Lent has come," said Bradford,
smiling. "Of course we country Congregationalists do not treat the
season as you Anglican Catholics do, and I've often thought it rather a
pity. It must be good to have a stated time and season for stopping and
sitting down to look at oneself. I picked up one of your New York church
papers in the library the other day, and was fairly surprised at the
number of services and the scope of the movement and the work of the
church in general."

Sylvia looked at him for a moment with an odd expression in her eyes, as
if questioning the sincerity of his remarks, and then answered, I thought
a little sadly: "I'm afraid it is very much like other things we read of
in the papers, half truth, half fiction; the churches and the services
are there, and the good earnest people, too--but as for our stopping! Ah,
Mr. Bradford, I can hardly expect to make you understand how it is, for I
cannot myself. It was all so different before I went to boarding school,
and we lived down in the house in Waverley Place where I was born. The
people of mamma's world do not stop; we simply whirl to a slightly
different tune. It's like waltzing one way around a ballroom until you
are quite dizzy, and then reversing,--there is no sitting down to rest,
that is, unless it is to play cards."

"Yet whist is a restful game in itself," said Bradford, cheerfully; "an
evening of whist, with even fairly intelligent partners, I've always
found a great smoother-out of nerves and wrinkles."

"They do not play it that way here," answered Sylvia, laughing, in spite
of herself, at his quiet assumption. "It's 'bridge' for money or
expensive prizes; and compared to the excitement it causes, the
tarantella is a sitting-down dance. I'm too stupid with cards to take the
risk of playing; even mamma does not advise it yet, though she wishes to
have me coached. So I shall have some time to myself after all, for my
defect puts me out of three Lenten card clubs to which mamma belongs, two
of which meet at our house. That leaves only two sewing classes, three
Lenten theatre clubs (one for lunch and matinee and two for dinner and
the evening), and Mr. Bell's cake-walk club, that practises with a
teacher at our house on Monday evenings. The club is to have a
semi-public performance at the Waldorf for charity, in Easter week, and
as the tickets are to be ten dollars each, they expect to make a great
deal of money. So you see there is very little time