“I am not going to-night,” she said to the girls.  “I am full, I want nothing more to-day.”

“Preached out, I declare!” said Eurie.  “Are you going to write out your report for the paper?  I wouldn’t, Marion.  I would go to the meeting.  I am going.”

“No,” said Marion in answer to the question, and smiling at the thought.  How strange it would seem to her to spend this Sabbath evening thus.  How many had she so spent!

“I am glad to-morrow is the last day,” she said, sinking into a chair; “I want to go home.”

And Flossy and Ruth looked at each other, and sighed.  How well these girls understood one another!  Why can’t people be frank and speak so that they can be understood?

Suppose Marion had said:  “No, I am not going to write my report, I am going to pray.”  Suppose she had said; “Yes, I want to go home to practice.”

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

It is a troublesome fact that, even when people are very much interested, and very eager over important themes, commonplace and comparatively trivial duties, will intrude, and insist upon being done at that moment.  For instance, our girls were obliged to spend the whole of Monday morning in packing their trunks and satchels, returning their furniture, settling for their tents, and the like; in short, breaking up housekeeping and getting ready to go back to the civilized world.  Flossy and Ruth dispatched their part at the hotel promptly and came over to the grounds to help the others.  They discussed the meeting while they worked.

“If we hadn’t been idiots,” Marion said, “we should have attended that normal class and been graduating, this morning, instead of being down here, at work at our trunks and unknown to fame.”

“Well, you wouldn’t go,” Ruth answered.  “Don’t you know you declared that was too much like work, and you hadn’t an idea of learning anything?”

“Oh, yes,” said Marion.  “I remember a great many things I have said, that I would quite as soon forget.”

By dint of eager bustling from one point to another, the work was accomplished by noon, and all the girls were ready for the afternoon service, which all seemed equally eager to attend.  When they reached the stand they looked about them in surprise and dismay.

“Everybody is gone!” said Flossy, “only look!  There are ever so many unoccupied seats!”

Marion laughed.

“And ever so many that are occupied,” she said.  “My child, you have been so used to counting audiences by the thousands, that sixteen or seventeen hundred people look rather commonplace to you.  However, there are more than that number here, I think.”

It soon became a matter of small importance, whether there were few or many, so long as they had the good fortune to be there themselves, and to have the company of Dr. Eben Tourjee.