Or Mr. Lancaster would exclaim: “Oh, Miss Miriam, do you recall that little wounded kid which we saw the summer you and I met in the Tyrol, and how its sad-eyed little owner carried it--at such an effort!--out to the Calvary on the hillside, and laid it at the foot of the crucifix? There was faith that the God Who suffered to save souls would also pity His small four-footed creatures!” “Indeed I could not easily forget it, Anselm! It was so sweet, and so piteous,” Miss Braithwaite had answered. “I’ve always been most thankful that you came along just then! I am sure that there is one young creature in Switzerland who will carry to the grave the conviction that, together with the guardian angels, Americans are the instruments of God’s mercy in answer to prayer! What a happy child that was when you bound up the kid and set its leg!” Cicely, sitting silent on her side of the fireplace, raised her eyes and met Mr. Lancaster’s look, like a boy’s who has been found out in gentleness, always more mortifying to an American lad than detection in naughtiness--together with her impressions of life amid venerable, yet vividly existent faith, she was getting the revelation of two beautiful souls, the elderly woman’s, the twenty-seven years younger man’s, who knew and loved these things because they were part of them. Sometimes something came up in these desultory, aimless talks which made Mr. Lancaster spring up, take a book from the shelves--Miss Braithwaite seemed to know exactly where to send him for any volume of the three thousand or so in this room--turn to a passage or a poem bearing on what had just been said, and read it aloud. This was almost the best of all. Anselm Lancaster had a beautiful, flexible voice; he had been an Oxford man and had brought home with him the perfect modulations and pronunciation of English which Oxford gives her sons, and he read with the feeling that an artist and lover of literature brings to a book. Cis, listening, felt that her education was just beginning; she realized what Miss Braithwaite had meant when she suggested to her that she should spend this winter in this way. Heretofore she had learned facts; now she was learning what the facts stood for, what had called them into being, and no array of facts can compare with this knowledge. It is the clothing of the dry bones which are meaningless until the spirit prophesies to them and makes them alive.