:

"Will you please explain, my dear, why it is that, though I used to be a
regular worshipper before we became man and wife, I have almost entirely
ceased to attend church since that time? Who is responsible for the
change, I wonder."

There is a point beyond which it is not safe to prod Josephine, and I
could see from the expression of her eye that we had reached it on this
occasion. She drew herself up and answered haughtily:

"I have heard you make that insinuation several times before, Fred. It
is not merely silly, it is disgraceful. I keep you from church? Don't
you know," she exclaimed, with a quaver of emotion, "that your refusal to
go is a source of genuine grief to me, and that I just hate to go alone?
Don't you know that I should like nothing better than to go with you
every Sunday, and that I am ready to go to any church you will select?"

"Yes," I answered, doggedly, "I am well aware that you would prefer to
have me become anything rather than remain--er--a steadfast worshipper of
nature."

Josephine made a little gesture of impatience such as my well-born
apotheosis of nature is apt to evoke. For a few moments she looked as
though she were going to cry; then, with an almost passionate outburst,
she exclaimed:

"You will promise me, Fred, won't you, that when the children are old
enough to understand what it means not to go to church you will go too?"

Now, it may be that my response at the time to this pathetic appeal was
not altogether satisfactory to my darling; but she has forgotten her
fears and her tears to-day in the happy consciousness that as surely as
the bells begin to ring on Sunday morning I begin to brush my silk hat
with the feverish impatience of an abandoned church-goer. Punctuality,
which has always seemed to Josephine a pitiful sort of virtue, ranks in
my category of human conduct almost on a par with brotherly love, and I
am apt to make myself and her pretty miserable on each returning Sabbath
by my endeavors to get the family out of the house and into our pew on
time. It is only by bearing strictly in mind what day it is that I am
able to keep my lips from speaking guile when little Fred remembers at
the last moment that he has forgotten his pocket-handkerchief or
Josephine's glove bursts open in the process of being hastily rammed on
and I am compelled to wait while she sends upstairs for a fresh pair.
You should see how her nostrils swell with pride as we sweep by my ol