Everybody shook hands with everybody, and congratulated themselves and the world generally, and said, "Who would have thought that such trifling subscriptions would amount to anything!" And "they were sure those girls deserved a great deal of credit;" and "who were they, anyway?" It is true that Mrs. Marshall Powers said it was a queer way to manage business! And there ought to have been a committee of selection. She was sure she hoped the books were worth reading! But even she was almost satisfied when she had examined them. And so, at last, Penn Avenue Church had a new library. "We have lost our motive power," said the girls, laughing a little, as they met together in the evening to talk things over. "I'm afraid," said one, "it will be humdrum work now. It was such fun to ask people for their ten cents and see some of them look bored, and some look like martyrs, suffering, in order that we might learn the folly that was in us." "Yes," said another, "now that it is all out, and the glorification has begun, I shall grow tired and ashamed of collecting money. There will be so much said, and so many questions to answer. I'm almost sorry we promised to continue." "Oh, you wretches!" said Mrs. Jones. "What is the use in being sorry about anything, when Susy Perkins has learned to make cake and keep her temper in the bargain; and Alice Burns can make her own dresses, and means to work for something besides her own self hereafter; and poor Bud is going to join the church to-morrow, and be a minister for anything you know? The library is the very least of it, you ungrateful creatures!" The girls laughed again, but with tender notes in the laughter. "Oh! We know it," they said with shining eyes; "that part of it is lovely, and we are glad to go on. But we are afraid the library business will grow commonplace after this. We must ask Jennie to give us something that will lift it up." Dear, thoughtless girls! Even then was preparing that which would forever lift the Penn Avenue Library above the commonplace! It was only the next afternoon that they were summoned, the class and their teacher and the pastors to Jennie's room to meet a guest whose presence has power to hush all other interests. The "King of Terrors" he has been named; but there was no shadow of terror anywhere about that room, least of all on the peaceful face of the one who lay on her white couch, with a spray of late blossoming roses in her hand. Yet they had gathered to say good-by. The circle was to be broken; the central figure, as they loved to call her, had been called. They were very still; there was no sound of weeping in the room. Tears would have seemed out of place in view of the shining of that face on the couch.