And she put her arm around the waist of her dear friend. But Lady Carse shook her off, turned weeping to Annie, and sobbed out, "If you save me--If this is all sincere in you, and--" "Sincere!" exclaimed Annie, in such surprise that she almost dropped the ball. "O yes, yes; it is all right, and you are an angel to me. I--" "What an amiable creature she is!" said Mrs Ruthven to her husband, gazing on Lady Carse. "What noble impulses she has!" "Very fine impulses," declared the minister. "It is very affecting. I find myself much moved." And he began pacing up and down. "Sincere!" Annie repeated to herself in the same surprise. "Oh, dear!" observed Mrs Ruthven, in a whisper, which, however, the widow heard: "how long it takes for some people to know some other people. There is Mrs Fleming, now, all perplexed about the dear creature. Why, she knew her; I mean, she had her with her before we ever saw her, and now we know her--Oh! how well, how thoroughly we know her--we know her to the bottom of her heart." "A most transparent being, indeed!" declared Mr Ruthven. "As guileless as a child." "Call me a child; you may," sobbed Lady Carse. "None but children and such as I quarrel with their best friends. She has been to me--" "You reproach yourself too severely, my dear lady," declared the minister. "There are seasons of inequality in us all; not that I intend to justify--" His wife did not wait for the end, but said, "Quarrel, my dear soul? Quarrel with your best friends? You do such a thing! Let us see whether you ever quarrel with us; and we _are_ friends, are we not; you and we? Let us see whether you ever quarrel with us! Ah!" Annie had finished her work; and she was gone before the long kiss of the new friends was over. "It is only two days more to the sabbath," thought she. Then she smiled, and said, "Anyone might call me a child, counting the days as if I could not wait for my treat. But, really, I did not know what the comfort of the sabbath would be. The chapel is all weather-tight now; and thank God for sending us a minister!" As all expected, up came the steward; very early and very angry. Nobody from the minister's house cared to encounter him. He threw the letters down upon the threshold of the door, and shouted out that his bringing them back was more than the writer deserved. If he had read them, and made mischief of their contents, nobody could, under the circumstances, have blamed him. Here they were, however, as a lesson to the family not to lose their time, and waste their precious ink and paper in writing letters that would never leave the island. As he was turning to go away, the widow opened her door, and asked if he would excuse her for troubling him with one little commission which she had not thought of the day before, and she produced the ball of thread.