I haven't told you all. Your father--!"

"Is Father worse? Tell me quick, Mother; it's better for us to know."

"No, he's no worse. He's better. But--the doctor says what he needs now is to go to the country and rest for a year. He mustn't have a care or worry. Absolute ease, absolute quiet. And it's all just as impossible as if he had said he must have heaven here on earth for a year."

Mrs. Challenger broke down and wept, and Phyllis, standing there with the nice forkful of beefsteak, just kept still for a minute and let her weep. Then she broke forth with a glad note in her voice.

"Why, that's lovely, Mother. That's wonderful! Father well enough to leave the hospital and get out into the country somewhere. There's nothing to cry over in that. Come, let's be happy! Let's eat our nice supper. For, Mumsie dear, we're all of us deadly hungry. Lissa and I haven't had a bite since crackers and tea this morning, and you didn't even have the crackers."

"But how can we ever manage to give him what he needs, Phyllis?"

"Oh, there'll be a way, Mumsie dear. Let's forget it tonight and eat our supper."

"Yes, there'll be a way! There will truly, Mother!" said little Rosalie earnestly. "I prayed for an onion and a beefsteak and they both came! And this will come, too!"

"You prayed for an onion!" exclaimed Melissa in horror and then began to laugh.

"And a beefsteak!" added the little girl seriously. "Say, do let's go and eat it before it gets cold. I'm just awful hungry."

Something in her little girl's face made Mrs. Challenger rise above her weakness and go out to the table with her children.

They bolstered her up in her place with pillows and gathered around excitedly, praising the steak and hearing over and over again Bob's account of how he went ten miles with a basket to earn that beefsteak, and what a wonderful friend Butcher Brady was.

"But you don't mean you really prayed for a beefsteak?" said Melissa, suddenly remembering and turning toward her little sister. "Not honestly, and an onion, Rosalie."

"Sure I did," said the child, somewhat abashed. "I asked Phyllie, and she said it would be all right. Was there anything wrong about that, Mother? He answered, anyway."

"Why, no, dear, not wrong. I'm sure God understood that you needed something to eat and that you were perfectly reverent about it. Melissa, dear, you ought not to laugh at your little sister."

"Well, but, Mother, do you believe God is like that, knowing about what we need, and even onions and things? Do you really believe there is a God, Mother? Hardly anybody at college seemed to believe in God at all, or if they did it was just a great power or influence or something like that."

"Why, certainly I believe in God," said Mrs. Challenger. "I'm shocked at you, Melissa. For pity's sake, don't take up with all these common modern ideas. Of course there is a God. Your father would be shocked to hear you talk like that."

"Well then, Mother, if you believe in God, why are you so worried? Don't you think He will somehow make things better for us?" asked Phyllis softly.

"Well, yes, I suppose, eventually--I'm not sure--I don't know just what I believe. I really have been too much worried to think about it, Phyllis.