"I've been a little boy once, you know I should enjoy it very much," said the applicant with satisfaction. "Oh, but--I couldn't teach _you_!" There was dismay in her voice. "Couldn't you, though? You've taught me more in the few months I've known you than I've learned in that many years from others. Try me. I'll be very good. I'll be a boy with the rest of them, and you can just forget I'm there and go ahead. I really am serious about it. I want to hear what you have to say to them." "Oh, I couldn't teach with you there!" exclaimed Shirley, putting her hands on her hot cheeks and looking like a frightened little child. "Indeed I couldn't, really. I'm not much of a teacher. I'm only a beginner. I shouldn't know how to talk before any but children." He watched her silently for a minute, his face grave with wistfulness. "Why do you teach them?" he asked rather irrelevantly. "Because--why, because I want to help them to live right lives; I want to teach them how to know God." "Why?" "So that they will be saved. Because it was Christ's command that His disciples should give the message. I am His disciple, so I have to tell the message." "Was there any special stipulation as to whom that message should be given?" asked the young man thoughtfully. "Did He say you were just to give it to those boys?" "Why, no; it was to be given to--all the world, every creature." Shirley spoke the words hesitatingly, a dimple beginning to show in her cheek as her eyelids drooped over her shy eyes. "And don't I come in on that?" asked Graham, with a twinkle that reminded Shirley of his father. Shirley had to laugh shamefacedly then. "But I couldn't!" said Shirley. "I'd be so scared I couldn't think of a thing to say." "You're not afraid of me, Miss Shirley? You wouldn't be scared if you thought I really needed to know the message, would you? Well, I really do, as much as any of those kids." Shirley looked steadily into his earnest eyes and saw something there that steadied her nerve. The laughter died out of her own eyes, and a beautiful light of longing came into them. "All right," she said, with a little lift of her chin as if girding up her strength to the task. "You may come, and I'll do the best I can, but I'm afraid it will be a poor best. I've only a little story to tell them this morning." "Please give them just what you had intended. I want the real thing, just as a boy would get it from you. Will the rest of them come in the car with us?" Shirley was very quiet during the ride to church. She let the rest do all the talking, and she sat looking off at the woods and praying for help, trying to calm the flutter of her frightened heart, trying to steady her nerves and brace herself to teach the lesson just as she had intended to teach it.