Mr. Alfred Ried. Well, now we know each other without
any further ceremony. Will you tell me a little about your sister, Mr.
Ried? You were thinking of her just now."
"I was missing her just now," said he, trying to smile, "as I very often
am. I was a little fellow when she died; but the older I grow the more
difficult I find it to see how the world can spare her. She was so full
of plans for work, and there are so few like her."
"It may be that she is working still, in the person of her brother."
He shook his head energetically, though his face flushed.
"No, I can only blunder vaguely over work that I know she, with her
energetic ways and quick wits, could have done, and done well. It
happens that she was especially interested in a class of people of whom
I know something. They need help, and I don't know how to help them. It
seems to me that she could have done it."
"Will you tell me who the people are?"
"It
is a set of boys for whom nobody cares," he said, speaking sadly;
"it hardly seems possible that there could ever have been a time when
anybody cared for them, though I suppose their mothers did when they
were little fellows."
Thus spoke the ignorant young man,--ignorant of the depths to which sin
will sink human nature, but rich in the memory of mother-love.
"I think of my sister Ester in connection with them," he said, speaking
apologetically, "because she was peculiarly interested in wild young
fellows like them; she thought they might be reached,--that there might
be ways invented for reaching them, such as had not been yet. She had
plans, and they were good ones. I thought so then, little fellow that I
was, and I think so now, only nobody is at work carrying them out; and I
wonder sometimes if Ester could have been needed in heaven half as much
as she is needed on earth. She used to talk to me a great deal abo-