As she spoke, the excited girl snatched the pocket Bible which her mother had replaced on the toilet, and was about to press her burning lips upon the cover, but Phebe sprung forward, laid her small hand on the book, and turned her pale earnest face on the excited features of her sister. “Malina!” she said. There was something solemn and sweet in the tones with which this little word was uttered—a look of awe and wonder in the large blue eyes which Phebe Gray lifted to her sister’s face, which would have checked the passions of a fiend—a flood of crimson rushed over Malina’s face, she laid the Bible down, covered her eyes with both hands, and shuddered amid her tears with a sense of the sacrilege which she had been tempted to commit. Phebe drew her gently to the bed, and when they were seated she placed an arm around her neck, and kissed the trembling fingers that covered her eyes. “Don’t cry,” she said softly, repeating her kiss, “they have been harsh, perhaps, but it was intended for your good.” Malina suddenly removed her hands—dashing the tears from her eyes with the action—while her lips and cheeks began to glow again. “Phebe,” she said, sitting upright and grasping her sister’s hand, “Phebe, you will not believe it, but our mother has commanded me to kneel down before the minister and ask his pardon for what I have done.” A look of indignation, almost the first that had ever visited the sweet features of Phebe Gray, was all the answer she could give. “But you did not obey?” she said at last. “Obey! sister, no, no; but I said things which made them both look aghast. They called me audacious, and so I was—they called me an unnatural child, and so I was—for I told my mother that she was a tyrant to her face. I told Minister Brown that I was not audacious enough to mock my Creator, by giving the homage which he alone should have to a weak fellow creature; and when they would have read me a chapter in the Bible, I told them the holy book was given as a blessing, not to be used as a punishment, with much more—but this I fear has made you angry with me already. Dear Phebe, don’t you turn against me with the rest, I am wretched enough without that.” “But what did the minister say? surely he did not wish you to humble yourself so far?” inquired Phebe, thoughtfully. “No, he begged my mother not to urge it, and even said that he had perhaps acted unwisely in reprimanding me from the pulpit. But mother still insisted. I do believe she is setting her cap at Parson Brown, and thinks if I kneel to him he will return the compliment by kneeling to her.” Here Malina broke off with a hysterical laugh, while a flash of mischievous humor shone through her tears. Phebe smiled very faintly, and kissing her sister once more, murmured, “But there is One to whom we may kneel,” and sinking to her knees, Phebe Gray kept Malina’s hand and would have drawn her to the same position.