And yet was it altogether a dead truth: this passionate belief in a personal God who had ordered all things for the best: who could be appealed to for comfort, for help? Might it not be as good an explanation as any other of the mystery surrounding us? It had been so universal. She was not sure where, but somewhere she had come across an analogy that had strongly impressed her. “The fact that a man feels thirsty—though at the time he may be wandering through the Desert of Sahara—proves that somewhere in the world there is water.” Might not the success of Christianity in responding to human needs be evidence in its favour? The Love of God, the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost, the Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Were not all human needs provided for in that one comprehensive promise: the desperate need of man to be convinced that behind all the seeming muddle was a loving hand guiding towards good; the need of the soul in its loneliness for fellowship, for strengthening; the need of man in his weakness for the kindly grace of human sympathy, of human example. “He has asked me,” answered the girl with a swagger. “Not sure that it would suit me now. They’re not so nice to you when they’ve got you fixed up. So long.”!

“We won’t despair of her,” laughed Joan. “She’s creeping up, poor lady, as Whistler said of her. We have passed the phase when everything she did was right in our childish eyes. Now we dare to criticize her. That shows we are growing up. She will learn from us, later on. She’s a dear old thing, at heart.” “Oh, you know,” explained Flossie. “Like a volcano compressed into a steam engine.”

“I should let him,” advised Madge. She grew thoughtful again. “We cranky young women, with our new-fangled, independent ways, I guess we hurt the old folks quite enough as it is.” “It was a foolish notion,” she said, “that of the Manchester school: that men and women could be treated as mere figures in a sum.” “Flossie engaged!” Joan seemed surprised.