s are
defective,"--Mary plucked at his sleeve, and sighed loudly; "(no,
Mary!)--even if his teachings are defective, he is a good man according
to his lights; I am sure of that. Still, do you think it well to
attend a place of worship when you cannot follow the pastor's
teachings?"

"I love him. And I don't listen to what he says," she excused herself.

"But you should listen to what ministers say," the shocked young man
protested--"at least to ministers of the right faith. But you should
not go to church because you love ministers."

Philippa's face flamed. "I do not love--most of them."

Mary, leaning against the girl's knee, looked up anxiously into her
face. "Do you love brother?" she said.

They were a pretty pair, the child and the girl, sitting there on the
porch with the sunshine sifting down through the lacy leaves of the two
big locusts on either side of the door. Philippa wore a pink and green
palm-leaf chintz; it had six ruffles around the skirt and was gathered
very full about her slender waist; her lips were red, and her cheeks
and even her neck were delicately flushed; her red-brown hair was
blowing all about her temples; Mary had put an arm around her and was
cuddling against her. Yes, even Mary's brother would have thought the
two young things a pretty sight had there been nothing more serious to
think of. But John Fenn's thoughts were so very serious that even
Mary's question caused him no embarrassment; he merely said, stiffly,
that he would like to see Miss Philippa alone. "You may wait here,
Mary," he told his little sister, who frowned and sighed and went out
to the gate to pull a handful of grass for the roan.

Philippa led her caller to her rarely used parlor, and sat down to
listen in silent pallor to his exhortations. She made no explanations
for not coming to his church regularly; she offered no excuse of filial
tenderness for her indifference to her father's mistaken beliefs; she
looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, then out of the
window at the big roan biting at the hitching-post or standing very
still to let Mary rub his silky nose. But John Fenn looked only at
Philippa. Of her father's heresies he would not, he said, do more than
remind her that the wiles of the devil against her soul might present
them-selves through her natural affections; but in regard to her
failure to wait upon the means of grace he spoke without mercy, for, he
said, "faithful are the