“The liking is mutual then,” was Mr. Wentworth’s laughing reply; “I’m coming to see you.”

“But, sir,” stammered the honest child, “I’m not good like my sister.”

The clergyman now laughed heartily.  “All the more reason I should come,” he said.

“Well, then, please come in the evening, for I wouldn’t miss your visit for the world.”

“I certainly shall,” and he named an evening early in the week; “and now,” he resumed, “my friend Miss Wetheridge here has informed me of the conditions on which you have visited our chapel.  We propose to carry them out in good faith, and not put any constraint upon you beyond a cordial invitation to cast your lot with us.  It’s a great thing to have a church home.  You need not feel that you must decide at once, but come again and again, and perhaps by and by you will have a home feeling here.”

“I’m coming whether the rest do or not,” Belle remarked emphatically, and Mr. Wentworth gave her a humorous look which completed the conquest of her heart.

“Miss Wetheridge knows that my decision was already made,” said Mildred quietly, with an intelligent glance toward her friend; “and if there is any very, very simple work that I can do, I shall feel it a privilege to do the best I can.”

She never forgot his responsive look of honest friendliness as he answered, “The simplest work you do in that spirit will be blessed.  Miss Wetheridge, I hope you will soon find some more people like Mrs. Jocelyn and her daughters.  Good-by now for a short time,” and a moment later Mildred saw him talking just as kindly, but differently, to a very shabby-looking man.

Mr. Wentworth was also a “fisher of men,” but he fished intelligently, and caught them.

Belle could hardly wait until she was in the street before exclaiming, “He isn’t a bit like our old minister.  Why—­why—­he’s a man.”

CHAPTER XXII

SKILLED LABOR

Miss Wetheridge’s visit bade fair to occasion important changes for the better in Mildred’s prospects.  From Mrs. Wheaton the young lady had learned of her protegee’s long hours of ill-repaid toil.  She was eager to gain Mildred’s confidence to an extent that would warrant some good advice, and after another call early in the week she induced the girl to come and see her and to open her heart fully in the privacy thus secured.  Of course there was one secret jealously guarded, and the reader can well understand that Vinton Arnold’s name was not mentioned, and the disagreeable episode of Roger Atwood was not deemed worth speaking of.  He was now but a fast-fading memory, for even Belle rarely recalled him.