A moment later there was a knock at the door, and Ella Bodine entered. We have all seen bright-hued flowers growing in shaded places, and among cold, grim rocks. Such brightness had the young girl who now appears upon the scene of our story. One speedily felt that its cause was not in externals, but that it resulted from inherent qualities. As with Mara, there had been much in her young life sad and hard to endure. She had not surmounted her trouble by shallowness of soul or callousness, but rather by a spiritual buoyancy which kept her above the dark waves, and enabled her to enjoy all the sunshine vouchsafed. Yet, unlike her father and Mara, she lived keenly in the present. She sympathized truly and honestly with her father, and in a large measure intelligently recognized the nature of the deep shadows projected across his life from the past, but it was her disposition to keep as near to him as possible and yet remain just beyond the shadows. She possessed a wholesome common-sense which taught her that the shadows were not hers and that they were not good for her father; so she was ever making inroads upon them, beguiling him into a smile, surprising him into a laugh--in brief, preventing the shadows from deepening into that gloom which is dangerous to bodily and spiritual health. She made his small earnings go a great way, and banished from his life the sordidness of poverty. God outlines an angel in many a woman's heart, and often privations and sorrow, more surely than luxury, fill out the divine sketch. In the instance of Ella Bodine the angelic was so sweetly and inextricably interwoven with all that was human that to mortal comprehension she was better than a wilderness of conventional angels. She was depressed now under one of the few forms of adversity that could cast her down. Her father was out of employment, their slender income had ceased, and they were dependent. She felt this cruel position all the more because Mrs. Bodine out of her poverty gave her hospitality so unstintedly and ungrudgingly. To the sensitive, fine-natured girl it was like feeding upon the life of another, and that other a generous friend. During her walk a score of schemes to earn money had presented themselves to her inexperienced mind, but her hands had learned only how to eke out a small salary and to minister to her father. She had come home resolute to do something, but troubled because she knew not what to do. She paused a moment on the threshold of Mrs. Bodine's apartment, and looked questioningly at Mara, at the same time half divining who she was. "Come along, Ella," cried Mrs. Bodine, with a little joyous laugh of anticipation, "and kiss one of your best friends, although you never saw her before." "Is it Mara?"