The kindly, grave eyes under the shaggy black brows never stirred from the minister’s face; once in a while the brown, strong hand stroked the long white beard; Judith watched him as he listened, and then she watched Aunt Rody, unbending, alert, with her deep-set black eyes, her hard-working hands very still in her new, black kid gloves. When the sermon was ended Judith gave a sigh of relief; she could sit still, she had sat still; but her mind had not followed the minister. She wished she could like sermons. She liked the Bible. This sermon was not like the Bible. As she stood in the church doorway, waiting for Aunt Rody, who always had something to tell, or something to ask in the crowd in the aisle, she overheard a loud whisper behind her: “Oh, that’s Judith Mackenzie. She has come to stay with the Sparrow girls. Her mother was their niece. Father died long ago; mother last winter.” To escape further details, the listener stepped forward and down one step; there was a stir and some one stood beside her, a tall young man, not like any one else in Bensalem: she knew without raising her eyes that he was the new minister. She flushed, thinking that he had noticed that she was reading her Sunday School book in church. “Would you like to be a Christian?” he asked, with something in his tone that made it hard for her to keep the tears back. This was worse than a rebuke for reading; she might have excused herself for that; for this she had no words. The voice was very low; perhaps no one heard beside herself. Too startled to speak at first, she kept silent; then, too truthful to speak one word that she was not sure was true, and thinking that she hardly knew what it was to _be_ a Christian, she could not say “Yes”; not daring to say “No,” she stood silent. “Pray for the Holy Spirit,” he said, moving away. She knew how to pray; she had prayed all her life; but she had never once prayed for the Holy Spirit. She was afraid to do that. What would happen to her if she did, she wondered, as she walked down the paved path to the gate; would a tongue of flame come down from heaven and settle on her head? Would she speak with tongues, right there, before them all, in the crowd? Would she heal the sick by prayer and anointing with oil? Would she pray in prayer-meeting, and go about from house to house talking about the Lord Jesus, whose dear, sacred name she seldom took upon her lips? What a strange thing to say to a girl of thirteen! There were no young disciples in the Bible; they were all grown up and old. Just now all she wanted to do was to tell Jesus and his Father everything that troubled her, and everything she was glad of, and read the Bible, and,—“Come Judith,” interrupted Aunt Rody’s shrill voice. She sat on the back seat of the carriage with Aunt Rody; Mr. Brush sat alone on the front seat; Aunt Affy had not come to church to-day; it was her turn to stay at home.