re drying your feet, but--but--they were just like
other people, as you told Mr. Finney, you know."

"Did you expect them to have horns and tails?"

"I don't think they are very wicked," said Susannah. She looked down as
she said it, speaking with a certain undefined tenderness of tone
begotten of a new experience.

"Well?"

"That's all."

"How could you know whether they are wicked or not?" he burst out
angrily. "Do you suppose that they would show _you_ the iniquity of
their hearts?"

"Why, Ephraim, you've always stood up for them before!"

He gave a sort of snort. "I never stood up for them by making eyes at my
hands and cooing out my words."

She looked up in entire bewilderment.

"It doesn't matter what I mean," he added. "What did they say? What did
they do? Tell me. If I'd known these fellows had come back, do you
suppose I'd have let you go?"

"You are so strange," she said. "They did nothing but just bring me home
and hold the umbrella, and Joseph Smith said he knew he'd been a bad man
and didn't know anything. I thought you'd be interested to hear about
them, Ephraim."

"I should have thought you'd had too much self-respect to allow him to
talk to you like that. Of course he was trying to work on your
feelings."

"No, he wasn't, Ephraim. You are quite as unjust as my aunt to-day. He
wasn't trying to work on my feelings. He was just--well, he was sorry
that my frock got so wet, and he just happened to say the other thing. I
am sure--"

Her conviction concerning the naturalness of Smith's conduct and the
Quaker's sincerity had arisen in the presence of each, and was not now
to be ascribed to any particular word or action which she could remember
and repeat.

"Oh, he was sorry your frock was splashed, was he? And the other fellow
they call Halsey, was he concerned about that too?"

"Who told you that his name was Halsey?" The interest of her tone was
unmistakable.

"That is his name, and he must be a degraded fellow to take up with
Smith."

She saw that Ephraim's clothes were very wet; he must have walked far.
She attributed his exhausted look entirely to fatigue, and his
ill-temper to the same cause. "Mr. Halsey seemed quite good and in
earnest, like the people that come to see Mr. Finney when he stays here,
asking about saving their souls, as if their souls were something quite
different from the other part of them; and, Ephraim, I have often wanted
to ask you, but I didn't like to. You