Winifred rose from her quaint little window-seat with an expression of pleasure.

“Oh, Adele!  I am so glad to see you.”

The two young ladies kissed each other and sat down to talk with the easy familiarity of old friends.

“Dear!” cried exclamatory Miss Forrester.  “I am out of breath!—­I have raced so!  I left home an hour ago, but was beguiled by some fascinating bargains in Butterworth’s windows.  Do see that love of a thing for ninety-eight cents.  Did you ever see such a bargain?  I wouldn’t let them send it for I wanted you to see it.”

The fascinating trifle was admired, and then Miss Forrester flew at the chief matter of her visit enthusiastically.

“Do you know what is in the wind, Winifred?  Professor Black, who leads the choir in the Linden Street church, is going to get up a comic opera with a cast from the various choirs, and I am invited.  We are to go to Northville and give it in the little one-horse theater there.  Won’t it be gay?  We shall astonish the natives of that small town!  Have you had your invitation?”

Winifred shook her head.

“How calm you are.  I am very much excited about it already.  You know I like that sort of thing.  It isn’t decided what we shall give, but probably Pinafore, or Patience, or some old thing.  They won’t care at Northville.  Do say what you think of it, Winifred?  Don’t be so unecstatic.”

Winifred smiled, not very merrily.  “I can’t get ecstatic,” she said.  “I shall not be in it.”

“You will not be in it!” Adele cried.  “Oh, why not?”—­coaxingly.  “Doesn’t your father approve of it?—­or your mother?—­of going off like that, I mean?  It will be perfectly proper.  We shall be chaperoned.”

“Oh, that’s not it,” said Winifred.  “I have left the choir.”

Adele opened her bright eyes wide in astonishment.

“Left the choir!” she exclaimed under her breath, and then leaned back in her chair with a gesture of comical despair of expressing herself.

Winifred could not help laughing at her friend’s dismay.  She said nothing and Adele soon recovered herself.

“A little tiff with the leader or somebody?” she queried.  “Such things are not unknown to us.  I am prepared to take your part, Winnie, right or wrong.  But you don’t mean you’ve left for good?  Oh, come and sing with us at St. John’s—­that would be lovely!”

Winifred girded herself mentally for her task.  She and lively Miss Forrester had never discussed spiritual things together.  They spoke freely of their choirs and of church, but that never seemed dissonant with the most frivolous social things.  Now as Winifred thought of the real Holy Place and the worship there “in spirit and in truth,” it seemed difficult to speak of it.  She began bravely, and began at the beginning, with Mr. Bond’s sermon.  She rehearsed many of the things that he said, and told frankly of her own conviction of