“Yours will not be a friendless life, I feel certain.  I see elements in your impulsive nature that must attract those who love the true and unselfish.”

“Oh, Mrs. Flaxman, what a delicious compliment to give me, just when I was most discouraged about myself!  Mr. Winthrop finds me such a nuisance, and all your pretty and elegant lady friends I know care so little for me that I can’t but believe that I am a poor specimen, although you speak so kindly.”

“You will be wise to learn the art of not thinking much about your merits.  I find these the happiest lives who live most outside of self; and they are the most helpful to others.”

“But we have mainly to do with ourselves.  How can we help wondering if our particular barque on the voyage of life is to be a success or not?”

“It lies with ourselves whether it is or no.”

“But persons like Mrs. Larkum and the Blakes, how can they have a successful voyage, when they are so poor and lowly?”

“You must get the thought out of your mind that being poor and humble makes any difference in God’s sight.  When Christ visited our planet his position was as lowly as the Blakes; his purse as empty as the widow Larkum’s.  We are such slow creatures to learn that character itself is the only greatness in God’s sight.  Our ancestry and rent roll are the small dust of the balance with Him.”

“But Mr. Winthrop thinks most of those things—­the ancestry and wealth.”

“We must not sit in judgment on any one’s thoughts, and we must not take any man’s gauge of character in the abstract as the correct one; only take the word of God.”

I went out into the sunshine to think over Mrs. Flaxman’s little lecture; a good deal comforted with the reflection that Mrs. Blake might have more weight in the balances of Heaven than I had thought.  The garden was looking very shabby—­its splendid midsummer glory had only a few flowers left to show what had been there, and these only the thick-petaled, substantial blossoms as free from perfume as the products of the vegetable garden.  I grew melancholy.  A premonition of my own sure coming autumn season, towards the end of life, was forecasting its cold shadow over the intervening years which made the November sunshine grow dim; and I gladly re-entered the house.  I went very meekly to the library-door and tapped.  Quite a long pause, and then I heard my guardian’s study door which opened into the library, shut; and a second after he stood before me.  I thought he gave me a surprised glance, since it was only the second time I had come into his presence there unsummoned.

“May I take some of the money you gave me this morning to Mrs. Larkum, before I leave for New York?”

“If you have time.  Usually it takes ladies some hours to prepare for a journey such as you have before you to-day.”

“I am sorry to say I am not a regulation lady.  I can get ready in half an hour.”