We are not going to tell any tales of Tom. She was a sensible girl—too sensible, perhaps, to waste time and shed tears in useless regrets. And, moreover, as she often said to herself, “No woman can have everything.” She would not have liked to give up her share of philanthropic work which was occupying the best energies of so many of the women of the day; and she had only to do from compulsion what they did from choice. Hundreds of educated women deliberately chose to be patriots instead of parents; and they proved in their own experience that love is not everything. They wisely saw what—happily for England and the Church—was being increasingly realised, that fathers and mothers of children are culpably unfaithful to their trust and duty who are busily engaged in their endeavour to save other people’s children while their own are unsaved; and now men and women who had families, instead of being besieged with requests that they would leave their homes and preach in the Sunday-school, or help in the Band of Hope, were left to meet the responsibilities of their state, or, at the most, were asked to receive and instruct, with the members of their own family, a few other boys and girls who were not amenable to ordinary efforts. As for Tom, she knew that it was a pleasure to her to be in the thick of the grand work of the times, and this self-knowledge came to her aid. Her letter to Mr. Macdonald left no doubt as to its sincerity. Tom showed it to her father before she sent it. “Are you sure that this is what you mean, Tom? There is no woman in England who would not be proud of the honour which you are refusing to accept,” he said. “I know that, father, quite well. Indeed, the honour lies upon me, and afflicts me night and morn—the burden of this honour unto which I was not born.” “Do not be flippant, my dear; this certainly should be considered gravely.” “Father, don’t you know that I am really grave enough even to satisfy you? I am not doing this thing hastily. Nothing would induce me to marry Mr. Macdonald—because I do not care for him, and never could. I respect him with all my heart, so, you see, there is no room left for love. Read this letter, please, and see if it will do.” Mr. Whitwell drew his daughter to his side, and looked at her with the anxiety of tenderness. Sometimes he had thought that Tom was not quite her own merry self, and that there must be a reason for the change. He told her so; and that little sentence spoken by her father was the most powerful tonic she could have had. Tom became from that day as mischievous and merry as ever. If Mr. Macdonald received her letter with great disappointment no one ever knew it. He read it as final; and, after replying to it in a kindly letter, which Tom kept as one of her treasures, he dismissed the thought of marriage from his mind, and threw himself unreservedly into his work. As Arthur Knight was doing also.