“You know,” exclaimed Miss Tremont, “I knew the Lord would bring you to me safely in spite of the perils of the ocean. Every night and every morning I prayed: _Dear_ Lord, don’t let anything happen to her,—and I knew He wouldn’t.” “Does He always do what you tell Him?” asked Patience. “Almost everything I ask Him,—that is to say, when He thinks best. Dear Patience, if you knew how He looks out for me—and it is well He sees fit, for dear knows I have a time taking care of myself. Why, He even takes care of my purse. I’m always leaving it round, and He always sends it back to me—from counters and trains and restaurants and everywhere. And when I start in the wrong direction He always whispers in my ear in time. Why, once I had to catch a certain train to Philadelphia, where I was to preside at a convention, and I’d taken the wrong street car, and when I jumped off and took the right one, the driver said I couldn’t possibly get to the ferry in time. So I just shut my eyes and prayed; and then I told the driver that it would be all right, as I had asked the Lord to see that I got there in time. The driver laughed, and said: ‘W-a-a-l, I guess the Lord’ll go back on you this time.’ But I caught that ferry-boat. _He_—the Lord—made it five minutes late. And it’s always the same. He takes care of me, praised be His name.” “You must feel as if He were your husband,” said Patience, too gravely to be suspected of irreverence. “Why, He is. Doesn’t the Bible say—” But the car began to rattle over the badly paved streets, and the quotation was lost. Patience looked eagerly through the windows at purlieus of indescribable ugliness; but it was New York, a city greater than San Francisco, and she found even its youthful old age picturesque. The dense throng of people in Sixth Avenue and the immense shop windows induced expressions of rapture. “You don’t live here, do you?” she said with a sigh. “Oh, Mariaville is much nicer than New York,” replied Miss Beale, in her enthusiastic way. “I hate a great crowded city. It baffles you so when you try to do good.” “Still they do say that reform work is more systematised here, dear sister.” “Forty-second Street,” shouted the conductor, and they changed cars. A few moments later they were pulling out of the Grand Central Station for Mariaville. Miss Beale had asked the conductor to turn a seat, and Patience faced her new friends. As they left the tunnel she caught sight of a tiny bow of white ribbon each wore on her coat. “Why do you wear that?” she asked. “Why, we’re W. C. T. U’s,” replied Miss Beale. “Wctus?” “Temperance cranks,” said Miss Tremont, smiling. “Temperance cranks?” “Why, have you never heard of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union?” asked Miss Beale, a chill breathing over her cordial voice. “The movement has reason to feel encouraged all through the West.” “I’ve never heard of it. They don’t have it in Monterey, and I’ve not been much in San Francisco.”