f course, I
was away at school a good deal. Every one knows her by sight now because
she's the most conspicuous woman in church. She dresses magnificently,"
said Mrs. Cranston the younger. "I couldn't help noticing her diamonds
last Sunday."

"They must have been big, Meg," put in the captain, reflectively, as he
was getting himself out of his smoking-jacket. "Let's see,--ours is a
hundred-dollar pew down near the foot of the side aisle, and hers a
thousand-dollar box-stall just in front of the centre. Could they flash
all that distance? They'd be useful for signalling----"

"Wilbur! I do wish you wouldn't mingle church and cavalry slang. It's
downright irreverent, and at the bottom of your heart you're anything
but an irreverent man."

"I won't," said the captain, solemnly; "at least I'll try to separate
the ideas--they are a trifle incongruous--if you'll tell me how at that
distance you could mingle your devotions with appraisal of Mrs.
Barnard's diamonds."

"I didn't. If you'd gone to church yourself you'd understand these
things. I couldn't help it. I simply happened to be next to her
afterwards--at communion."

"Oh, I see," said Cranston, giving a jab at his thinning hair with the
thickest and stiffest of brushes. "That does bring us to close quarters,
doesn't it?" Then with provoking deliberation he rearranged his necktie
and began pulling on his coat. "Hum, let's see," he went on, his eyes
twinkling and his lips twitching ominously, "anything wrong about Mrs.
B., mother mine, or with the millionaire husband? No? I see: just some
of those people one meets at the Lord's table and nobody else's."

"Wilbur!" exclaimed Mrs. Cranston, in tones of horror. "Indeed, indeed,
mamma, he isn't a bit like that out on the frontier. It's only when he
gets into civilized church circles that he says these outrageous things.
If you could hear him read the burial service over some of our poor
fellows as I have heard him, you'd know he lacked no reverence at all.
He's queer,--he always has been about these social distinctions. You
know and I know they are inevitable."

But leaving wife and mother to deplore his conduct and comfort each
other with the assurance that he really knew better and wasn't as bad as
he painted himself, which was occasionally in lurid colors, as must be
admitted, Captain Cranston went down-stairs with a certain stiffness of
gait which his intimates were well aware was attributable entirely to a
war re