off from hour to hour, and perhaps she ended by not doing it at all. When this happened she was fretful and unhappy; nothing went right with her. God made the body so that it cannot go without food at regular times, and keep in order. He made the soul in the same way. It must get food from the Bible, and by thinking about God and speaking to him, or it cannot be a healthy soul. This poor little Christian knew she must eat her breakfast or she would feel faint and weak by ten o’clock, but she had not learned that she must not starve the other and better part of herself. So it was no wonder that she did not always do right. One reason why it was particularly hard now was that two of her best friends were away. Elmer Newton’s older brother was obliged, from ill health, to spend the winter in the South, and wished to have Elmer with him. Mrs. Duncan felt anxious about her sick brother, and at the last decided to accompany them and remain a few weeks, which lengthened into months. This made a lonely, gloomy time for Margaret, she had come to depending so much upon their help and counsel. She felt as if there was nobody to go to with her troubles and doubts. Mr. Wakefield was always kind, but she stood in a little awe of him because he was the minister, and so, unless strongly excited, was too timid to talk freely with him. When a girl of thirteen resolves to be dignified toward any body it means that she is going to make herself very disagreeable whether she knows it or not. Amelia Barrows was not an ill-natured young woman, and if Margaret had tried she might have made a friend of her. As it was, Margaret forgot that she was herself several years the younger. She assumed airs of importance, and found fault. She laid down laws about her room, and called Amelia to account if a brush or a chair was not in its exact place. “See here, young woman!” Amelia said one day, losing all patience, “you’d better stop your high airs. A piece of this room belongs to me while I stay here, and I’m going to do exactly as I please in it. I don’t want to be in it, or in this house, either, but I’m here, and we’ve both got to stand it. I never wanted my sister to marry your father any more than you did,—not as I have anything against him,—but I told her she might as well put her head into a hornets’ nest as to try to manage three saucy young ones. No wonder she’s sick!” There is no telling what Margaret would have said then if Amelia had not gone out and banged the door after her. She was angry enough to have said anything. To be called “a saucy young one” when she had borne everything, and was almost as tall as a woman; it was too much! “O, dear!” she sighed, bursting into tears, “I wish she wasn’t here. She’s perfectly horrid!” When she went down to the well-cooked dinner a couple of hours afterward she forgot to ask herself how they could possibly get along comfortably without Amelia.