When she lifted the programme in her hands and glanced over it, her eyes fastened upon two lines thereon and her slight sense of humour came to the surface to such a degree that she nudged Mahlon and ran her finger under them. What Mahlon saw, when he looked where the finger indicated, read: “Sowing Seeds of Kindness” and beneath it, “Edith Williams.” It was a poor place to catch Mahlon unprepared and unaware. The gurgle that arose to his lips made him look, for an instant, as human as Jimmy Price. Nothing could have mortified Mahlon more deeply. The organ was rolling again. The imported soprano was warbling among high notes about the “tide coming up from Lynn,” and a few seconds later John Reynolds was delivering the salutatory and then sailing into the bay he had left and prognosticating what was going to happen upon the ocean that lay before him. While her aunt and uncle clutched cold hands and dared not look each other in the face, Edith Williams stood up and sowed her “seeds of kindness” without a falter and without a break. She went straight through as if she could not have lost a word if she had tried, and sat down in such a spasm of self-congratulation that she could scarcely keep from applauding her own performance. Never in all her life had she been quite so surprised: never had she been one half so deeply pleased. Immediately after her, looking as handsome as it was possible for him to look, beautifully clothed, cool and utterly self-possessed, taking his time, a jesting light in his eyes, half a laugh on his lips, for a few minutes Martin Moreland Junior held forth on the Constitution of these United States. He gave the impression that the Constitution should feel much better since it had his approval. Then, in a dress half way of Mahala’s making, the goods of her giving, flushed and attractive, Susanna Bowers told the audience her conception of the full duty of woman. It was difficult for any one in the audience to imagine where Susanna had gotten her ideas as to what the full duty of a woman might be. The audience would persist in thinking about the place from which Susanna naturally would have been supposed to gain her conclusions, but Susanna had been forced to go by contraries. She had gotten her material where none of the other girls had secured theirs. Her conception was one half the fruit of a vivid imagination, and the other half Mahala Spellman. All Susanna needed to do in writing her paper was to look at Mahala, then shut her eyes and concentrate on the kind of a woman that she believed Mahala would be ten years hence. It made an attractive paper; Susanna delivered it well.