All this time there was the hurry and bustle of Sunday morning in a large family where every one goes to church, and the time between breakfast and half-past ten is a scramble.  Grace kept quietly on with the work she had that morning assumed, straightening the quilts on the invalid’s chair, bringing her a new book, and setting a little vase with a few late flowers on the table by her side.  Out of Grace’s trunks there had been produced gifts for the whole household, and many pretty things, pictures and curios, which lent attractiveness to the parlor, grown shabby and faded with use and poverty, but still a pretty and homelike parlor, as a room which is lived in by well-bred people must always be.

“Well, when the rest have gone to Sunday-school, and papa has started on his afternoon rounds, I’ll come here and take my seat, where I used to when I was a wee tot, and we’ll have an old-fashioned confab.  Now, if the girls have finished dressing, I’ll run and get ready for church.  I’m so glad all through that I can again hear one of Dr. Raeburn’s helpful sermons.”

Mrs. Wainwright smiled.

“To hear Frances’ and Amy’s chatter, one would not think that so great a privilege, Grace.”

“Oh, that amounts to nothing, mamma!  Let somebody else criticise their father and you’d hear another story.  Ministers’ families are apt to be a little less appreciative than outsiders, they are so used to the minister in all his moods.  But Dr. Raeburn’s “Every Morning” has been my companion book to the Bible ever since I was old enough to like and need such books, and though I was so small when I went that I remember only the music of his voice, I want to hear him preach again.”

“Grace,” came a call from the floor above, “you can have your turn at the basin and the looking-glass if you’ll come this minute.  Hurry, dear, I’m keeping Eva off by strategy.  You have your hair to do and I want you to hook my collar.  You must have finished in mother’s room, and it’s my belief you two are just chattering.  Hurry, please, dear!”

“Yes, Miriam, I’m coming.  But let Eva go on.  It takes only a second for me to slip into my jacket.  I never dress for church,” she explained to her mother.  “This little black gown is what I always wear on Sundays.”

“I wish you could have a room of your own, daughter.  It’s hard after you’ve had independence so long to be sandwiched in between Miriam and Eva.  But we could not manage another room just now.”  The mother looked wistful.

“I’m doing very well, mamma.  Never give it a thought.  Why, it’s fun being with my sisters as I always used to be.  Miriam is the one entitled to a separate room, if anybody could have it.”

Yet she stifled a sigh as she ran up to the large, ill-appointed chamber which the three sisters used in common.