"I think I am playing the school-ma'am quite as much as is good for me," she said, with a smile. "Sometimes I am almost frightened at the multiplicity of things I am undertaking to do. However, the work you propose looks very attractive; I might spare one evening in the week." "They are almost all confined to their studies in the evening. Perhaps we should have to steal a piece of Sunday." "Oh, I don't see where." "Nor I; unless I succeed in carrying out a plan I have in my mind. My theory is that there is too much preaching, and too little doing, of the word. Men of business, for instance, have next to no time for Christian work, and their piety falls to sleep in consequence. If the church would organize some plan for setting everybody at work on Sunday afternoons, pastors and all, I think we might soon begin to expect the coming of our Lord. By the bye, you love to deal with difficult cases; I wish you would take occasion to talk to Mr. Morrison. You have had great experience, and I have had next to none." "It takes more than experience to reach a polished moralist," she replied. "It needs the Holy Spirit. I doubt if there is anything we can do but pray for him. He is so intrenched in his own virtues that he is farther out of reach than most hardened sinners." "I know it; but there are his poor wife and those six boys to be thought of." "You have been among us so little time that you are, perhaps, not aware that he is my brother." "Indeed, I was not aware of it." "He is my half-brother; we had different mothers. At the time of his birth, and for many years following, our father was not a Christian; his training was different from mine. Our mothers were as unlike as possible, and I can't begin to tell you how it pains me to look at his perfectly useless--because Christless--life. I think he will be saved at last; too much prayer has been offered for him to permit his being lost; but oh, how much he has thrown away!" "He is an interesting man; he would be very useful in the church; I wish I could see him identified with it." "I will make one more attempt to move him. My heart yearns over those dear boys." A few evenings later saw her closeted with Mr. Morrison, a fine-looking man, with complexion almost as pure as a baby's, clear blue eyes, and a noble head, crowned with waving white hair. They talked a while about his boys, and his plans for their future; then she spoke, naturally, for her heart was full of it, of the special religious work then going on in the church. "It is mere excitement," he said; "it will not last." "Time alone can prove that. In my own case the excitement has lasted fifty years, and I see no signs of its passing off. Robert, you can't think how it distresses me to see you coming to church, Sunday after Sunday, with a regularity that might put many a professor to the blush, yet never advancing beyond that point."