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er fingers--at such times vague fancies would get tangled up with the facts of reality, and disturb her new, assured sense of wisdom. Suddenly she'd find herself all mixed up, confused as to what actually was and wasn't.
But she never worried long over that. Life was too complex to permit much time for worry over anything; too full and compelling in every minute of the long, long hours which yet seemed not long enough to hold the new experiences and emotions which ceaselessly flooded in upon her.
The emotion she felt this Sunday was utterly new. It was not contentment nor enjoyment merely, nor just happiness. For, in the morning as mother dressed her in her embroidered white "best" dress, and as she walked through the June sunshine to the Presbyterian church, trying to remember not to skip, she had been quite happy. And she had still felt happy during the Sunday-school lesson, while Miss Simpson explained how our Lord multiplied the loaves and fishes so as to feed the multitude. How wonderful it must have been to be alive when our Lord walked and talked among men!
Her feeling of peaceful contentment intensified a little when they all stood up to sing,
"Let me be a little sunbeam for Jesus--" and she seemed, then, to feel a subtle sort of glow, as from an actual sunbeam, warming her whole being.
But the marvellous new feeling did not definitely begin till after Sunday-school was over, when she was helping Miss Simpson collect the song-books. Not the big, thick hymn-books used for the church service, but smaller ones, with pasteboard backs and different tunes. Melissa would have preferred the Sunday-school to use the big, cloth-covered hymnals. Somehow they looked more religious; just as their tunes, with slow, long-drawn cadences, somehow sounded more religious than the Sunday-school's cheerful tunes. Why this should be so Melissa didn't know; there were many things she didn't yet understand about religion. But she asked no questions; experience had taught her that the most serio