Patience reflected that she had never seen any one look less humble than Miss Beale. In spite of her old frock she conveyed with unmistakable if unconscious emphasis that she possessed wealth and full knowledge of its power. “You look so happy,” Patience said, her curiosity regarding Miss Tremont blunted for the present. “Are you?” “Happy? Of course I am. I’ve never known an unhappy moment in my life. When my dear parents died, I only envied them. And have I not perfect health? Is not every moment of my time occupied?—why, I only sleep six hours out of the twenty-four. And Him. Do I not work for Him, and is He not always with me?” “They are so funny about God,” thought Patience. “She talks as if He were her beau; and Miss Tremont as if He were her old man she’d been jogging along with for forty years or so.—Do you live alone?” she asked. “Yes—that is, I board.” “And don’t you ever feel lonesome?” “Never. Is not He always with me?” Her strong brown face was suddenly illuminated. “Is He not my lover? Is He not always at my side, encouraging me and whispering of His love, night and day? Why, I can almost hear His voice, feel His hand. How could I be lonesome even on a desert island with no work to do?” Patience gasped. The extraordinary simplicity of this woman of fifty fascinated her whom life and heredity had made so complex. But she moved restlessly, and felt an impulse to thrust out her legs and arms. She had a sensation of being swamped in religion. “I shouldn’t think you’d like boarding,” she said irrelevantly. “I don’t like it particularly, but it gives me more time for my work. I make myself comfortable, I can tell you, for I have my own bed with two splendid mattresses,—my landlady’s are the hardest things you ever felt,—and all my own furniture and knick-knacks. And I have my own tub, and every morning even in dead of winter, I take a cold bath. And I don’t wear corsets—” “Mariaville,” called the conductor. “Oh, here we are,” cried Miss Tremont. She made a wild dive for her umbrella and bag, seized Patience by the hand, and rushed up the aisle, followed leisurely by Miss Beale. The snow was falling heavily. Patience had watched it drift and swirl over the Hudson, and should have liked to give it her undivided attention. As they left the station they were greeted by a chorus of shrieks: “Have a sleigh? Have a sleigh?” “What do you think, sister?” asked Miss Tremont, dubiously. “Do you think Patience can walk two miles in this snow? I don’t like to spend money on luxuries that I should give to the Lord.” “Perhaps the sleigh man needs it,” said Patience, who had no desire to walk two miles in a driving storm. “We’d better have a sleigh,” said Miss Beale, decidedly. “We will each pay half.” “But why should you pay half,” said Miss Tremont, in her protesting voice, “when there are three of us?” “I will pay for myself,” said Patience. “Mr. Foord gave me a twenty dollar gold piece, and I haven’t spent it.”