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What a rude table it was! How roughly they were dressed! Why, they were only poor people, yet the Christ was standing in their midst, giving them to eat.

She studied his face. How beautiful it was! How much she loved him! How eager she was to give him her very best! What could she do to show her love? And as she looked she heard a voice saying to her: “The poor ye have always with you, but me ye have not always.”

Then somehow the faces of the men in the picture seemed like those of the men who worked in her father’s mill and in the face of the woman she saw a likeness to Elizabeth Meeker. But the face of the Christ was still full of love and tenderness.

The head of the girl drooped as she sat long before the picture. What had she against Elizabeth Meeker? Nothing except the fact that she was poor. She was a girl that Jesus would have loved, for she was always dependable. Yet Mary was trying to take away the greatest pleasure that might ever come to that poor girl.

She had no pretty home, she had little time for play; she hadn’t even a mother. Yet Mary knew she had been very, very unkind to her.

And now the face of the Christ seemed searching her very soul: “The poor ye have always with you, but me ye have not always. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me.”

There was a sound of a bell and Mary knew she must leave the room. One last look she gave to the Christ of the picture. Then she smiled and nodded her head.

When she came to join the girls below, she said quietly:

“Girls, let’s give the school a surprise to-morrow. Let’s go and vote for Elizabeth Meeker, since so many of the class want her for president, and then prove to the rest that we can still have a good time during Commencement week. Father will let us use the grounds when we like and we can all have a part in the planning of the fun. I should just like to see if she really can make a class president as well as we girls from the Hill.”

And though the girls couldn’t understand why she had changed, yet they were glad to follow her lead.

That night Mary Waite sat before her desk in her pretty room on the Hill and looked again at the assignment which had been given to her–

“Study the pictures in Gallery Nine and bring to me the name of the picture and the artist who painted the one that speaks most plainly to you.”

And in no uncertain letters she wrote:

Christ in the Home of the Lowly.

By L’Hermitte

Mary Waite.