"I won't," declared the perverse Harry, "because I don't like it;" and
so saying, he rushed off to join "the boys," as he called them.

"What have you got there?" asked Stella, holding out her hand for
Lucy's card, which she had brought down. "Yes, it's pretty, but Sophy
does much prettier ones; you should see some lovely ones she has
done!"

"Has she?" asked Lucy with interest,--thinking Stella's sister must
care more for the Bible than she herself did, if she painted
illuminated texts. "I was going to tell you this was what Miss Preston
was speaking to us about."

"I don't see that she could say much about that, it's so short. I
don't see what it means; Jesus is in heaven now, and we can't see
Him."

"Oh, but," exclaimed Lucy eagerly, overcoming her shy reluctance to
speak, "He is _always near_, though we can't see Him, and is ready to
help us when we do right, and grieved and displeased when we do wrong.
I forget that myself, Stella," she added with an effort, "or I
shouldn't have been so cross when I came home."

Stella had already forgotten all about that, and felt a little
uncomfortable at her cousin's entering on subjects which she had been
accustomed to consider were to be confined to the pulpit, or at any
rate were above her comprehension. She believed, of course, in a
general way, that Christ had died for sinners, as she had often heard
in church, and that in some vague way _she_ was to be saved and taken
to heaven, when she should be obliged to leave this world; but it had