Lottie's eyes moistened, and she said in half soliloquy, "I didn't know it was so nice and easy to make others happy." "Ah! depend upon it, you are learning lots of things," said Mrs. Dlimm, significantly. "When God begins to teach, then we do learn, and something worth knowing, too." "I thought that God's lessons were very hard and painful," said Lottie to Hemstead, with a spice of mischief in her manner. "Mrs. Dlimm is a better authority than I was," he replied. "Do you know," he continued, addressing their hostess, "that Miss Marsden has done more to teach me how to preach than all my years at the seminary?" "Surely," exclaimed Mrs. Dlimm, "that's a rather strong statement. I can understand how Miss Marsden can do a great deal for one. We have had very nice experience in that direction; but just how she should teach you more than all the grave professors and learned text-books is not clear at once." "Well, she has," he maintained stoutly. "I doubt whether your husband gets as much light upon the Bible from that huge commentary there as Miss Marsden gave me in one afternoon." Mrs. Dlimm turned her eyes inquiringly toward Lottie, who said, laughingly, "It would seem, last week, that I was a heathen and Mr. Hemstead a heretic." "And what are you now?" "O, he's all right now." "And not you?" "I fear I shall always be a little crooked; but I hope I am not exactly a heathen any longer." "Miss Marsden was a heathen, as Nathanael was a shrewd and dishonest Jew," said Hemstead. "What kind of a Jew was Nathanael?" asked Lottie, innocently. "Christ said, when he first saw him," replied Mrs. Dlimm, smiling, "'Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.'" Then both were puzzled at Lottie's sudden and painful flush, but they ascribed it to her modesty; and Hemstead, to give her time to recover herself, gave a brief sketch of his sermon, and how, in the afternoon, while reading, at Lottie's suggestion, the complete story of Lazarus, they both had seen the unspeakable sympathy of Christ for those He sought to save. "O dear!" thought Lottie, "when shall I escape the consequences of my foolish jest? 'Without guile,' indeed!" Mr. Dlimm now appeared, and he and Hemstead were soon discussing the rendering of an obscure passage, upon which the big commentary gave the conflicting opinions of a dozen learned doctors. Mrs. Dlimm carried Lottie off to her sanctum, the nursery,--the fruitful source of questions and mysteries the learned doctors would find still more difficult to solve. "And you are contented with this narrow round of life?" asked Lottie, curiously, as Mrs. Dlimm finished the narration of what seemed to her very tame experience.