neighbourhood than you are?"

"She has a way with them," said Blossom sweetly. "I don't know what it
is and I am sure she is a good, kind girl--but I sometimes think men
like her because she is so contrary. My Uncle Abel has almost lost his
head about her, yet she plays fast and loose with him in the cruelest
fashion."

"Oh, well, she'll burn her fingers some day, at her own fire, and then
she'll be sorry."

"I don't want her to be sorry, but I do wish she'd try just a little
to be kind--one day she promises to marry Abel and the next you'd think
she'd taken a liking to Jim Halloween."

"Perhaps she has a secret sentiment for the rector?" he suggested, to
pique her.

"But I don't believe he will marry anybody around here," she insisted,
while the colour flooded her face.

The discovery that she had once cherished--that she still cherished,
perhaps, a regard for the young clergyman, added a zest to the
adventure, while it freed his passion from the single restraint of which
he had been aware. It was not in his nature to encourage a chivalrous
desire to protect a woman who had betrayed, however innocently, a
sentiment for another man. When the Reverend Mr. Mullen inadvertently
introduced an emotional triangle, he had changed the situation from one
of mere sentimental dalliance into direct pursuit. By some law of reflex
action, known only to the male mind at such instants, the first sign
that she was not to be won threw him into the mental attitude of the
chase.

"Are the fascinations of your Mr. Mullen confined to the pulpit?" he
inquired after a moment, "or does he wear them for the benefit of the
heterodox when he walks abroad?"

"Oh, he's not my Mr. Mullen, sir," she hastened to explain though her
words trailed off into a sound that was suspiciously like a sigh.

"Molly Merryweather's Mr. Mullen, then?"

"I don't think he cares for Molly--not in that way."

"Are you quite as sure that Molly doesn't care for him in that way?"

"She couldn't or she wouldn't be so cruel. Then she never goes to
lectures or Bible classes or mission societies. She is the only girl in
the congregation who never makes him anything to wear. Don't you think,"
she asked anxiously, "that if she really cared about him she would have
done some of these things?"

"From my observation of ladies and clergymen," replied Gay seriously, "I
should think that she would most likely have done all of them."

She appeared relieved, he thought,