“You’d better stay,” said Maria coolly, aside.  “These children will plead your cause with such a girl as that better than you can do or have done, I take it.  Now, my dear,” putting Kitty’s hand between her own, “this is my brother’s work, in which he wishes you to join him.  Put it to yourself whether it is not your duty.  You’re very young; you’ve dreamed a good deal, most likely:  this wakening to the fact that there is work in the world besides marrying and nursing babies revolts and shocks most young girls.  Yet here it is.”  Her voice was very gentle, and sincere in every cadence, the words true:  there lay the terrible grinding power of them.  “Talk over your future life with William, my dear.  There is the matron.  I must go and see about that charge for pepper she made last month.  Pepper for these children’s stomachs, indeed!”

Mr. Muller drew Catharine’s hand in his arm.  “I did not mean to bring you here to-day,” he said, nervously mopping his face with his handkerchief.  “Maria is so fond of managing!  But—­but it was as my wife I wanted your help.”

“My wife.” Kitty was not surprised.  At eighteen one reasons as the bird flies.  Since she passed the six straight evergreens yonder she had learned that life was not an old book-house, a few sad and merry tunes, meals, and a bench to dream on.  It was work—­for Christ.  Not far-off pagans, but little children with sin and disease heavy upon them, asking her to take it away.

She might want stamina or any other intellectual power, but her emotions were hot and near the surface:  these children and their misery wounded and bruised her as they had never done Mr. Muller or his sister:  her sense of duty and affection for her God, too, was as real and urgent with her as that of a dog for his master.

“Take me home now,” she said quietly.

“But, Catharine—­This is no answer.  And my love for you is of such long standing!” pleaded the little man, whose mouth, being once opened by his passion, found it difficult to close.  He forgot, too, the hundreds of eyes staring at him over the soup-spoons.

“Shall we go out?” said Kitty with an impatient laugh, which would not be polite.  “There’s too much beef here.  And cabbage.”

They passed Miss Muller, who nodded down on Catharine from the heights of brusque sincerity of the Woman’s Rights people:  “Come and see me, my dear.  You and I shall get on very comfortably, I dare say;” to which Kitty replied with her old-fashioned manner, which had a fine courteous quality in it, whether it meant anything or not.

They were out in the street again.  The sun was still hot and glaring.  Past the new row of Morse’s blue-painted shops, down the factory alley, all along the cinder path, Mr. Muller pressed and urged his suit.  She heard every word with sharp distinctness.

The children:  her work for Christ.  Under all was a dull consciousness that this thing had been coming on her since the day, years ago, when she had suffered conviction at a revival and been converted.  All His followers must give their lives to His service.  Give their lives!  These were words which to the poor little girl had always been terribly real, never a hackneyed form.  Now the time had come, there was a dreadful wrenching at her heart.