"O girls," said Lulu, "come up to my room and take off your things. I've something to tell you," and she looked so gay and happy that they felt quite sure it was something that pleased her greatly. "I think I can guess what it is," laughed Rosie; "your father has promised you the diamond ring you want so badly." "No, it isn't that; you may have another guess; but I don't believe you could hit the right thing if you should guess fifty or a hundred times." "Then I sha'n't try. I give it up. Don't you, Eva?" "Yes, please tell us, Lu," said Evelyn. Then Lulu, talking fast and eagerly, repeated to them what she had told to Grace, in bed that morning. "Oh how nice!" Evelyn exclaimed. "How I should like to be in your place, Lu!" "I think it's nice, too," Rosie said, "and I'd like mamma or grandpa to do the same by me. But I'd want my pearls too," she added, laughing. "Mamma's rich enough to give me them, and do all she need do for missions and the poor beside." "But so very, very much is needed," remarked Evelyn. "I've read in some of the religious papers, that if every church member would give but a small sum yearly, there would be enough," said Rosie; "and mamma gives hundreds and thousands of dollars; and grandpa gives a great deal too. So I don't see that I ought to do without the set of pearls I've set my heart on. It isn't mamma's place to do other people's duty for them--in the way of giving, any more than in other things." Grandma Elsie and her older daughters were in Violet's boudoir. "I had letters this morning, from your brothers Harold and Herbert, Vi, and have brought them with me to read to you," the mother said, taking the missives from her pocket. "Thank you, mamma; I am always glad to hear what they write; their letters are never dull or uninteresting," Violet replied, her sister Elsie adding, "They are always worth hearing, Lester and I think. What dear boys they are!" "And quite as highly appreciated by my husband as by yours, Elsie," Violet said with a bright, happy look. "They are a great blessing and comfort to their mother," Grandma Elsie remarked, "as indeed all my children are--their letters always a source of pleasure, but these even more so than most; for they show that my college boys are greatly stirred up on the subject of missions at home and abroad; full of renewed zeal for the advancement of the Master's cause and kingdom." She then read the letters which gave abundant evidence of the correctness of her estimate of the state of her sons' minds. They were working as teachers in a mission Sunday school, as Bible readers and tract distributors among the poor and degraded of the city where they were sojourning; doing good to bodies as well as souls--their mother supplying them with means for that purpose in addition to what she allowed them for pocket-money;--also exerting an influence for good among their fellow students.