While they were away, Aunty Stevens said, “Isn’t that a pretty hard test?”

The children’s mother shook her head thoughtfully at the dancing fire.

“I hope not,” she said.  “I don’t wish them to do things now that they will repent of afterwards.  But it seems to me that if they are trained now to be unselfish, they will always be so.  Don’t you think, dear Mrs. Stevens, that the whole trouble with the world is its selfishness?”

“No doubt at all about it,” said the older woman, nodding emphatically over her flying needles.

“Then if the world is to be made better, and rid of this, which lies at the bottom of all the crime, sin and unhappiness, the younger ones of us will have to be taught to sacrifice, at least some luxuries, to help give less fortunate ones the necessities of life,” said Mrs. Rayburn, getting interested, and talking fast and earnestly.

“How I hate the expression ‘Look out for number one,’ It’s such teaching as this, that makes human beings so forgetful of others,” she went on after a little pause, “and the modern socialist only seems to be trying to exchange one set of selfish, grasping rules for another of the same sort.  So the world will go on, until the laws are again based on the teaching of our Lord, and Christian socialism will prevail.”

“Yes, you are quite right, but what are you among so many?” asked Aunty Stevens, smiling across at her friend.

Mrs. Rayburn’s cheeks flushed.  “Yes, I know,” she said.  “I suppose it looks as though I alone were trying to reform the world; but I am not.  I am only one little atom trying to teach still smaller atoms that they must do their share.”

“Was it not in ‘Bleak House’ that that exceedingly unpleasant personage used to give away her children’s pocket money?  And the black looks she received from them when she was not looking, were something dreadful.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Rayburn, laughing, “I hope you don’t think the cases are parallel.”

“No indeed, I don’t.  I was trying to say, I think you are right because you go at it in the right way, and let them choose.  Then, because they love and have perfect confidence in you, they will be pretty likely to choose the right way.”

“People so often say, ‘Let children have a good time,’ but interpreted, from their point of view, a good time, means a selfish time.  That is selfish enjoyment, but it might be good occasionally to put to the test the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Elizabeth now came in with her baby doll in her arms.  She soberly climbed up again into the blessed fold of her mother’s arms.

“I’d just as lief Dick would have it as not, momsey, for I’ve my heart chock full of dolls now, and it will be so good to have Dick and others well and comfyble.”

Ethelwyn came a moment later.

“It’s all right, mother,” she said, also climbing up to her place.  “I can make pictures with a pencil more easily than I can bear to think that Dick needs my camera money, I’ll be glad to do it, mother.”