“Well, I would try to make him more loveable, Fred, and then I might perhaps love him,” said Emilie.

“Ah, Emilie, your ‘overcome evil with good’ rule would fail there I can tell you; you may laugh.”

“No, I won’t laugh, I am going to be serious.  You will allow me to preach a short sermon to-night, the last for some time, you know, and mine shall be but a text, or a very little more, and then ‘good night.’  Will you try to love that boy for a few weeks? really try, and see if he does not turn out better than you expect.  If he do not, I will promise you that you will be the better for it.  Love is never wasted, but remember, Fred, it is wicked and sad to hate one another, and it comes to be a serious matter, for ’If any man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen.’  Good night.”

“Good night, Miss Schomberg, you have taught me to like you,” and oh, how I did dislike you once! thought Fred, but he did not say so.

Miss Webster’s foot got well at last, but it was a long time about it.  The lodgers went away at the end of the six weeks, and aunt Agnes and Emilie were quietly settled in their little apartments again.  The piano was a little out of tune, but Emilie expected as much, and now after her six weeks’ holiday, so called, she prepared to begin her life of daily teaching.  Her kindness to Miss Webster was for some time to all appearance thrown away, but no, that cannot be—­kindness and love can never be wasted.  They bless him that gives, if not him that takes the offering.  By and bye, however, a few indications of the working of the good system appeared.  Miss Webster would offer to come and sit and chat with aunt Agnes when Emilie was teaching or walking; and aunt Agnes in return taught Miss Webster knitting stitches and crochet work.  Miss Webster would clean Emilie’s straw bonnet, and when asked for the bill, she would say that it came to nothing; and would now and then send up a little offering of fruit or fish, when she thought her lodgers’ table was not well supplied.  Little acts in themselves, but great when we consider that they were those of an habitually cold and selfish person.  She did not express love; but she showed the softening influence of affection, and Emilie at least understood and appreciated it.

Fred had perhaps the hardest work of all the actors on this little stage; he thought so at least.  Joe White was an unamiable and, as Fred expressed it, a sneaking boy.  He had never been accustomed to have his social affections cultivated in childhood, and consequently, he grew up into boyhood without any heart as it is called.  Good Mr. Barton was quite puzzled with him.  He said there was no making any impression on him, and that Mr. Barton could make none was very evident.  Who shall make it?  Even Fred; for he is going to try Emilie’s receipt for the cure of the complaint under which Master White laboured, a kind of moral ossification of the heart.  Will he succeed?  We shall see.