“Do I dress in a manner unbecoming to my station in life.”

“No,” said Ester promptly, admiring even then the crimson finishings of her cousin’s morning-robe.  “But then—­Well, Abbie, do you think it is wicked to like nice things?”

“No,” Abbie answered very gently; “but I think it is wrong to school ourselves into believing that we do not care for any thing of the kind; when, in reality, it is a higher, better motive which deters us from having many things.  Forgive me, Ester, but I think you are unjust sometimes to your better self in this very way.”

Ester gave a little start, and realized for the first time in her life that, truth-loving girl though she was, she had been practicing a pretty little deception of this kind, and actually palming it off on herself.  In a moment, however, she returned to the charge.

“But, Abbie, did Aunt Helen really want you to have that pearl velvet we saw at Stewart’s?”

“She really did.”

“And you refused it?”

“And I refused it.”

“Well, is that to be set down as a matter of religion, too?” This question was asked with very much of Ester’s old sharpness of tone.

Abbie answered her with a look of amazement.  “I think we don’t understand each other,” she said at length, with the gentlest of tones.  “That dress, Ester, with all its belongings could not have cost less than seven hundred dollars.  Could I, a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus, living in a world where so many of his poor are suffering, have been guilty of wearing such a dress as that?  My dear, I don’t think you sustain the charge against me thus far.  I see now how these pretty little collar (and, by the way, Ester, you are crushing one of them against that green box) suggested the thought; but you surely do not consider it strange, when I have such an array of collars already, that I did not pay thirty dollars for that bit of a cobweb which we saw yesterday?”

“But Aunt Helen wanted you to.”

A sad and troubled look stole over Abbie’s face as she answered:  “My mother, remember, dear Ester, does not realize that she is not her own, but has been bought with a price.  You and I know and feel that we must give an account of our stewardship.  Ester, do you see how people who ask God to help them in every little thing which they have to decide—­in the least expenditure of money—­can after that deliberately fritter it away?”

“Do you ask God’s help in these matters?”

“Why, certainly—­” with the wondering look in her eyes, which Ester had learned to know and dislike—­“’Whatsoever therefore ye do’—­you know.”

“But, Abbie, going out shopping to buy—­handkerchiefs, for instance; that seems to me a very small thing to pray about.”

“Even the purchase of handkerchiefs may involve a question of conscience, my dear Ester, as you would realize if you had seen the wicked purchases that I have in that line; and some way I never can feel that any thing that has to do with me is of less importance than a tiny sparrow, and yet, you know, He looks after them.”