"You will be allowed to answer it next week," she said. "All letter-writing is done upon the third Friday of the month."

The girl took the missive with burning face. The envelope was already slit. The letter itself had undergone inspection, and five whole lines had been expunged. But her anger at this tampering lost itself in the unspeakable bitterness which jaundiced her to the soul as she read. Better that they had blotted every syllable.

Jean: I hope this will find you reconciled to your cross, and resolved to lead a different life. After talking over this great affliction with our pastor, and taking it to the Throne of Grace in prayer, I have come to feel that His hand guides us in this, as in all things. I cannot understand why I have been so chastened, but I bow to the rod. If your father were alive, I should consider it a judgment upon him for his lax principles in religious matters. I never could comprehend his frivolous indifference. I am sure I spared no effort to bring him to a realizing sense of his impiety.

Jean

Amelia takes the same view that I do of all that has happened. She has not felt like going out, poor sensitive child, but.... (The hand of the censor lay heavy here. Jean readily inferred, however, that Amelia's retirement had its solace.) The first storm of the winter came yesterday. Snow is six inches deep on a level, and eggs are high.

Your devoted mother, Marcia Fanshaw.

Marcia Fanshaw

The matron was reading aloud from a novel which her audience found absorbing. Jean could give it no heed. What were the imaginary woes of Oliver Twist beside her actualities!

The hands of a bland-faced clock crept round to bedtime. The reader marked her place, and, after a moment's pause, began the first line of a familiar hymn. Jean hated hymn-singing out of church. It had depressed her even as a child, while later it evoked choking memories of her father's funeral. So she set her teeth till they made an end of it.

Suggestive also of her father and of vesper services to which they had sometimes gone together, after a Sunday in the fields, were the words presently repeated by the forlorn figures kneeling about her; but she heard them with mute lips and in passionate protest against their personal application. These tawdry creatures might confess that they had erred and strayed like lost sheep, if they would. She was not 

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