Presently, happier than she had ever been in her life before, Molly went out to hear Mark Molyneux preach on sanctifying our common actions.

“No position is so hard” he said in his peroration, “no circumstances are so difficult, no duties so conflicting, no temptations so mighty, as not to be the means to lead us to God if we seek to do His will.”

But the words seemed in no way appropriate to Molly’s mind, which was wholly occupied in a wordless song of thanksgiving.

CHAPTER XIX

LADY ROSE’S SCRUPLE

As Edmund Grosse was shown up-stairs to Lady Rose Bright, he passed a young clergyman coming down.  He found Rose standing with a worried look in the middle of the room.

“Edmund! how nice,” she said gently.

“What has that fellow been worrying you about?”

“It isn’t his fault, poor man,” said Rose, “only it’s so sad.  He has had at last to close his little orphanage.  You see, we used to give him L100 a year, and after David died I had to write and tell him that I couldn’t go on, and it has been a hard struggle for him since that.  I don’t think he meant it, but when he came and saw this house”—­she waved her hands round the very striking furniture of the room—­“I think he wondered, or perhaps it was my fancy.  You see, Edmund, I don’t know how it is, but I’ve overdrawn again.  What do you think it can be?  The housekeeping comes to so little; I have only four servants, and——­”

She paused, and there were tears in her eyes.  She was wondering where the orphans would go to.  It was not like Rose to give way like this and to have out her troubles at once.  The fact was that she was finding how much harder it is to help in good works without money than with.  If she had started without money it would have been different, but to try to work with people who used to find her large subscriptions a very great help and now had to do without them, was depressing.  She had to make constant efforts to believe that they were all just the same to her as they had been in the past.

“How much did you give that youth instead of the L100?”

“Only ten, Edmund.”  There was a note of pleading in her voice.

“And you will have dinner up here on a tray as there is no fire in the dining-room?”

“Well, what does it matter?”

“And how much will there be to eat on the tray?”

“Oh! much more than I can possibly eat.”

“Because it will be some nasty warmed-up stuff washed down by tea.  It’s of no use trying to deceive me:  I’ve heard that the cook is seventeen, and an orphan herself.”

“But what will those other orphans have for dinner?”

“Now, Rose, will you listen to common sense.  How many orphans has that sandy-faced cleric on his hands?”

“There were only four left.”

“Then I’ll get those four disposed of somehow, if you will do something I want you to do.”