you prefer to rely?"

This was one of the little winds which Pere Michaux occasionally sent
over the self-esteem of his two Protestant companions: he could not help
it. Dr. Gaston frowned: he had not an acquaintance between New York and
the island, and Pere Michaux knew it. But Miss Lois, undaunted, rushed
into the fray.

"Oh, certainly, it would be quite easy for us to have her met by friends
on the way," she began, making for the moment common and Protestant
cause with Dr. Gaston; "it would require only a few letters. In New
England I should have my own family connections to call upon--persons of
the highest respectability, descendants, most of them, of the celebrated
patriot Israel Putnam."

"Certainly," replied Pere Michaux. "I understand. Then I will leave Anne
to you."

"But unfortunately, as Anne is going to New York, not Boston, my
connections do not live along the route, exactly," continued Miss Lois,
the adverb standing for a small matter of a thousand miles or so; "nor,"
she added, again admitting Dr. Gaston to a partnership, "can we make
them."

"There remain, then, the pastors of your church," said the priest.

"Certainly--the pastors. It will be the simplest thing in the world for
Dr. Gaston to write to them; they will be delighted to take charge of
any friend of ours."

The chaplain pushed his wig back a little, and murmured, "Church
Almanac."

Miss Lois glanced at him angrily. "I am sure I do not know what Dr.
Gaston means by mentioning 'Church Almanac' in that way," she said,
sharply. "We know most of the prominent pastors, of course. Dr.
Shepherd, for instance, and Dr. Dell."

Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Dell, who occasionally came up to the island during
the summer for a few days of rest, lived in the lower-lake town where
Anne's long railway journey began. They were not pastors, but rectors,
and the misuse of the terms grated on the chaplain's Anglican ear. But
he was a patient man, and accustomed now to the heterogeneous phrasing
of the Western border.

"And besides," added Miss Lois, triumphantly, "there is the bishop!"

Now the bishop lived five miles farther. It was not evident, therefore,
to the ordinary mind what aid these reverend gentlemen could give to
Anne, all living, as they did, at the western beginning of her railway
journey; but Miss Lois, who, like others of her sex, possessed the
power (unattainable by man) of rising above mere logical sequence, felt
that she had conquered.