FAIRLY seated in the train, Ruth Burnham gave herself up to gloominess over her own planning. The episode with the famous criminal lawyer not having served to sweeten her way, she speedily determined on making as little a cross of the rest of it as she could, too fully realizing that, plan as she would, the way was a cross. She still shrank from the fashionable “Madame’s,” and her fashionable corps of workers. Perhaps the worriment was what she deserved for being so fashionable in her desires that she could not bring herself to look up an obscure back street with a modest sign, and thus help along the large army of workers, who can not be fashionable—though really, there are two sides to even that question. She understood that as a rule, the work done from that back street would be a continual source of mortification to her—a constant strain on her temper, so long as the garments lasted. After all, it is not so much the desire to be in the height of the fashion that sends women to the extravagantly high-priced modistes, as a knowledge of the fact that as a rule, the low-priced ones do not understand their business, and will succeed in making a bungle of any work which they undertake. When there shall arise a class of women who have carefully learned how to cut and make ordinary garments, in the best manner, the cry of hard times, among such workers, will be less frequently heard.

Ruth concluded not to risk contact with chance acquaintances in street-cars; but, directly she reached the city, took a carriage to a store where she was a stranger, and did some rapid transforming work. Two stylish wraps, selected with due reference to their qualifications for covering much objectionable toilet underneath—selected, too, with careful reference to the height and shape and complexion of the wearers; then gloves that were strong and neat-fitting and shapely; then hats of easily-donned stamp, gracefully, yet slightly trimmed; and, really, Judge Burnham would hardly have recognized his daughters. Ruth surveyed them with satisfaction; and, if they could have been fitted at the “Madame’s,” without removing those stylish mantles, she would have drawn a sigh of relief. As it was, she still had that to dread, and a real ordeal it was. Those who condemn her for exhibiting much false pride and foolish lack of independence have probably never been tried in the same way. You have, of course, observed that people’s own peculiar trials are the ones for which they have sympathy. They are harder, too, to bear, than any other person’s.

Ruth was not one whit behind the multitude, in her way of thinking about herself. As she stood in the “Madame’s” apartments and endured the well-bred stares and the well-bred impudence—for there really is such a thing as what might be called well-bred impudence—she set her teeth hard, and ruled that the color should not rush into her face, and, also, that the “Madame” should have no more of her custom, from this time forth. And yet, when she came to cooler moments, she tried to reason within herself, as to how the woman was to blame. What had she said, or looked, that was not, under the circumstances, most natural?

All these questions Ruth held, for the time being, at bay, and arranged and directed and criticised with her usual calm superiority of manner, and with the assurance of one who knew exactly what she wanted, and intended not to stop short of entire satisfaction. And she didn’t. She was more critical and troublesome, even, than usual; and the “Madame” would have told you that that was unnecessary. And, at last, after many delays, and changes of plan and trimmings, and changes of patterns, involving vexatious delays on “Madame’s” part, they were free of her for the day, and could pursue their round of shopping more at leisure. But Ruth was in no mood for shopping, other than the necessary things that must be ordered to the “Madame’s” without delay. She was tired and fretted; she wanted something to cool and quiet her.

She dispatched the necessary shopping with great care, indeed, but with unusual speed, leaving the girls, meantime, seated in the carriage, instead of in the great store, where they would have delighted to be.

The business of lunching had been dispatched some time before—as soon, indeed, as they had left the dress-making establishment. Ruth had chosen an obscure place for refreshment, not choosing to risk the danger of fashionable acquaintances, at the places with which she was familiar. Consequently, she had been able to do little else than gather her skirts about her, to protect them from careless and hurried waiters, and to curl her aristocratic nose behind her handkerchief, at the unwonted smells combining around her; while the girls, famished by the drain on their nerves, and having, by reason of the excitement of the morning, been unable to indulge in much breakfast, made a hearty meal, not at all disturbed by the sights and sounds and odors which made eating an impossibility to Ruth. This little matter served to add to her discomfort and her sense of gloom; for, when people are hungry, they are much more ready to yield to gloom. All the shopping done that she could bring herself to give attention to, she consulted her watch, and learned with dismay, that there was an hour and a half before train-time. What was to be done with it?

She thought of her husband’s office; but suppose the criminal lawyer should be there? In any case, there would be those dreadful students to stare, and nudge each other and giggle. Ruth dreaded a giggle more than she did a bullet. Assuredly, she would not go there! Neither was her city home to be thought of. She was not in a mood to present her husband’s daughters to Mrs. Judge Erskine; neither did she intend that those daughters, in their present attire, or with their present attainments, should come in contact with her. So, as the gloomy-faced woman rode listlessly along, on an up-town car, while the two girls were bobbing their heads swiftly from one window to another, endeavoring to take in all the strange sights, she was engaged in trying to decide what to do with time. A blackboard bulletin, before one of the public halls, caught her notice, and her quick eye took in the large lettering: “Bible Reading! Harry Morehouse! Here, at Four O’clock! Come!” Before she had reached the inviting word, she had signaled the car, and the bewildered girls were following her whither she would.

“There is an hour or more before we can go home,” she said in explanation. “Let us go to this meeting. Perhaps it will be interesting.”

They were entirely willing; in fact, they were in a state of maze. Anything that this remarkable woman—who knew her way so composedly through this great whirling city—suggested, they were willing to help carry out. So they mounted the steps to the large, light, social-looking room, where people were already thronging in. No acquaintances to be feared here. Ruth did not now know many who frequented such meetings, or were to be found in this part of the city. In the distance she caught a glimpse Marion, but she shrank back, unwilling to be recognized even by her; for Marion had her beautiful daughter beside her, and the contrast would be too strikingly painful. Presently the meeting opened. Ruth looked about her for Harry Morehouse, a name with which she was not unfamiliar. But she almost curled her lip in disappointment, she was so amazed at the insignificance of this little, boyish man! “As if he could help anybody!” her heart said, in scorn. “What exaggerated reports do get into the papers about people!” And then, presently, she did just what many another person has done, who has listened to Harry Morehouse’s rendering of Scripture—forgot to think of the man, and gave earnest heed to the words which he was reading; words which, someway, had a sound—strangely familiar though they were—as if she had never heard them before.

“Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” What was there in the familiar verse that thrilled so through Ruth Burnham’s soul? “That which satisfieth not.” She needed only her own experience to show her that one who understood the human heart spoke those words! How freely she had been giving labor! and how strangely unsatisfying it all seemed to her to-day! She fairly hungered and thirsted after a higher grasp of the Infinite Arm, reached down. A great longing came over her to hide herself away in him. She was so tired and so tried, and a long line of petty trials stared her in the face. She felt like turning away from them all; and yet she mustn’t. Well, then, she felt like reaching higher ground—getting up where the air was purer—where these endless details of dress and position would trouble her less—where such women as “Madame,” the dressmaker, would have no power to flush her cheek and set her heart to angry beatings by a high-bred stare. Suddenly a new thought flashed across her heart. These girls—what had she been doing for them? How had she been trying to satisfy them? In the days that they had spent together, she remembered that she had not once alluded, even in the most remote manner, to anything higher, or better, or more satisfying, than these new things, which, at best, were to perish with the using. Had she not, by her example, left the impress of her first influence upon them to the effect that well-furnished rooms and carefully-adorned bodies were the important things on which to spend one’s strength?

“Well,” she said within her disturbed self, “I have no time.”

“No time?” inquired that other inner self, which is forever at war with its fellow. “Is it because you have been employed on more important matters?”

This almost angered Ruth; it flushed her face, and she said:

“There is a proper time for all things.”

“Yes,” said the other one, “and is the proper time to attend to this most important concern with which we have to do in life after all the lesser matters are disposed of?”

Then Ruth roused, and gave her heart some searching into. Was it possible that she had really been teaching those girls that she considered the matter of their outward adorning more important than anything else connected with them! If actions speak even louder than words, and if she had acted the one, and not so much as spoken about the other, what else could they think?

“I am glad,” she told herself, “that I brought them into this meeting. At least they will get a different idea here.”

Then she turned and looked at them. Would they get different ideas, or had the first taken root, leaving at least no present room for other growths?

Miss Seraphina was spreading her hand carefully out on her lap, and contemplating with eyes of unmistakable admiration the color and texture and fit of her new gloves! It was altogether probable that she had never worn well-fitting gloves before, and she felt their importance. The other sister was evidently as totally absorbed in the trimness of her neatly-fitting kid boot, the advent of which had made her foot a stranger to herself, with which she was trying to get acquainted, as though Harry Morehouse and his wonderful new Bible had been in London at that moment! A strange pang thrilled the heart of the woman who was trying in her youth to be a mother to these two, as she looked at their absorbed faces and followed the direction of their eyes. Was that simply the necessary result of new refinements? Would these all sink into their proper and subordinate places directly the newness and strangeness had worn off, or was this really a wave of her own influence which was going to increase in power as surely as it was fed?

Now, this thought did not rest her; and while it was desirable in itself that she should be thus early roused to the sense of danger there might be in flooding these young creatures with this world’s vanities, that wise old enemy, Satan, was on the alert to make the whole matter into thorns with which to prick Ruth’s tired heart, and in obliging her thoughts to revolve around this center, never widening it nor seeing her way out of the maze, yet effectually shutting her off from the practical help which awaited her through the channel of Harry Morehouse’s Bible.

Somebody has said that, whoever else stays away from a religious meeting, Satan never does. Was there ever a truer statement? If he would only appear in his natural character, instead of, as in this instance, transforming himself into a goad, and pressing hard against the nerves that were already strained to their utmost!

On the whole, Mrs. Judge Burnham went home on the five o’clock train thoroughly wearied in body and mind, and with a haunting sense of disappointment pressing down her spirits. She had accomplished that which she had in the morning started to do. She had been successful in all her undertakings, and could feel that things were now in train for making transformation in the outward appearance of these hitherto neglected girls. A laudable undertaking, certainly, so it was held in its place, but she could not get her heart away from the sentence: “And your labor for that which satisfieth not.”