gloves, and with more difficulty untied her hat. Then she took off her
jacket, smoothed her hair, and retreated to a corner. There a large
shabby doll lay upon her little chair: she took it up, disposed it
gently upon the bed, seated herself in its place, got a little book
from where she had left it under the chair, smoothed down her skirts,
and began simultaneously to read and suck her thumb. The book was an
unhealthy one, a cup filled to the brim with a poverty-stricken and
selfish religion: such are always breaking out like an eruption here
and there over the body of the Church, doing their part, doubtless, in
carrying off the evil humours generated by poverty of blood, or the
congestion of self-preservation. It is wonderful out of what spoiled
fruit some children will suck sweetness.

But she did not read far: her thoughts went back to a phrase which had
haunted her ever since first she went to church: "Whom the Lord
loveth, he chasteneth."

"I wish he would chasten me," she thought for the hundredth time.

The small Christian had no suspicion that her whole life had been a
period of chastening--that few children indeed had to live in such a
sunless atmosphere as hers.

Alice threw down the newspaper, gazed from the window into the
back-yard of the next house, saw nothing but an elderly man-servant
brushing a garment, and turned upon Sophy.

"Why don't you hang up your jacket, miss?" she said, sharply.

The little one rose, opened the wardrobe-door wide, carried a chair to