Silverbeach Manor by Margaret S. Haycraft

Surely you remember
her, Pansy? What beautiful dresses she always wore, and in what a
bright, lively manner she sang and acted. Showers of bouquets were
thrown to her night after night."
    "I remember
her quite well now," says Pansy slowly, watching the white face
that is brightened by a trembling smile as a worker of the Flower
Mission goes up to her bed and hands her a beautiful bunch of
carnations, with a text of eternal comfort. "But, Mabel, what a
change in her. She always seemed the most cheerful person
around."
    "Even then,"
says Sister Mabel, "her sickness had hold of her, and was
aggravated by late hours, the heat of the theatre, the chilly
out-of-door air, and the unnatural pace of her life. When she could
no longer bring in money, her employers ceased to take interest in
her. She grew poorer and poorer, till at last a worker in a
charitable mission found her suffering alone in a miserable attic,
and arranged her admission here. I respect the poor girl, Pansy.
She is good and virtuous, but I feel sure her theatrical life was
beset by temptation, and she will not hear of her little sister
going on the stage. We have got the child into a training-home for
servants."
    The hospital
is close to a railway station, and Pansy returns alone to
Silverbeach by train. One passenger after another in her
compartment alights at intervening stations. Her only companion at
last is a young man engaged in reading. She is absorbed in her own
thoughts, for her soul has been stirred today by the sight of the
patient nurses, the workers in the Flower Mission, and the
sufferers whose lives are so different from her own.
    If, like some
of these, she were lying today on a bed of sickness from which she
might never rise, she asks herself what value to her heart would be
her dresses and jewels, her musical achievements, even wonderful
Silverbeach Manor? At this moment Pansy remembers the old Sunday
school of her childhood -- the plain, whitewashed room, brightened
by texts on the walls, and by the presence of loving, earnest
teachers and smiling young faces. How joyously she had sung of
Heaven and of home in those far-distant days.
    And then she
thinks of those solemn times when, as a child, a growing girl, she
listened to the voice of her aunt praying for her and with her that
she might be a disciple of Him who died for us -- that the Lord
Jesus would set His seal upon her as His own ransomed child.
    "Ah, well,"
she thinks, with something between a smile and a sigh, "my aunt's
prayer is one of the many unanswered petitions that have been
offered up. I am certainly not religious -- I wonder how anyone
could be at Silverbeach Manor."
    There is a
young housemaid, fresh from Bible class crowned and wreathed with
prayer, shining alone for Jesus in the servants' hall at
Silverbeach. She might testify that there is no place where the
soul cannot serve and honour the Lord. But the young disciple is
only third housemaid, and Pansy takes little notice of the comings
and goings of the servants under Fox, Mrs. Adair's housekeeper.
    Presently she
puts her hand listlessly in her pocket for her small purse, and
then more carefully. Then she rises, and with a heightened colour
makes a search for her ticket. What has become of it, and where is
the purse that held it? The purse contained a ten pound note
besides some gold. Can it be that one of the patients at the
hospital, skilled, perhaps, in stealing, has secured the purse?
    Pansy is not
used to travelling alone, and it was only with difficulty that she
persuaded Mrs. Adair to let her visit town unattended today. She
shrinks from an encounter with the guard who will come round for
tickets at Morfill Junction, where she has to change trains. By
this time her agitated movements have disturbed her companion, who
politely inquires if he can assist her in any way. Pansy eyes him
distrustfully. He looks nothing like the dandies to whom she is
accustomed. She is surprised that he should be riding in a
first-class