"True, my dear, true, and I don't suppose you ever denied yourself to anyone, no matter how tired, or ill, or grieved you were feeling. You welcomed them all with 'gently smiling jaws.' Do you remember the only occasion on which we said 'Not at home'? We had been at the church hall all afternoon preparing it for a church 'At Home' and had just come in for tea and a short rest, with the prospect of three hours' solid smiling later in the evening. When I found the housemaid going to answer the door-bell I hissed at her, 'Say not at home,' and by sheer bad luck the caller turned out to be a minister's wife from a distance, who had depended on being warmed and fed at our house. She had gone home cold and tealess and, as a consequence, got a bad chill, and we felt so guilty about it we trailed away to see her, and on hearing she had a sale of work in prospect--when has a minister's wife not a sale of work in prospect?--we felt bound to send her a handsome contribution. I sadly sacrificed on the altar of remorse some pretty silver things I had brought from India, feeling it an expensive pleasure to say 'Not at home.' But of course you are right. Now that it is all over and we have long hours to read and write and think long thoughts, it is nice to feel that you helped a lot of people over rough bits of the road and didn't think of how tired it made you." Mrs. Douglas looked at her daughter with unsmiling eyes. "Do you know what I feel?" she asked. "I feel that I have done nothing--_nothing_. All the opportunities I was given, I can see now how I missed them; while I was busy here and there, they were gone. And I grumbled when I trudged down to the sewing-class on Monday nights, leaving all you children. I used sometimes to envy the mothers who had no kirk, and no meetings, and could spend their evenings at home. I had to be out so many nights of the week. No wonder poor little Davie said, 'I wish I had a mother who didn't go to meetings.' And it was such a long way home. Standing shivering in the wind and rain at the corner of Bridge Street, waiting for a car, I wondered if there would ever come a time when I would sit at my ease in the evenings with no late meetings to bother about. I didn't know how blessed I was. 'The Almighty was still with me, and my children were about me.' How could I know when I yearned for ease and idleness that when I got them I should sit bereft, and ask nothing better than the old hard-working days back----" Ann said nothing for a minute, but sat scribbling on a corner of her paper; then she looked at her mother, and her eyes were half sad, half merry: