d higher notions, and she's young and
haint never been away nowhere, and no wonder if he waits on her she
should take a kind o' fancy to him."

"You know, ma," continued Madeline, "that Dave Rollin would never take
her home among his folks, never; and if I was Becky's mother I'd shut the
door in his face before I'd ever have him fooling around my house, and
she should never stir out of the house with him, never!"

"I don't suppose there's much use in talking to the girl," said Grandma:
"Emily was in here the other day, and Becky, she happened to come in the
same time, and I didn't see no use in Emily's speaking up in the way she
did; for, says she, 'What do you have that Dave Rollin flirtin' around
you for, Beck? What do you suppose he wants o' you 'cept to amuse himself
a little when he ain't nothin' better to do, and then go off and forgit
he's seen ye!' And Becky didn't say nothin', but she give Emily a
dreadful long, quiet kind of a look out of her eyes."

"She hasn't lost quite all of Weir's temper since she's been seeking
religion," said Madeline, in a strangely light and vivacious tone.
Grandma and Grandpa Keeler, by the way, were good Methodists, but
Madeline was not a "professor."

"Seeking religion, eh?" inquired Grandpa Keeler. "She'd better let Dave
Rollin alone, then," he added.

"Let us hope that we shall all on us be brought to a better state of
mind," concluded Grandma Keeler, with solemn pertinency.

Before the meal was finished and the table cleared away, the latch of the
Ark had been often lifted.

On all occasions, afterwards, there was a marked and cheerful variety in
the nature of the droppers-in at the Ark--the children and all the young
men and maidens making their appearance with a promiscuousness which
precluded the possibility of design--but to-night the Wallencamp mind had
evidently aimed at some great system of conventionality, and had been
eminently successful in evolving a plan.

The callers were young men exclusively--the native youth of Wallencamp.
Their blowzy, well-favored faces, which ever afterward appeared to beam
with good nature, to-night expressed a sense of some grave affliction
heroically to be endured.

Their best clothes, it was obvious, had been purchased by them
"ready-made," and had been designed, originally, for the sons of a less
stalwart community. The young men were especially pinched as to their
expansive chests, the broadcloth coming much too short at this