"Mr. Van Brunt, don't _you_ love hymns?" "I don't know much about 'em, Miss Ellen." "Mr. Van Brunt, are you one of that fold?" "What fold?" "The fold of Christ's people." "I'm afeard not, Miss Ellen," said he, soberly, after a minute's pause. "Because," said Ellen, bursting into tears, "I wish you were, very much." She carried the great brown hand to her lips before she let it go. He went, without saying a word. But when he got out, he stopped and looked at a little tear she had left on the back of it. And he looked till one of his own fell there to keep it company. CHAPTER XXI. Footsteps of Angels. The next day, about the middle of the afternoon, a light step crossed the shed, and the great door opening gently, in walked Miss Alice Humphreys. The room was all "redd up," and Miss Fortune and her mother sat there at work; one picking over white beans at the table, the other in her usual seat by the fire, and at her usual employment, which was knitting. Alice came forward and asked the old lady how she did. "Pretty well! — oh!, pretty well!" she answered, with the look of bland good-humour her face almost always wore — "and glad to see you, dear. Take a chair." Alice did so, quite aware that the other person in the room was _not_ glad to see her. "And how goes the world with you, Miss Fortune?" "Humph! it's a queer kind of world, I think," answered that lady, drily, sweeping some of the picked beans into her pan: "I get a'most sick of it, sometimes." "Why, what's the matter?" said Alice, pleasantly; "may I ask? Has anything happened to trouble you?" "Oh, no!" said the other, somewhat impatiently; "nothing that's any matter to anyone but myself; it's no use speaking about it." "Ah! Fortune never would take the world easy," said the old woman, shaking her head from side to side; — "never would; — I never could get her to." "Now, do hush, mother, will you!" said the daughter, turning round upon her with startling sharpness of look and tone; " 'take the world easy!' you always did; I am glad I ain't like you." "I don't think it's a bad way, after all," said Alice; "what's the use of taking it hard, Miss Fortune?" "The way one goes on!" said that lady, picking away at her beans very fast, and not answering Alice's question; "I'm tired of it; toil, toil, and drive, drive, from morning to night — and what's the end of it all?" "Not much," said Alice, gravely, "if our toiling looks no further than this world. When we go we shall carry nothing away with us. I should think it would be very wearisome to toil only for what we cannot keep, nor stay long to enjoy." "It's a pity you warn't a minister, Miss Alice," said Miss Fortune, drily. "Oh, no, Miss Fortune," said Alice, smiling, "the family would be overstocked. My father is one, and my brother will be another — a third would be too much. You must be so good as to let me preach without taking orders."