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Transcriber's Note:

  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
  been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.




     AMAZING GRACE

  [Illustration: I took up the first one]




     AMAZING GRACE

     _Who Proves That Virtue Has Its Silver Lining_

     By
     KATE TRIMBLE SHARBER
     _Author of_
     THE ANNALS OF ANN, AT THE AGE OF EVE, ETC.

     ILLUSTRATED BY
     R. M. CROSBY

     INDIANAPOLIS
     THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
     PUBLISHERS




     COPYRIGHT 1914
     THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

     PRESS OF
     BRAUNWORTH & CO.
     BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
     BROOKLYN, N. Y.




     TO
     LAURA NORVELL ELLIOTT
     WHO HAS THE OLD LETTERS--




CONTENTS


     CHAPTER                             PAGE

     I STRAINED RELATIONS                  1

     II A GLIMPSE OF PROMISED LAND        26

     III NIP AND TUCK                     40

     IV THE QUALITY OF MERCY              59

     V ET TU, BRUTE!                      82

     VI FLAG DAY                          99

     VII STRAWS POINT                    115

     VIII LONGEST WAY HOME               128

     IX MAITLAND TAIT                    141

     X IN THE FIRELIGHT                  157

     XI TWO MEN AND A MAID               168

     XII AN ASSIGNMENT                   186

     XIII JILTED!                        211

     XIV THE SKIES FALL                  230

     XV THE JOURNEY                      244

     XVI LONDON                          278

     XVII HOUSE OF A HUNDRED DREAMS      312




AMAZING GRACE




AMAZING GRACE




CHAPTER I

STRAINED RELATIONS


Some people, you will admit, can absorb experience in gentle little
homeopathic doses, while others require it to be shot into them by
hypodermic injections.

Certainly my Dresden-china mother up to the time of my birth had been
forced to take this bitter medicine in every form, yet she had never
been known to profit by it. She would not, it is true, fly in the very
face of Providence, but she _would_ nag at its coat tails.

"You might as well name this child 'Praise-the-Lord,' and be done with
it!" complained the rich Christie connection (which mother had always
regarded as outlaws as well as in-laws), shaking its finger across the
christening font into mother's boarding-school face on the day of my
baptism. "Of course all the world knows you're _glad_ she's
posthumous, but--"

"But with Tom Christie only six weeks in spirit-land it isn't decent!"
Cousin Pollie finished up individually.

"Besides, good families don't name their children for abstract
things," Aunt Hannah put in. "It--well, it simply isn't done."

"A woman who never does anything that isn't done, never does anything
worth doing," mother answered, through pretty pursed lips.

"But, since you must be freakish, why not call her Prudence, or
Patience--to keep Oldburgh from wagging its tongue in two?" Aunt
Louella suggested.

Oldburgh isn't the town's name, of course, but it's a descriptive
alias. The place itself is, unfortunately, the worst overworked
southern capital in fiction. It is one of the Old South's "types,"
boasting far more social leaders than sky-scrapers--and you can't
suffer a blow-out on _any_ pike near the city's limits that isn't
flanked by a college campus.

"Oldburgh knows how I feel," mother replied. "If this baby had been a
boy I should have named him Theodore--gift of God--but since she's a
girl, her name is _Grace_."

She said it smoothly, I feel sure, for her Vere de Vere repose always
jutted out like an iceberg into a troubled sea when there was a family
squall going on.

"_All_ right!" pronounced two aunts, simultaneously and acidly.

"All _right_!" chorused another two, but Cousin Pollie hadn