courteous quality in it, whether it meant anything or not.

They were out in the street again. The sun was still hot and glaring.
Past the new row of Morse's blue-painted shops, down the factory
alley, all along the cinder path, Mr. Muller pressed and urged his
suit. She heard every word with sharp distinctness.

The children: her work for Christ. Under all was a dull consciousness
that this thing had been coming on her since the day, years ago, when
she had suffered conviction at a revival and been converted. All His
followers must give their lives to His service. Give their lives!
These were words which to the poor little girl had always been
terribly real, never a hackneyed form. Now the time had come, there
was a dreadful wrenching at her heart.

"Oh, God! oh, my God! I want to do what's right!" cried Kitty
silently, looking away to the farthest horizon.

Mr. Muller remembered by this time some of his long-planned endearing
speeches, and used them. But he could not bring a blush to her cheek.
She did presently look straight at him, her eye passing quickly and
critically over the neat paunchy little figure in its fashionably-cut
coat and tight-fitting trowsers. When she was a girl of ten she had
fancied that Dr. Brownlee would be her future husband--the actual
Sir Guy. She would listen Sunday after Sunday to the gray-bearded old
fellow dealing the thunders of Sinai from the pulpit overhead, in a
rapt delight, thinking how sweet it would be to be guided step by step
by so holy and great a man. Long after she grew out of that, indeed
only a year or two ago, she used to tremble and grow hot to her
finger-tips when young Herr Bluhm, the music-master, went by the gate.