“What a treat you will have!”

“Isn’t it lovely?  I never had that day in my air-castles, either.  Nor you coming to stay all day with me, nor writing to Hollis.  I had a letter from him last night, the funniest letter!  I laughed all the time I was reading it.  He begins:  ‘Poor little Mousie,’ and ends, ’ours, till next time.’  I’ll show it to you.  He doesn’t say much about Helen.  I shall tell him if I write about his mother he must write about Helen.  I’m sorry to tell him what his mother said yesterday about herself but I promised and I must be faithful.”

“I hope you will have happy news to write soon.”

“I don’t know; she says the minister doesn’t do her any good, nor reading the Bible nor praying.  Now what can help her?”

“God,” was the solemn reply.  “She has had to learn that the minister and Bible reading and prayer are not God.  When she is sure that God will do all the helping and saving, she will be helped and saved.  Perhaps she has gone to the minister and the Bible instead of to God, and she may have thought her prayers could save her instead of God.”

“She said she was in despair because they did not help her and she did not know where to turn next,” said Marjorie, who had listened with sympathetic eyes and aching heart.

“Don’t worry about her, dear, God is teaching her to turn to himself.”

“I told her about the plate, but she did not seem to care much.  What different things people do care about!” exclaimed Marjorie, her eyes alight with the newness of her thought.

“Mrs. Harrowgate will never be perfectly satisfied until she has a memorial of Pompeii.  I’ve promised when I explore underground I’ll find her a treasure.  Your Holland plate is something for her small collection; she has but eighty-seven pieces of china, while a friend of hers has gathered together two hundred.”

“What do you care for most, Miss Prudence?

“In the way of collections?  I haven’t shown you my penny buried in the lava of Mt.  Vesuvius; I told my friend that savored of Pompeii, the only difference is one is above ground and the other underneath, but I couldn’t persuade her to believe it.”

“I don’t mean collecting coins or things; I mean what do you care for most?”

“If you haven’t discovered, I cannot care very much for what I care for most.”

Marjorie laughed at this way of putting it, then she answered gravely:  “I do know.  I think you care most—­” she paused, choosing her phrase carefully—­“to help people make something out of themselves.”

“Thank you.  That’s fine.  I never put it so excellently to myself.”

“I haven’t found out what I care most for.”

“I think I know.  You care most to make something out of yourself.”

“Do I?  Isn’t that selfish?  But I don’t know how to help any one else, not even Linnet.”

“Making the best of ourselves is the foundation for making something out of others.”