“Oh, the same as usual.  He looks like a ghost, and is about as cheerful as a cemetery.  He spends his holidays going over musty old letters in papa’s desk.  I’m sure I don’t see what fun he finds in it.  It is so selfish in him, when he might be giving mamma and me some pleasure—­but Louis never did think of anyone but himself.  One day I found him stretched across the desk and it gave me such a fright!  You know what a state my nerves are in.  I thought he was in a fit or something,—­he just looked like death, and he didn’t seem to hear me when I called.  He had a large envelope addressed to papa in his hand and there was another under his arm that didn’t look as if it had ever been opened, but I couldn’t see the address.  I ran for mamma, but before we got back he was gone and the letters with him.  Whatever it was, it has had an awful effect upon him, though he won’t give us any satisfaction, you know how provoking he is.  It is my belief he is going into decline, and I have such a horror of contagious diseases!

“If Evadne is so anxious to work, why doesn’t she come and help mamma and me?  It is the least she could do after all we have done for her, but as mamma says, ’It is just a specimen of the ingratitude there is in the world.’”

* * * * *

The months rolled by and Evadne sat one afternoon in the superintendent’s reception room reading a letter which the postman had just delivered.  It bore the Vernon postmark.

She had seen but little of Mrs. Everidge through the years which followed her graduation.  She had been constantly busy and her aunt’s hands had been full, for her husband’s health had failed utterly and he demanded continual care.  Now her long, beautiful ministry was over, for Horace Everidge, serenely selfish to the last, had fallen into the slumber which knows no earthly waking, and Aunt Marthe was free.

“I do not know what it means,” she wrote, “but something tells me I shall not be long in Vernon.  I am just waiting to see what work the King has for me to do.”

Evadne pressed the letter to her lips.  “Dear Aunt Marthe!  If the majority had had your ‘tribulum’ they would think they had earned the right to play!”

She looked up.  John Randolph was standing before her with a package in his hands.

“I have been commissioned by the Hawthornes to give this into your own possession,” he said with a smile.

She opened it wonderingly.  Bonds and certificates of stock bearing her name.  What did it mean?  John Randolph had drawn a chair opposite her and was watching her face closely.

“You cannot think what long consultations we have held on the subject of what you would like,” he said, “you seemed to have no wishes of your own.  At last a happy thought struck Reginald, and he sent me a power of attorney to make the transfer of these bonds and stocks to you.  It is a Trust Fund to be used to help souls.  We all thought that would please you best of all.  You are a rich woman, Miss Hildreth.”