madame is engaged?" asked the nun.

[Illustration: JOYCE AND SISTER DENISA.]

"Oh, yes, thank you," answered Joyce, who had found by this time that
this home was not for little beggar girls, but for old men and women.
Joyce had known very few old people in her short life, except her
Grandmother Ware; and this grandmother was one of those dear, sunny old
souls, whom everybody loves to claim, whether they are in the family or
not. Some of Joyce's happiest days had been spent in her grandmother's
country home, and the host of happy memories that she had stored up
during those visits served to sweeten all her after life.

Old age, to Joyce, was associated with the most beautiful things that
she had ever known: the warmest hospitality, the tenderest love, the
cheeriest home-life. Strangers were in the old place now, and
Grandmother Ware was no longer living, but, for her sake, Joyce held
sacred every wrinkled face set round with snow-white hair, just as she
looked tenderly on all old-fashioned flowers, because she had seen them
first in her grandmother's garden.

Sister Denisa led the way into a large, sunny room, and Joyce looked
around eagerly. It was crowded with old men. Some were sitting idly on
the benches around the walls, or dozing in chairs near the stove. Some
smoked, some gathered around the tables where games of checkers and
chess were going on; some gazed listlessly out of the windows. It was
good to see how dull faces brightened, as Sister Denisa passed by with a
smile for this group, a cheery word for the next. She stopped to brush
the hair back from the forehead of an old paralytic, and pushed another
man gently aside, when he blocked the way, with such a sweet-voiced