ever see in his audience, though
not such pretty ones. I never saw so many lovely faces and dresses
together. Esther, how is your father to-day?"

"Not very well, aunt. He wants to see you. Come home with us and help us
to amuse him."

So talking, all three walked along the avenue to 42d Street, and turning
down it, at length entered one of the houses about half way between the
avenues. Up-stairs in a sunny room fitted up as a library and large
enough to be handsome, they found the owner, William Dudley, a man of
sixty or thereabouts, sitting in an arm-chair before the fire, trying to
read a foreign review in which he took no interest. He moved with an
appearance of effort, as though he were an invalid, but his voice was
strong and his manner cheerful.

"I hoped you would all come. This is an awful moment. Tell me instantly,
Sarah; is St. Stephen a success?"

"Immense! St. Stephen and St. Wharton too. The loveliest clergyman, the
sweetest church, the highest-toned sermon and the lowest-toned walls,"
said she. "Even George owns that he has no criticisms to make."

"Aunt Sarah tells the loftiest truth, Uncle William," said the
professor; "every Christian emblem about the church is superlatively
correct, but paleontologically it is a fraud. Wharton and Hazard did the
emblems, and I supplied them with antediluvian beasts which were all
right when I drew them, but Wharton has played the devil with them, and
I don't believe he knows the difference between a saurian and a crab. I
could not recognize one of my own offspring."

"And how did it suit you, Esther?"

"I am charmed," replied his daughter. "Only it certainly does come just
a little near being an opera-house. Mr. Hazard looks horribly like
Meyerbeer's Prophet. He ordered us about in a fine tenor voice, with his
eyes, and told us that we belonged to him, and if we did not behave
ourselves he would blow up the church and us in it. I thought every
moment we should see his mother come out of the front pews, and have a
scene with him. If the organ had played the march, the effect would have
been complete, but I felt there was something wanting."

"It was the sexton," said the professor; "he ought to have had a
medieval costume. I must tell Wharton to-night to invent one for him.
Hazard has asked me to come round to his rooms, because he thinks I am
an unprejudiced observer and will tell him the exact truth. Now what am
I to say?"

"Tell him," said the aunt, "tha