trade."

CHAPTER IV

On the following Sunday, young Mrs. Ware sat alone in the preacher's pew
through the morning service, and everybody noted that the roses had
been taken from her bonnet. In the evening she was absent, and after
the doxology and benediction several people, under the pretence of
solicitude for her health, tried to pump her husband as to the reason.
He answered their inquiries civilly enough, but with brevity: she
had stayed at home because she did not feel like coming out--this and
nothing more.

The congregation dispersed under a gossip-laden cloud of consciousness
that there must be something queer about Sister Ware. There was a
tolerably general agreement, however, that the two sermons of the day
had been excellent. Not even Loren Pierce's railing commentary on the
pastor's introduction of an outlandish word like "epitome"--clearly
forbidden by the Discipline's injunction to plain language understood of
the people--availed to sap the satisfaction of the majority.

Theron himself comprehended that he had pleased the bulk of his
auditors; the knowledge left him curiously hot and cold. On the one
hand, there was joy in the apparent prospect that the congregation would
back him up in a stand against the trustees, if worst came to worst.
But, on the other hand, the bonnet episode entered his soul. It had
been a source of bitter humiliation to him to see his wife sitting there
beneath the pulpit, shorn by despotic order of the adornments natural
to her pretty head. But he had even greater pain in contemplating the
effect it had produced on Alice herself. She had said not a word on the
subject, but her every glance and gesture seemed to him eloquent of deep
feeling about it. He made sure that she blamed him for having defended
his own gas and sidewalk rights with successful vigor, but permitted
the sacrifice of her poor little inoffensive roses without a protest. In
this view of the matter, indeed, he blamed himself. Was it too late to
make the error good? He ventured a hint on this Sunday evening, when he
returned to the parsonage and found her reading an old weekly newspaper
by the light of the kitchen lamp, to the effect that he fancied there
would be no great danger in putting those roses back into her bonnet.
Without lifting her eyes from the paper, she answered that she had
no earthly desire to wear roses in her bonnet, and went on with her
reading.

At breakfast the next morning Theron f