."

Julia Cloud looked still graver.

"God doesn't change, Leslie. He is the same yesterday and to-day and
forever. And He said that whoever took away from the meaning of the
words of His book would have some terrible punishment, so that it were
better that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were
drowned."

"Well, I think He'd be a perfectly horrid God to do that!" said
Leslie. "I can't see how you can believe any such old thing. It isn't
like you, Cloudy, dear; it's just some old thing you were taught. You
don't like to be long-faced and unhappy one day in the week, you know
you don't."

"Long-faced! Unhappy! Why, dear child, God doesn't want the Sabbath to
be that. He wants it to be the happiest day of all the week. I'm never
unhappy on Sunday. I like it best of all."

Suddenly Allison turned around, and looked at Julia Cloud, saw the
white, strained look around her lips, the yearning light in her eyes,
and had some swift man's intuition about the true woman's soul of her.
For men, especially young men, do have these intuitions sometimes as
well as women.

"Leslie," he said gently, as if he had suddenly grown much older than
his sister, "can't you see you're hurting Cloudy? Cut it out! If
Cloudy likes Sunday, she shall have it the way she wants it."

Leslie turned with sudden compunction.

"O Cloudy, dear, I didn't mean to hurt you; indeed I didn't! I never
thought you'd care."

"It's all right, dear," said Julia Cloud with her gentle voice, and
just the least mite of a gasp. "You see--I--Sunday has been always
very dear to me; I hadn't realized you wouldn't feel the same."

She seemed to shrink into herself; and, though the smile still
trembled on her lips, there was a hovering of distress over her fine
brows.

"We _will_ feel the same!" declared Allison. "If you feel that way so
much, we'll manage somehow to be loyal to what you think. You always
do it for us; and, if we can't be as big as you are, we haven't got
the gang spirit. It's teamwork, Leslie. Cloudy goes to football games,
and makes fudge for our friends; and we go to church and help her keep
Sunday her way. See?"

"Why, of course! Sure!" said Leslie, half bewildered. "I didn't mean
not to, of course, if Cloudy likes such things; only she'll have to
teach me how, for I never did like those things."

"Well, I say, let's get Cloudy to spend the first Sunday telling us
how she thinks Sunday ought to be kept, and why. Is that