It appeared that the former mission where he had been superintendent had grown into a live Sunday-school, and that they were looking for his home-coming with great joy and expectation. How could such a thing be other than disconcerting to the man he had become? He had no time to be bothered with his former life. He had his life-work to attend to, which was not—and now he began to feel irritated—mission Sunday-schools. That was all well enough for his boyhood, but now—and besides there was the “ladye of high degree.” Perhaps the man of experience saw the stiffening of the shoulders and the upper lip and divined the thoughts of the other. His heart sank for his daughter and her boys, and the mission, and their plans for his home-coming, and he made up his mind that secret or no secret, this man must be told a little of the joy of sacrifice that had been going on for him, for surely he could not have been the man that he had been, and not have enough of goodness left in his heart to respond to that story, no matter what he had become. And so he told him as much of the story his daughter had written him as he thought necessary, and John Wentworth Stanley thanked him and tried to show that he was properly appreciative of the honor that was to be shown him, and tried not to show his annoyance about it all to the stranger, and got away as soon as possible, after a few polite exchanges of farewells for the evening, and went to his stateroom. Arrived there he seated himself on the side of his berth, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and sat scowling out of the porthole with anything but a cultured manner. “Confound it all!” he muttered to himself. “I suppose it’s got to be gone through with some way for mother’s sake and after they’ve made so much fuss about it all. I can see it’s all that girl’s getting up; some silly girl that thinks she’s going to become prominent by this sort of thing. Going to give me a present! And I’ve got to go up there and be bored to death by a speech probably, and then get up and be made a fool of while they present me with a pickle dish or a pair of slippers or something of the sort. It’s awfully trying. And they needn’t think I’m going back to that kind of thing, for I’m not. I’ll move to New York first. I wish I had stayed in France! I wish I had never worked in Forest Hill Mission!” Oh, John Stanley! Sorry you ever labored and prayed for those immortal souls, and wrought into your crown imperishable jewels that shall shine for you through all eternity! CHAPTER II