“Yes,—­so I told him, and I tried to persuade him to talk with Dr. H.; but he was very unwilling.  He said, I could have more influence over him than anybody else,—­that nobody could do him any good but me.”

“Yes, yes,—­I understand all that,” said Aunt Katy,—­“I have heard young men say that before, and I know just what it amounts to.”

“But, mother, I do think James was moved very much, this afternoon.  I never heard him speak so seriously; he seemed really in earnest, and he asked me to give him my Bible.”

“Couldn’t he read any Bible but yours?”

“Why, naturally, you know, mother, he would like my Bible better, because it would put him in mind of me.  He promised faithfully to read it all through.”

“And then, it seems, he wrote you a letter.”

“Yes, mother.”

Mary shrank from showing this letter, from the natural sense of honor which makes us feel it indelicate to expose to an unsympathizing eye the confidential outpourings of another heart; and then she felt quite sure that there was no such intercessor for James in her mother’s heart as in her own.  But over all this reluctance rose the determined force of duty; and she handed the letter in silence to her mother.

Mrs. Scudder took it, laid it deliberately in her lap, and then began searching in the pocket of her chintz petticoat for her spectacles.  These being found, she wiped them, accurately adjusted them, opened the letter and spread it on her lap, brushing out its folds and straightening it, that she might read with the greater ease.  After this she read it carefully and deliberately; and all this while there was such a stillness, that the sound of the tall varnished clock in the best room could be heard through the half-opened door.

After reading it with the most tiresome, torturing slowness, she rose, and laying it on the table under Mary’s eye, and pressing down her finger on two lines in the letter, said, “Mary, have you told James that you loved him?”

“Yes, mother, always.  I always loved him, and he always knew it.”

“But, Mary, this that he speaks of is something different.  What has passed between”—­

“Why, mother, he was saying that we who were Christians drew to ourselves and did not care for the salvation of our friends; and then I told him how I had always prayed for him, and how I should be willing even to give up my hopes in heaven, if he might be saved.”

“Child,—­what do you mean?”

“I mean, if only one of us two could go to heaven, I had rather it should be him than me,” said Mary.

“Oh, child! child!” said Mrs. Scudder, with a sort of groan,—­“has it gone with you so far as this?  Poor child!—­after all my care, you are in love with this boy,—­your heart is set on him.”

“Mother, I am not.  I never expect to see him much,—­never expect to marry him or anybody else;—­only he seems to me to have so much more life and soul and spirit than most people,—­I think him so noble and grand,—­that is, that he could be, if he were all he ought to be,—­that, somehow, I never think of myself in thinking of him, and his salvation seems worth more than mine;—­men can do so much more!—­they can live such splendid lives!—­oh, a real noble man is so glorious!”