"Does it," Marion asked, speaking with sadness. "I am sorry to hear that. I really thought I was improving." "The question is, can we do anything to improve matters?" Eurie said. "Can't we manage to smuggle some more people into that chapel on Wednesday evenings?" "Invite them to go, do you mean?" Flossy said, and her eyes brightened. "I never thought of that. We might get our friends to go. Who knows what good might be done in that way? What if we try it?" Ruth looked gloomy. This way of working was wonderfully distasteful to her. She specially disliked what she called thrusting unpopular subjects on people's attention. But she reflected that she had never yet found a way to work which she did like; so she was silent. Flossy, according to her usual custom, persistently followed up the new idea. "Let us try it," she said. "Suppose we pledge ourselves each to bring another to the meeting next week." "If we can," Marion said, significantly. "Well, of course, some of us can," Eurie answered. "You ought to be able to, anyway. There you are in a school-room, surrounded by hundreds of people who ought to go; and in a boarding-house, coming in contact with dozens of another stamp, who are in equal need. I should think you had opportunities enough." "I know it," Marion said, promptly. "If I were only situated as you are, with nobody but a father and mother, and a brother and a couple of sisters to ask--people who are of no special consequence to you, and about whom it will make no personal difference to you whether they go to church or not--it would be some excuse for not bringing anybody; but a boarding-house full of men and women, and a room full of school girls!--consider your privileges, Marion Wilbur." Eurie laughed. "Oh, I can get Nell to go," she said. "He nearly always does what I want him to. But I was thinking how many you have to work among." "Six people are as good to work among as sixty, until you get them all," Marion answered, quickly. As for Ruth, it was only the darkness that hid her curling lip. She someway could not help disliking people who, like Nellis Mitchell, always did what they were asked to do, just to oblige. Also, she dreaded this new plan. She had no one to ask, no one to influence. So she said to herself, gloomily, although (knowing that it was untrue) she did not venture to say it aloud. She gave consent, of course, to the proposition to try by personal effort to increase the number at prayer-meeting. It would be absurd to object to it. She did not care to own that she shrunk from personal effort of this sort; it was a grief to her very soul that she did so shrink. "Remember, we stand pledged to try for one new face at the prayer-meeting," Eurie said, as she bade them good night. "Pledged to _try_, you understand, Marion, we can at least do that, even if we don't succeed."