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MISSY
by DANA GATLIN

TO VIOLA ROSEBORO'

CONTENTS
I THE FLAME DIVINE
II "YOUR TRUE FRIEND, MELISSA M"
III LIKE A SINGING BIRD
IV MISSY TACKLES ROMANCE
V IN THE MANNER OF THE DUCHESS
VI INFLUENCING ARTHUR

VII BUSINESS OF BLUSHING
VIII A HAPPY DOWNFALL
IX DOBSON SAVES THE DAY
X MISSY CANS THE COSMOS
CHAPTER I
THE FLAME DIVINE
Melissa came home from Sunday-school with a feeling she had never
had before. To be sure she was frequently discovering, these days,
feelings she had never had before. That was the marvellous reward of
having grown to be so old; she was ten, now, an advanced age--almost
grown up! She could look back, across the eons which separated her
from seven-years-old, and dimly re-vision, as a stranger, the little girl
who cried her first day in the Primary Grade. How absurd seemed that
bashful, timid, ignorant little silly! She knew nothing at all. She still
thought there was a Santa Claus!--would you believe that? And, even at
eight, she had lingering fancies of fairies dancing on the flower-beds by
moonlight, and talking in some mysterious language with the flowers!
Now she was much wiser. She knew that fairies lived only in books and
pictures; that flowers could not actually converse. Well. . . she almost
knew. Sometimes, when she was all alone--out in the summerhouse on
a drowsy afternoon, or in the glimmering twilight when that one very
bright and knowing star peered in at her, solitary, on the side porch, or
when, later, the moonshine stole through the window and onto her
pillow, so thick and white she could almost feel it with her fingers--at
such times vague fancies would get tangled up with the facts of reality,
and disturb her new, assured sense of wisdom. Suddenly she'd find
herself all mixed up, confused as to what actually was and wasn't.
But she never worried long over that. Life was too complex to permit
much time for worry over anything; too full and compelling in every
minute of the long, long hours which yet seemed not long enough to

hold the new experiences and emotions which ceaselessly flooded in
upon her.
The emotion she felt this Sunday was utterly new. It was not
contentment nor enjoyment merely, nor just happiness. For, in the
morning as mother dressed her in her embroidered white "best" dress,
and as she walked through the June sunshine to the Presbyterian church,
trying to remember not to skip, she had been quite happy. And she had
still felt happy during the Sunday-school lesson, while Miss Simpson
explained how our Lord multiplied the loaves and fishes so as to feed
the multitude. How wonderful it must have been to be alive when our
Lord walked and talked among men!
Her feeling of peaceful contentment intensified a little when they all
stood up to sing,
"Let me be a little sunbeam for Jesus--" and she seemed, then, to feel a
subtle sort of glow, as from an actual sunbeam, warming her whole
being.
But the marvellous new feeling did not definitely begin till after
Sunday-school was over, when she was helping Miss Simpson collect
the song-books. Not the big, thick hymn-books used for the church
service, but smaller ones, with pasteboard backs and different tunes.
Melissa would have preferred the Sunday-school to use the big,
cloth-covered hymnals. Somehow they looked more religious; just as
their tunes, with slow, long-drawn cadences, somehow sounded more
religious than the Sunday-school's cheerful tunes. Why this should be
so Melissa didn't know; there were many things she didn't yet
understand about religion. But she asked no questions; experience had
taught her that the most serious questions may be strangely turned into
food for laughter by grown-ups.
It was when she carried the song-books into the choir-room to stack
them on some chairs, that she noticed the choir had come in and was
beginning to practise a real hymn. She loitered. It was an especially
religious hymn, very slow and mournful. They sang:

"A-a--sle-e-e-ep in Je-e-e--sus--Ble-e-es--ed sle-e-e-ep--From which
none e-e-ev--er Wake to we-e-e-ep--"
The choir did not observe Melissa; did not suspect that state of
deliciousness which, starting from the skin, slowly crept into her very
soul. She stood there, very unobtrusive, drinking in the sadly sweet
sounds. Up on the stained-glass window the sunlight filtered through
blue-and-red-and-golden angels, sending shafts of heavenly colour
across the floor; and the fibres of her soul, enmeshed in music,