her
side.

'What have _you_ been doing this winter?' he asked, putting the
question with his eyes as well as with his words.

'Making old stock pay,'--said the girl, looking down at her
folded hands; she was not of the calm sisterhood who hide
themselves in crochet.

'Perhaps you will be so good as to enlarge upon that.'

Hazel sent back the first answer that came to her tongue, and
the next: it was no part of her plan to have herself in the
foreground.

'This is a fair average specimen of our tea-drinkings,' she
said. 'And the mornings are hardly more eventful. Just lately,
Mr. Falkirk has been a good deal disturbed about you. Or else
he was easy about you, and disturbed about your doings,--he has
such a confused way of putting things. But we heard you had
copied my "hurricane track," ' said Miss Wych, folding her
hands in a new position.

'And were you disturbed about my doings?'

'I? O no. I am never disturbed with what you do to anybody but
me.'

Rollo did not choose to pursue that subject. He plunged into
another.

'I should like to explain to you some of my doings; and I must
go a roundabout way to do it. Miss Hazel, do you read the
Bible much?'

'Much?' she said with a sudden look up. 'What do you call
"much?" '

He smiled at her. 'Are you in the habit of studying it?'

'As I study other things I do not know?--Not often. Sometimes,'
said Wych Hazel, thinking how often she had gone over that
same ninety-first Psalm.

'What is your notion of religion?--as to what it means?'

She glanced up at him again, almost wondering for a moment if
his wits were 'touched.' Then seeing his eyes were undoubtedly
sane and grave, set her own wits to work.

'It means,' she answered slowly after a pause, 'to me,
different things in different people. All sorts of
contradictions, I believe!--In mamma, as they tell of her, it
meant everything beautiful, and loving, and loveable, and
tender. And it puts Dr. Maryland away off--up in the sky, I
think. And it just blinds Prim, so that she cannot comprehend
common mortals. And it seems to open Gyda's eyes, so that she
_does_ understand--like mamma. And--I do not know what it means in
you, Mr. Rollo!'

'You never saw it in me.'

'No.'

'Let me give you a lesson to study,' said he. 'Something I
have been studying lately a good deal. I must take this minute
before we are interrupted. Have you got a Bible here?'

She sprang up and brought her own from the next ro