y?"

At this point Misses Lily and Lorena are joined by the said "Jim."
And be it noticed that he makes the first remark on the sermon that
has been heard as yet.

"We had a stunning sermon this morning, didn't we?"

"Oh, you shocking fellow!" murmurs Lorena "How _can_ you use such
rough words?"

"What words!' Stunning?' Why, dear me, that is a jolly word; so
expressive. I say, you sheep in this fold took it pretty hard. A
fellow might be almost glad of being a goat, I think."

"Jim, don't be wicked," puts in Miss Lily who has a cousinship in the
said Jim, and therefore can afford to be brusque. Jim shrugs his
shoulders.

"Wicked," he says. "If the preacher is to be credited, it is you
folks who are wicked. I don't pretend, you know, to be anything
else."

A change of subject seems to the fair Lorena to be desirable, so she
says:

"Why were you not at the hop last night, Mr. Merchant?"

And Jim replies, "I didn't get home in time. I was at the races. I
hear you had a _stunning_--I beg your pardon--a _perfectly splendid_
time. Those are the right words, I believe."

And then the two ladies gathered their silken trains into an
aristocratic grasp of the left hand, and sailed down town on either
side of "Jim" to continue the conversation. And those coral lips had
but just sung--

"My thoughts lie open to the Lord,
Before they're formed within;
And ere my lips pronounce the word
He knows the sense I mean."

What _could_ He have thought of her? Is it not strange that she did
not ask this of herself.

"How are you to-day?" Mr. Jackson asked, shaking his old
acquaintance, Mr. Dunlap, heartily by the hand. "Beautiful day, isn't
it?"

Now, what will be the next sentence from the lips of those
gray-headed men, standing in the sanctuary, with the echo of solemn
service still in their ears? Listen:

"Splendid weather for crops. A man with such a farm as mine on his
hands, and so backward with his work, rather grudges such Sundays as
these this time of year."

And the other?

"Yes," he says, laughing, "you could spare the time better if it
rained, I dare say. By the way, Dunlap, have you sold that horse yet?
If not, you better make up your mind to let me have it at the price I
named. You won't do better than that this fell."

Whereupon ensued a discussion on the respective merits and demerits,
and the prospective rise and fall in horse-flesh.

"Take heed wha