Mildreds Inheritance | Page 5

sobbing, "Oh, God, I don't know what will become of me if you do not help me now! Oh, show me 'mine inheritance!'"
Three times during that week she went back to that same place with that same cry. The last time she went some one was in the church. It was the organist, practising some new Easter music for the next day's services. A burst of triumphant melody greeted her as she noiselessly opened the side door. She met the florist coming out, for he had just completed the decorating, and the place was a mass of bloom. All around the chancel stood the tall, white Easter lilies, waiting, like the angels in the open tomb, with their glad resurrection message--"He is risen!"
As Mildred stood with clasped hands, an unspoken prayer rising with the organ's jubilant tones and the incense of the lilies, she felt a touch on her shoulder. It was the white-haired old minister.
"I saw you come in," he said, in a whisper. "I have been trying all day to find time to call at your aunt's to talk with you. You do not know, but I have been in correspondence several times this winter regarding you, with a Mr. Rowland. He wrote me when you first came that his wife and daughter were deeply interested in you, and wanted to be kept informed of your welfare. This morning I received a letter which needs your personal answer. I am very busy now, but shall try to see you Monday in regard to it."
Mildred's heart beat rapidly as he handed her a large, businesslike-looking letter and went softly out again. In the dim light of the great stained-glass windows she read that poor Muffit had over-taxed her eyes, and that they were so badly affected she could not go back to school for the spring term. In looking for some one who could be eyes for their Mildred, so that she might go on with her studies at home, they had thought of this other Mildred, the little English girl, whose low, musical voice had been so carefully trained by her father in reading aloud. By one of these strange providences which we never recognize as such at the time, Mr. Rowland had broken his spectacles the last evening of Mildred's stay in New York. She had offered to read the magazine article which he was particularly anxious to hear, and they had been charmed by her beautifully modulated voice. Now the letter had been written to offer her a liberal salary and a home for the summer.
Mildred gave a gasp of astonishment. It was not the almost miraculous finding of what she had come to seek that overwhelmed her. It was a feeling that swept across her like a flood, warm and sweet and tender; the sudden realization that a hand stronger than death and wise above all human understanding had her in its keeping. She dropped on her knees at the flower-decked altar-rail, with face upturned and radiant; no longer lonely; no longer afraid of what the future might hold. She had come into her inheritance.
[Illustration: "SHE READ THAT POOR MUFFIT HAD OVERTAXED HER EYES."]
Kneeling there she looked back again to her father's lowly grave in the little churchyard across the seas, but she saw it no longer through hopeless tears. Into her heart the great organ had pealed the gladness of its exultant Easter message, and in the deep peace of the silence which followed, the fragrance of the lilies breathed a wordless "Amen!"

JUST HER WAY
"Look out of the window, Judith! Quick! Mrs. Avery is going away!" Judith Windham, bending over the sewing-machine in her bedroom, started as her little sister's voice came piping shrilly up the stairs, and leaving her chair she leaned out of the old-fashioned casement window.
There were so few goings and comings in sleepy little Westbrooke, that the passing of the village omnibus was an exciting event. With an imposing rumble of yellow wheels it rattled up to Doctor Allen's gate across the road. A trunk, a dress suit case, and numerous valises were hoisted to the top of it, and the doctor's family flocked down to the gate to watch the departure of the youngest member of their household, Marguerite.
It had been four years since the first time they watched her go away, a nineteen-year-old bride. Since then they had visited her, severally and collectively, in her elegant apartments in Washington, but this had been her first visit home. Judith, watching her flutter down the walk with her hand in the old doctor's, thought she looked even prettier and more girlish than on her wedding-day. Married life had been all roses for Marguerite.
"She's the same dear old harum-scarum Daisy she always was, in spite of the efforts of her Lord