my leanings toward sentimentality.

As I approached the door of the wide, low-browed parlor, I saw Miss
Warren reading a paper; a second later and my heart gave a bound: it
was the journal of which I was the night editor, and I greeted its
familiar aspect as the face of an old friend in a foreign land. It was
undoubtedly the number that had gone to press the night I had broken
down, and I almost hoped to see some marks of the catastrophe in its
columns. How could I beguile the coveted sheet from Miss Warren's
hands and steal away to a half-hour's seclusion?

"What! Miss Warren," I exclaimed, "reading a newspaper on Sunday?"

She looked at me a moment before replying, and then asked:

"Do you believe in a Providence?"

Thrown off my guard by the unexpected question, I answered:

"Assuredly; I am not quite ready to admit that I am a fool, even after
all that has happened."

There was laughter in her eyes at once, but she asked innocently:

"What has happened?"

I suppose my color rose a little, but I replied carelessly, "I have
made some heavy blunders of late. You are adroit in stealing away from
a weak position under a fire of questions, but your stratagem shall
not succeed," I continued severely. "How can you explain the fact, too