the really good women are never guilty of the
sacrilege of showing their immortality to preachers. I lived with
William for thirty years, and had more than my share of spiritual
difficulties. But I would have as soon asked him how to cut out my
dress as what to do with my soul. No man's preaching benefited me
more, but in so far as my soul was feminine and peculiar to me I took
it as an indication that Providence meant it to remain so, and I never
betrayed it, not even to him.

But I could not keep other women from doing so. There was a beautiful
lady in the church at Orionville who gave "Bible readings" as if they
were soprano solos. She was always beautifully gowned for the
occasion, and had an expression of pretty, pink piety that was
irresistible. She was "not happy at home" and candidly confessed it.
The lack of congeniality grew out of the fact that her husband was a
straightforward business man who took no interest in her Bible
readings. But he was about the only man in the church who did not.
And it is only a question of time when she would have betrayed William
in the Second Book of Samuel if I had not intervened.

She had been coming to the parsonage regularly for a month, consulting
him about her "interpretation" of these Scriptures. She asked for him
at the door as simply as if I had been his office-boy. And William was
always cheered and invigorated by her visits. He would come out of his
study to tea after her departure, rubbing his hands and praising the
beautiful, spiritual clearness of her mind, which he considered very
remarkable in a woman.

Poor William! I never destroyed his illusions, for they were always
founded upon the goodness and simplicity of his own nature. But when
Mrs. Billywith began to spend three afternoons of the week with him in
his study, with nobody but the dead-and-gone Second Samuel to chaperon
them, and when William began to neglect his pastoral visiting on this
account, I couldn't have felt the call to put an end to the
"interpretations" stronger than I did if I had been his guardian angel.
The next time she came he was out visiting the sick.

"Come right in, Mrs. Billywith," I said, leading her into the study and
seating myself opposite her when she had chosen her chair. "William is
out this afternoon, but possibly I can help you with the kind of
interpretation you ought to do now, better than he can." She stared at
me with a look of proud surprise.

"You a