it.

In spite of this fact, however, the rector of the Episcopal church of
Thorbury and the Methodist minister were both great friends of Miss
Panney, and although she did not come to hear them, they liked very much
to go to hear her. Mr. Hampton, the Methodist, would talk to her about
flower-gardening and the by-gone people and ways of the region, while Mr.
Ames, the rector, who was a young man, did not hesitate to assert that he
frequently got very good hints for passages in his sermons, from remarks
made by Miss Panney about things that were going on in the religious and
social world.

But although Miss Panney took pleasure in the company of clergymen and
physicians, she boldly asserted that she liked lawyers better.

"In the law," she would say, "you find things fixed and settled. A law
is a law, the same for everybody, and no matter how much people may
wrangle and dispute about it, it is there, and you can read it for
yourself. But the practice of medicine has to be shifted to suit
individual cases, and the practice of theology is shifted to suit
individual creeds, and you can't put your finger on steady principles as
you can in law. When I put my finger down, I like to be sure what is
under it."

Miss Panney had other reasons for liking lawyers, for her first real
friend had been her legal guardian, old Mr. Bannister of Thorbury. She
was one of the few people of the place who remembered this old gentleman,
and she had often told how shocked and pained she had been when summoned
from boarding-school to attend his funeral, and how she had been
impressed by the idea that the preparations for this important event
consisted mainly in beating up eggs, stemming raisins, baking cakes and
pies, and making all sorts of provision for the sumptuous entertainment
of the people who should be drawn together by the death of the principal
citizen of the town. To her mind it would have been more appropriate had
the company been fed on bread and water.

Thomas Bannister, who succeeded to his father's business, had been Miss
Panney's legal friend and counsellor for many years. But he, too, was
dead, and the office had now devolved on Herbert Bannister, the grandson
of the old gentleman, and the brother of Miss Dora.

Herbert and Miss Panney were very good friends, but not yet cronies. He
was still under thirty, and there were many events of the past of which
he knew but little, and about which he could not wholly sympathize wit