As Stella had a fancy for seeing the Sunday school, Lucy accepted the invitation, given to them both by Mr. Edwards, to spend with his family the interval between the morning and evening service.  Stella’s zeal for seeing the Sunday school, however, died out with the first Sunday; and after that she always remained with Mrs. Edwards, who, being very delicate, and having a young infant, had been obliged to resign her own class, the one now taken by Lucy.  Mrs. Edwards was a sweet, gentle woman, overflowing with Christian love and kindness; and as Stella at once took a great fancy to her, she exercised a very beneficial influence over one who was much more easily swayed by kindness than by any other power.

The celebration of the Lord’s Supper was approaching, and as Bessie was looking forward to participating for the first time in the holy ordinance, Lucy gladly embraced the opportunity of making a formal confession of her faith in Christ, and claiming the blessing attached to the ordinance by Him who instituted it.  It was pleasant, too, to do so in the very place in which He had first, by the cords of love, drawn her heart to Himself.  Solemn as she knew the step to be, she had lived too long on the principle of “looking unto Jesus” not to feel that she had only to look to Him still to give her the fitting preparation of heart for receiving the tokens of His broken body and shed blood; and in this happy confidence she came forward to obey His dying command.

Stella had seemed much interested about the approaching communion, and had asked a good many questions respecting it, and as to the nature of the qualification for worthily partaking in it.  At last, much to Lucy’s surprise, she asked her, with a timidity altogether new to her, whether she thought she might come forward also.

It was with difficulty that Lucy could restrain the expression of her surprise at the unexpected question, but she did repress it, and replied: 

“It all depends on whether you have made up your mind to take Jesus for your Lord and Saviour, and to follow Him, dear Stella!”

“I should like to, if I knew how,” she said.  “I have been speaking to Mrs. Edwards about it, and she thinks I might come.  I know I’m not what I ought to be, and that I’ve been very careless and wicked; but Mrs. Edwards says if I’m really in earnest, and I think I am, I may come to the communion, and that I shall be made fit, if I ask to be.”

Lucy had not lost her faith in the Hearer and Answerer of prayer, but she had been so long accustomed to regard Stella as one who “cared for none of these things,” that she could scarcely believe in the reality of so sudden a change.  But it was not so very sudden, and Lucy’s own earnestness and simple faith had been one means of bringing it about.  Her daily intercourse with her cousin had, in spite of herself, impressed Stella gradually with a conviction of the importance of what she felt