Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/223

 the young man, feeling more and more that he could trust this woman.

The Angel of the Chair smiled inspiringly.

"The Scripture has no rule for getting out from under," she suggested quietly, "but there is something about not letting go of the plow once you have grasped the handles."

The Angel was looking straight up at John now, searching his eyes for a moment, then adding significantly:

"I do not think you are a quitting sort of person."

A quitting sort! John could have blessed this woman. In two sentences she had felt her way to the principle he had tried to make the very center of his character,—loyalty to duty and everlasting persistence. Some people rather thought he was a quitting sort. John knew he was not, and to prove it bent till his buttonhole was in easy reach of the hands uplifted with the flower.

"And what," he asked, "does the minister do when he has received this decoration from the Angel of the Chair?"

It was Mrs. Burbeck's turn to feel a flush of pleasure at this appellation from a stranger.

"Why," she smiled, her large eyes lighting persuasively, "he goes into the pulpit and announces a hymn."

"Which I am not going to do," declared John, "because I should not know what to do next."

"In that hour it shall be given you," quoted the lady.

Now it was very strange, but when Mrs. Burbeck quoted this, it did not seem like an appeal to faith at all, but the simple statement of a fact. It chimed in, too, with that odd suggestion of the presence of the Presence, which had come to John a while ago.

Feeling thereby unaccountably stronger, and endued with a sort of moral authority as if he had just taken Holy Orders because of the carnation which bloomed so