“And Miss Barry will teach them what to sing, perhaps?” asked Mr. Walton.

“Yes sir,” replied Miss Barry.

“I’ll have my choir to help, but I expect the ‘Up-the-Ladder Club’ to do the most.”

The boys were eager in their interest.  To encourage them, Miss Barry said, “I’ll make a little blue cross to go inside each white shield.  A little blue cross—­that is a temperance sign—­will look pretty on the white silk.”

“There, there, won’t they be proud of it?” said Aunt Stanshy.

“Of course we will,” declared Sid.  “Knights, we must give three cheers for teacher when we get to her door.”

During this conversation they were passing down the street, and when Miss Barry’s door was reached, be assured that three hearty cheers were given for her.

“Now three for temperance!” cried Sid.  Then they cheered for temperance.

“I feel that my boys are, indeed, mounting the ladder of the true and noble,” was Miss Barry’s thought, as from her window she saw the ardent young knights pass away.

The next day Aunt Stanshy met Miss Barry.  “Miss—­Miss—­Barry,” said Aunt Stanshy, nervously clutching her companion’s shawl, “we must—­pray for our meeting.”

“O, we will, we will!”

There were earnest prayers going to God in behalf of that meeting.  As step after step might be proposed, prayer went up from the altar of those two women’s hearts especially, beseeching God to recognize and bless each step that might be taken.  O in what a cloud of prayer that enterprise was enveloped!

Aunt Stanshy and Miss Barry were talking about the meeting one day.

“I wish, Miss Barry, we could make sure that every body would go to the meeting.  Will Dr. Tilton go?”

“That’s what I am wondering about, and Will Somers?”

Aunt Stanshy shook her head sadly:  “He says, No.”

“They must be there,” said Miss Barry, “and—­and—­we must set a trap for them.”

“A trap?”

“I’ll ask my uncle to help the choir sing, and—­of course, he wont refuse.  I don’t suppose he cares to come to the meeting because he needs it, but if others go he won’t want to be left out, and if he can sing, that will give him a chance to attend.  He is my uncle, you know.”

The “trap” for Dr. Tilton worked successfully.  He scorned the idea that he might need the meeting.  This he said to himself.  However, he would help the choir sing, he said, to his niece.  But a trap for Will Somers!  Who could make that?

“Won’t you come to the meeting to hear us sing?” asked Charlie, with a sad face.

“O, you don’t want me, Charlie,” replied Will.  “O, I can’t go.”

Aunt Stanshy made no remark.  She sat silently, busily thinking, while Charlie and Will talked about the meeting.  Aunt Stanshy was making a “trap.”

The day before that appointed for the temperance meeting, she went to her pastor.