were, too--at least I was. Yes, I hope the youngster will see what a
sweet creature old Roberts's Philippa is."

She was a sweet creature; but as William King said, she was amusingly
old-fashioned. The Old Chester girl of those days, who seems (to look
back upon her in these days) so medieval, was modern compared to
Philippa! But there was nothing mystical about her; she was just
modest and full of pleasant silences and soft gaieties and simple,
startling truth-telling. At first, when they came to live near
Perryville, she used, when the weather was fine, to walk over the
grassy road, under the brown and white branches of the sycamores, into
Old Chester, to Dr. Lavendar's church. "I like to come to your
church," she told him, "because you don't preach quite such long
sermons as Mr. Fenn does." But when it rained or was very hot she
chose the shorter walk and sat under John Fenn, looking up at his pale,
ascetic face, lighted from within by his young certainties concerning
the old ignorances of people like Dr. Lavendar--life and death and
eternity. Of Dr. Lavendar's one certainty, Love, he was deeply
ignorant, this honest boy, who was so concerned for Philippa's father's
soul! But Philippa did not listen much to his certainties; she coaxed
his little sister into her pew, and sat with the child cuddled up
against her, watching her turn over the leaves of the hymn-book or
trying to braid the fringe of Miss Philly's black silk mantilla into
little pigtails. Sometimes Miss Philly would look up at the careworn
young face in the pulpit and think how holy Mary's brother was, and how
learned--and how shabby; for he had only a housekeeper, Mrs. Semple, to
take care of him and Mary. Not but what he might have had somebody
besides Mrs. Semple! Philippa, for all her innocence, could not help
being aware that he might have had--almost anybody! For others of
Philly's sex watched the rapt face there in the pulpit. When Philippa
thought of that, a slow blush used to creep up to her very temples.
She saw him oftener in the pulpit than out of it, because when he came
to call on her father she was apt not to be present. At first he came
very frequently to see the Irvingite, because he felt it his duty to
"deal" with him; but he made so little impression that he foresaw the
time when it would be necessary to say that Ephraim was joined to his
idols. But though it might be right to "let him alone," he could not
stop calling at Henry