“Thank you; I like to stay with grandma.”

“But I want hasty pudding to-night, and you won’t be home in time to make it, Hepsie,” pleaded the old lady in a tone of real distress.

“Oh, yes, I will, Marjorie will have the kettle boiling and she’ll stir it while I get supper.”

Mrs. Rheid stooped to pick up the threads that had fallen on her clean floor, rolled up her work, took her gingham sun-bonnet from its hook, and stepped out into the sunshine almost as lightly as Marjorie would have done.

“Cynthy” was African John’s wife, a woman of deep Christian experience, and Mrs. Rheid’s burdened heart was longing to pour itself out to her.

Household matters, the present and future of their children, the news of the homes around them, and Christian experience, were the sole topics that these simply country women touched upon.

“Well, deary, what shall I tell you about?  I must keep on knitting, for Hollis must have these stockings at Christmas, so he can tell folks in New York that his old grandmarm most a hundred knit them for him all herself.  Nobody helped her, she did it all herself.  She did it with her own old fingers and her own blind eyes.  I’ll drop too many stitches while I talk, so I’ll let you hold it for me.  It seems as if it never will get done,” she sighed, dropping it from her fingers.

“Oh, yes,” said Marjorie, cheerily, “it’s like your life, you know; that has been long, but it’s ‘most done.’”

“Yes, I’m most through,” sighed the old lady with a long, resigned breath, “and there’s nobody to pick up the stitches I’ve dropped all along.”

“Won’t God?” suggested Marjorie, timidly.

“I don’t know, I don’t know about things.  I’ve never been good enough to join the Church.  I’ve been afraid.”

“Do you have to be good enough?” asked the little church member in affright.  “I thought God was so good he let us join the Church just as he lets us go into Heaven—­and he makes us good and we try all we can, too.”

“That’s an easy way to do, to let him make you good.  But when the minister talks to me I tell him I’m afraid.”

“I wouldn’t be afraid,” said Marjorie; “because you want to do as Christ commands, don’t you?  And he says we must remember him by taking the bread and wine for his sake, to remember that he died for us, don’t you know?”

“I never did it, not once, and I’m most a hundred!”

“Aren’t you sorry, don’t you want to?” pleaded Marjorie, laying her warm fingers on the hard old hand.

“I’m afraid,” whispered the trembling voice.  “I never was good enough.”

“Oh, dear,” sighed Marjorie, her eyes brimming over, “I don’t know how to tell you about it.  But won’t you listen to the minister, he talks so plainly, and he’ll tell you not to be afraid.”

“They don’t go to communion, my son nor his wife; they don’t ask me to.”

“But they want you to; I know they want you to—­before you die,” persuaded Marjorie.  “You are so old now.”