AN ALLY

"I do not know that there is any 'thus saith the Lord,' against your wish, my dear," she said at last, in a hesitating tone, "but the inference from all gospel teaching seems to be that this life is the time for prayer."

Maybelle gave a disappointed sigh.

"I should think people would study into it," she said, "and find out if they might. It makes such an awful blank in one's praying to suddenly leave out a name that has been on one's lips and in one's heart for years."

Then Ruth knew that the child was thinking of her father, and that she must move very carefully in trying to comfort her.

"I did not have that feeling about my father, Maybelle dear, nor about my husband. On the contrary I had an almost joyful realization that they were beyond the need for prayer—were where they could make no mistakes, where the mistakes of others could never harm them any more, and where they would be forever in the presence of the Lord. What could one possibly ask more for them?"

Maybelle was silent for several minutes, and her eyes were soft with unshed tears. Then she spoke gently:—

"What a lovely thought! thank you."

After a moment she began again, earnestly.

"Mrs. Burnham, there is something I want you to know. What I am sure that Madame Sternheim thinks about my papa isn't true. Papa learned how to pray; and every afternoon during those last few weeks, he and I used to read in the Bible together, and pray. And the last time I saw him he told me that, although he had wasted his life, and been in every way a different man from what he ought to have been, God had forgiven him, and was going to take him home. He wasn't a bad man, ever, Mrs. Burnham; at least—well, I know he did some wrong things, but he was good in many ways. He had a very low estimate of himself, though, and those were the words he said. I shall never forget the last sentence he ever spoke; I can often close my eyes and seem to hear his dear voice with its note of exultation, 'It is wonderful, but I am going home!' He used to speak that word 'home' in a peculiar manner; his voice seemed to linger over it lovingly, like a caress. He had no home, you know, after mamma went away."

This was Maybelle's way of speaking of death; but the woman, who realized how literally the phrase "went away" applied to this child's mother, could never hear it without an inward shudder. Her own eyes had dimmed with tears as she listened to this pathetic and yet gracious close of a wasted life. Then she acted upon a sudden resolution.

"Maybelle, dear, there is one person for whom I want you to pray with all your soul; that is my son's wife."

"Your daughter?" said Maybelle, lingering over the word as a sweet sound, yet with a hint of surprise in her tone, as though she might almost ask, "Why should any woman so blessed as she need praying for?" But what she added was:—

"I should love to pray for her. Tell me about her, please. She must be a very happy woman to have the right to call you 'mother.' What is it you want me to ask for her? Of course she is a Christian?"

"She is a member of the church," said Ruth. "But I do not think she knows the Lord Jesus in the way that you and I know Him, or that she loves and serves Him."

"Oh!" said Maybelle, and that single mono-syllable from her lips meant much. Surprise, regret, pity, resolve, were all expressed in it.

Ruth made haste to finish what she had resolved to say.

"And she needs to know Him; oh! she needs it more than most women do. If she could come, even now, into intimate fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, it would make an infinite difference, not only with her life, but in the lives of others. There are others who—" She stopped abruptly; excitement was getting the better of discretion. She must have a care what she said. After a moment she spoke with less intensity.

"I hope you will pray, too, for Erskine. For my son, I mean." For Maybelle had made a little startled movement at the mention of this name, and turned great wondering eyes upon her.

"My son's name is Erskine, you remember. He is my only one, dear, the only treasure that I ever had; for years and years he has been all that I have; and I cry out so for God's best for him! He is a Christian, a good, true Christian man; he is everything that to other people seems desirable; but—"

"I think I know what you mean," Maybelle said gently. "I know that there can be degrees in living religion. Sometimes I think I know that fact better than any other; I have had so many illustrations of it in my life. It must be hard for him that his wife does not always think just as he does in this. At least I should think it would be very hard indeed for married people not to be as one in such matters."

"Yes," said Ruth, "it is very hard." Then she turned suddenly to a radically different subject, with the conviction strong upon her that she could talk no more about Erskine and Irene without saying what would be better left unsaid.

But she had secured a wonderful ally in Maybelle. The girl knew how to pray, and her faith was as the faith of a little child: simple, and literal, and firm. She became intensely interested in Mrs. Burnham's daughter-in-law. She asked many questions about her, sometimes making remarks, in her ignorance, that wrung Ruth's heart.

"I think I love her," she said one day. "There are times when I feel a curious yearning tenderness for her, as though I must put my arms about her and kiss her. It seems strange, doesn't it, when I have never seen her? I do not love a great many people; of course I like ever so many, but this feeling that I have is different. Still, I suppose it is the way one feels toward those for whom one prays, definitely and daily. Isn't it?"

"Perhaps," said Ruth, unable to add another word, and turning away her face so that the child could not see what it might express. If only Irene had loved her!

One noticeable feature of this time was that Maybelle began to speak confidently regarding the answer to her prayers.

"You will tell me when your daughter truly begins to serve Jesus Christ, won't you?" she said. "I think I should like to know it, soon, because it changes the tone of one's prayers, don't you think, as soon as one for whom you have been asking just this, recognizes Jesus Christ and begins to be acquainted with Him?"

"You speak very confidently, dear," Ruth could not help saying. "Do you always feel quite sure that the people for whom you pray will 'recognize' Jesus Christ?"

"Not always," the girl said thoughtfully. "I cannot be sure, because they may keep on refusing to let Him in, and of course He will not force an entrance. When I was a little girl, I thought that was very strange. I wondered why God did not make people love and serve Him, whether they wanted to, or not. But when I grew old enough to realize what love really is, I knew better; for what is enforced service worth? and as for enforced love, that couldn't be. But sometimes the feeling comes to me that the one for whom I am asking, will let him in; and I have it now."

And then Mrs. Burnham began to desire exceedingly that this girl should pray mightily for her son. More than all things else, more even than that the rags of his outward respectability—as regarded his home—might be preserved to him, did she long for his entire consecration to God. She knew only too well that, despite his strict integrity and his firm adherence to the letter of his faith, the world was gripping him with a mighty hold. She knew, too, how insidiously and how surely Irene's views, and Irene's feelings, and Irene's wishes were slipping in between him and that entirely consecrated life which would hold him safe above all the world's allurements.

It was not that he was markedly different in word or deed from what his early manhood had promised. It was rather that he had not grown, spiritually, with the passing years; and of late years, since his marriage, his mother could detect a backward movement, as of one drifting downstream imperceptibly to himself, and losing force. There were times when she felt almost jealous of the hold which her daughter-in-law had taken upon the heart of this girl who believed as well as prayed.

"You will not forget my Erskine?" she said one day when they had been talking about it.

"Oh, no!" Maybelle said quickly. "No, indeed! How could I, dear Mrs. Burnham, when he is your son, and you asked me to pray for him? I never forget him; but after all, it isn't so important, you know."

"Why not?" The mother was almost indignant. From her standpoint nothing in life seemed quite so important as that Erskine should be the kind of Christian that the Lord wanted.

"Why, because," said the child, wonderingly, "he belongs, you know, and—won't the dear Lord take care of his own? But it is different with her,—why, she may not let Him!"

There was the most peculiar emphasis of that word "belongs"; and almost infinite dismay expressed by the last phrase. Maybelle was a literalist. She believed that when the Lord said, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life," he meant that it was quite within man's power to refuse it.

But from that hour Ruth's heart was quieter concerning her son, and she prayed in stronger faith. Erskine "belonged" and she could trust the Lord to take care of His own. It seemed strange, but the child was really helping the Christian of mature years. "Except ye become as little children," she repeated to her heart with a grateful smile. Maybelle's faith was as the faith of a little child; that was what made it so strong.

The plans for the summer matured and, to the joy of all concerned, Mrs. Burnham was carried a willing captive to the new seaside home; and, on one pretext or another, lingered there from week to week. The young people were fertile in schemes, and vied with one another in pretexts to hold her just a few days more.

"You cannot surely go until after the fourteenth!" and "Why, we must have you for the twenty-first, anyway!"

Meantime, Erskine was growing almost indignant, at least on paper. His final argument was put with lawyer-like directness.

"It seems to be true that you have ceased to care for your son, but perhaps the advent of your grandson will move you. Erskine Burnham, Junior, arrived at four this morning, as I have already announced to you by telegram, and is in excellent health and spirits, and very desirous of beholding the face of his grandmother; I might remark, in passing, that his father and mother sympathize with him in this desire, save that the cruel grandmother seems to be quite dead to all natural affection. We are hoping that to have a grandson will be something so unnatural as to arouse her desires for home."

But if he could have seen his mother during that first hour after the despatch reached her, he would have been deeply pained as well as puzzled. Did ever grandmother take such triumphant news in such strange fashion before? She was alone in her room, and she let the paper drop away from her while she hid her face in her hands and shook as though in an ague chill. Her grandson! yes, but Irene's son! born of such a mother into this dangerous, sin-stricken world! to be trained by such a mother! and her fair and lovely daughter an outlaw at this moment from her mother's home and heart! How would it be possible for a boy with such an inheritance as such a mother would give him, to escape the snares that would assuredly be set for him? Great waves of pain seemed to have this woman in its clutches, as she lived over again her own young motherhood, and thought of all that it had meant to her, and contrasted herself with that other mother; and remembered that she was the mother of Erskine Burnham's son.

But by degrees saner thoughts began to come. Heredity was not everything, she reminded herself; and even according to it its full place, had not the boy a father? The thought of Maybelle in this connection helped to quiet her. Was ever sweeter, purer, more lovable girl born of woman than she? And was not that same woman her mother? What of heredity here?

But the girl was deserted by her mother, and mercifully preserved from such training as she would have given. What was that promise? "When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." Had not the Lord made good this word? If only this little new boy, her grandson, could—And then Ruth turned in stern repellence from herself. What was this that she was thinking! Could not God take care of his own?

But she must go home, of course she must go home now, at once. But she did not. One of Mrs. Roberts's flock fell ill, and before noon of the following day was very seriously, even desperately ill, and there followed a long, hard battle with disease; and Ruth, who had lingered for her pleasure, apparently, could not of course leave them now, when for the first time there was opportunity to be of real service. The sick one, even after the battle was fought, was slow in convalescing, and the mother was worn, and Ruth could see that she held a place in this home that no one else just then could fill, and she stayed.

So it came to pass that the summer was gone, and the Roberts household was established in town again, and Maybelle was entered at Madame Sternheim's for a year of graduate work, before the Burnham carriage waited at the station for the belated grandmother, and her son paced the station platform more eager and impatient for his mother than it seemed to him he had ever been in his life before, and his son was two months old that day.