"Well, we can try," sighed Gatty. "But, Phoebe, 'tis no good telling me to pray, because I have done it. I said over every collect in the Prayer-book--ten a day; and the very morning after I had finished them, that horrid man came, and Mother made--I had to go down and sit half an hour listening to him. Praying does no good." "I am not sure that you have tried it," said Phoebe. "Didn't I tell you, this minute, I said every--" "I ask your pardon for interrupting you, but saying is not praying. Did you really pray them?" "Phoebe, I do not understand you! How could I pray them and not say them?" "Well, I did not quite mean that," said Phoebe; "but please, Mrs Gatty, did you feel them? Did you really ask God all the collects say, or did you only repeat the words over? You see, if I felt cold in bed, I might ask Mrs Betty to give me leave to have another blanket; but if I only kept saying that I was cold, to myself, over and over, and did not tell Mrs Betty, I should be long enough before I got the blanket. Did you say the collects to yourself, Mrs Gatty, or did you say them to the Lord?" There was a pause before Gatty said, in rather an awed voice, "Phoebe, when you pray, is God there?" "Yes," said Phoebe, readily. "He is not, with me," replied Gatty. "He feels a long, long way off; and I feel as if my collects might drop and be lost before they can get up to Him. Don't you?" "Never," answered Phoebe. "But I don't send my prayers up by themselves; I give them to Jesus Christ to carry. He never drops one, Mrs Gatty." "'Tis all something I don't understand one bit," said Gatty, wearily. "Go to sleep, Phoebe; I won't keep you awake. But we'll go and see Mrs Dolly." The next afternoon, when Rhoda and Molly had disappeared on their private affairs, Gatty dropped a courtesy to Madam, and requested her permission to visit Mrs Dolly Jennings. "By all means, my dear," answered Madam, affably. "If Rhoda has no occasion for her, let Phoebe wait on you." The second request which had been on Gatty's lips being thus forestalled, the girls set forth--without consulting Rhoda, which Gatty was disinclined to do, and which Phoebe fancied that she had done--and reached the Maidens' Lodge without falling in with any disturbing element, such as either Rhoda or Molly would unquestionably have been. Mrs Dorothy received them in her usual kindly manner, and gave them tea before they entered on the subject of which both the young minds were full. Then Gatty told her story, if very much the same terms as she had given it to Phoebe. "And I can't understand Phoebe, Mrs Dolly," she ended. "She says God has given her Himself; and I cannot make it out. And she says she gives her prayers to Jesus Christ to carry. I don't know what she means. It sounds good. But I don't understand it--not one bit."