Some weeks later she came shyly again behind her grandmamma and whispered: "May I join the church next Sunday?" "'If thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest,'" was the fervent reply, and Gabrielle slipped timidly away. Everybody knows that, as a general rule, young people cannot talk to their nearest friends about their souls when they will confide in strangers. It ought not to be so. A warm-hearted mother once said that she began to talk to her children about Christ when they were _three weeks old_! by which sweet little exaggeration she only meant that she gave her confidence, and won theirs, at the earliest conceivable age. Mrs. Grey perfectly understood that, taking Gabrielle at a disadvantage, she could not expect her to sustain to herself the relation of a little child, and that she would be painfully shy should she try to penetrate her hidden life. Indeed there was little to penetrate. The child apprehended dimly the path on which she had entered. All she knew about herself was, that whereas her chief aim once was to have a nice time, and that in her own way, her earnest desire now was to be "good." Mrs. Grey's life, far more than her instructions, had dropped, as a seed, into soil prepared for it by the hand of Him who hears and answers prayer. Nor did she at once emerge into a saint, with all the holy aspirations and activities of mature life. She was a child still, and needed pruning, grafting, and weeding. But the root of the matter was in her. That tiny spark of grace that sometimes seemed to her and to her friends to have died out, was there; it flickered, and was often invisible to mortal eyes; _but it was there_, and had her soul been at any moment required of her, that grace, small though it was, would have been her humble passport into the company of the redeemed. Mrs. Grey's pastor at this time was quite an inexperienced man, and he would not venture to admit any young people to his church till he had seen their parents or guardians. He came now to see her with reference to Gabrielle. "I think the root of the matter is in the child," she said, "and that she may safely unite with the church. But, if you will allow me to say it, these immature young Christians need a great deal of looking-after. Taking them into the church is like taking plants into shelter. But shelter is not enough. _All_ the conditions of growth should be observed, or instead of blossoms and fruit, we shall have stunted or effeminate growth, or what is worse, no growth at all." "One object I had in calling to-day," he returned, "was to ask you if it would be possible to gather our young people about you once a week for Christian counsel?" Mrs. Grey cast her eye over her already overcrowded life, and shook her head.