ou free, too?"

"Not to do what I want to. The only thing I really want to do is
to go out to China and help Carrie in her work. Mother thinks I'm
not strong enough. But Carrie was never very strong here. She is
better in China, and I think I might be."

Claude felt concern. He had not seen Enid since the sleigh-ride,
when she had been gayer than usual. Now she seemed sunk in
lassitude. "You must get over such notions, Enid. You don't want
to go wandering off alone like that. It makes people queer. Isn't
there plenty of missionary work to be done right here?"

She sighed. "That's what everybody says. But we all of us have a
chance, if we'll take it. Out there they haven't. It's terrible
to think of all those millions that live and die in darkness."

Claude glanced up at the sombre mill house, hidden in
cedars,--then off at the bright, dusty fields. He felt as if he
were a little to blame for Enid's melancholy. He hadn't been very
neighbourly this last year. "People can live in darkness here,
too, unless they fight it. Look at me. I told you I've been
moping all winter. We all feel friendly enough, but we go
plodding on and never get together. You and I are old friends,
and yet we hardly ever see each other. Mother says you've been
promising for two years to run up and have a visit with her. Why
don't you come? It would please her."

"Then I will. I've always been fond of your mother." She paused a
moment, absently twisting the strings of her bonnet, then
twitched it from her head with a quick movement and looked at him
squarely in the bright light. "Claude, you haven't really become
a free-thinker, have you?"

He laughed outright. "Why, what made you think I had?"

"Everybody knows Ernest Havel is, and people say you and he read
that kind of books together."

"Has that got anything to do with our being friends?"

"Yes, it has. I couldn't feel the same confidence in you. I've
worried about it a good deal."

"Well, you just cut it out. For one thing, I'm not worth it," he
said quickly.

"Oh, yes, you are! If worrying would do any good--" she shook her
head at him reproachfully.

Claude took hold of the fence pickets between them with both
hands. "It will do good! Didn't I tell you there was missionary
work to be done right here? Is that why you've been so
stand-offish with me the last few years, because you thought I
was an atheist?"

"I never, you know, liked Ernest Havel," she murmured.

When Claude