gs, as old he is,
a-gossipin' about other people's business! Sakes alive! he needs every
breath he 's got now fur his prayers,--as all of us pore mortals do
now," added Mrs. Hodges, as she let her eyes fall upon her own wrinkled
hands.

"Yes, we 're old, Hester, you an' I; but I 'm mighty glad o' the faith I
've been a-storin' up, fur it 's purty considerable of a help now."

"Of course, 'Liphalet, faith is a great comfort, but it 's a greater one
to know that you 've allus tried to do yore dooty the very best you
could; not a-sayin' that you 'ain't tried."

"Most of us tries, Hester, even Dan'l."

"I ain't a-goin' to talk about Dan'l Hastings. He 's jest naturally
spiteful an' crabbed. I declare, I don't see how he 's a-goin' to
squeeze into the kingdom."

"Oh, never mind that, Hester. God ain't a-goin' to ask you to find a
way."

Mrs. Hodges did not reply. She and her husband seldom disagreed now,
because he seldom contradicted or found fault with her. But if this
dictum of his went unchallenged, it was not so with some later
conclusions at which he arrived on the basis of another of Fred's
letters.

It was received several months after the settlement of the young man in
Cincinnati, and succeeded a long silence. "You will think," it ran,
"that I have forgotten you; but it is not so. My life has been very full
here of late, it is true, but not so full as to exclude you and good
Aunt Hester. I feel that I am growing. I can take good full breaths
here. I could n't in Dexter: the air was too rarefied by religion."

Mrs. Hodges gasped as her husband read this aloud, but there was the
suspicion of a smile about the corners of Eliphalet's mouth.

"You ask me if I attend any church," the letter went on. "Yes, I do.
When I first left, I thought that I never wanted to see the inside of a
meeting-house again. But there is a young lady in our office who is very
much interested in church work, and somehow she has got me interested
too, and I go to her church every Sunday. It is Congregational."

"Congregational!" exclaimed Mrs. Hodges. "Congregational! an' he borned
an' raised up in the Methodist faith. It 's the first step."

"He was n't borned nothin' but jest a pore little outcast sinner, an' as
fur as the denomination goes, I guess that church is about as good as
any other."

"'Liphalet Hodges, air you a-backslidin' too?"

"No: I 'm like Freddie; I 'm a-growin'."

"It 's a purty time of life fur you to be a-t