“Why, Mr. Winthrop, here is our runaway.”

He turned towards me, a startled look in his eyes.  “Have you been out?” he asked, with some surprise at her remark.

“Yes,” I looked at him with a pathetic interest never felt before.

“Visiting your Mill Road pensioners?” he said, with a peculiar gesture, as if trying to rid himself of some unpleasant reflection.

“Not to-day, I do not go there every time I am out.”

“No, indeed, Medoline does not confine her kindness to those poor folk alone,” Mrs. Flaxman interposed.

“You do not seek for the sorrowful elsewhere, I hope?”

“The heavy-hearted are not confined to that locality alone, Mr. Winthrop.”

“You include those also in your ministries of mercy,” he said, with that rare smile which strongly reminded me of a bright gleam of sunshine falling on a hidden pool.

“I am not so vain as to think I can reach their case.  After I have experienced the ministry of sorrow, I may touch sad hearts and comfort them.”

“You are not anxious to suffer in order to do this.  Remember, misery sometimes hardens.”

“If we take our miseries to God, He can turn them into blessed evangels,” I replied softly.

“Where did you learn that secret, Medoline?”

“It was Mr. Bowen who taught me.  God left him in the darkness, and then gave him songs in the night—­such grand harmonies, his life became like a thanksgiving Psalm.”

“I hope you are not going to indulge in cant, Medoline.  It does very well for poor beggars like them; but for the enlightened and refined it is quite out of place.”

“The very noblest specimens of humanity who have climbed to the utmost peaks of intellectual excellence thought as Mr. Bowen does; as I hope to think—­God helping me, as I do think,” I said, with a strange gladness coming into my heart as if the old, hard heart had been suddenly changed and made clean for the Master’s entrance.

“Poor little girl, I wish you had something more tangible than illusions to rhapsodize over.”

My eyes filled with such happy tears as I lifted them to him, standing at his side.  “If you could only trust God, believe in Him as Mr. Bowen does, you would find every other delight in life illusive, compared with the joy He would give you.”

“Child, is that your own experience?”

“Yes,” I murmured softly.

He turned and left the room abruptly.  I went to Mrs. Flaxman, and, kneeling beside her, my head on her knee—­a posture we both enjoyed—­I anxiously asked:  “Have I angered Mr. Winthrop?”

“No, dear, he was not angry, for I was watching him; but you did what I have not seen any one do to him for a good many years.  You touched his heart; ‘and a little child shall lead them,’” she murmured so softly, I scarce could catch the words.

“I am not a little child, Mrs. Flaxman,” I remonstrated.