choir had come in and was beginning
to practise a real hymn. She loitered. It was an especially religious
hymn, very slow and mournful. They sang:

"A-a--sle-e-e-ep in Je-e-e--sus--Ble-e-es--ed sle-e-e-ep--From which
none e-e-ev--er Wake to we-e-e-ep--"

The choir did not observe Melissa; did not suspect that state of
deliciousness