"Now, I don't want to speak to you again about this. Get right to
your exercises--I hope I won't have to hide that hymn-book!"

Mother's voice was stern. The laundress's defection and other
domestic worries may have had something to do with it. But Missy
couldn't consider that; she was too crushed. In stricken silence she
attacked the "exercises."

Not once during that day had she a chance to let out, through music,
any of her surcharged devotionalism. Mother kept piling on her one
errand after another. Mother was in an unwonted flurry; for the next
day was the one she and Aunt Nettie were going to Junction City and
there were, as she put it, "a hundred and one things to do."

Through all those tribulations Missy reminded herself of "Thy rod
and Thy staff." She didn't yet know just what these aids to comfort
were; but the Psalmist had said of them, "they shall comfort me."
And, somehow, she did find comfort. That is what Faith does.

And that night, after she had said her prayers and got into bed,
once more the grace of God rode in on the moonlight to rest upon her
pillow.

But the next afternoon, when she had to kiss mother good-bye, a
great tide of loneliness rushed over Missy, and all but engulfed
her. She had always known she loved mother tremendously, but till
that moment she had forgotten how very much. She had to concentrate
hard upon "Thy rod and Thy staff" before she was able to blink back
her tears. And mother, noticing the act, commented on her little