d have a good time, for one thing," he
answered, adding, more seriously, "The house of Rimmon may be all right
for some people, but _my_ head isn't clear enough."

Lydia looked frankly at a loss. She did not belong to the alert, quickly
"bluffing" type of young lady. "Rimmon?" she asked.

"He's in the Bible."

"That's a good reason why I've never heard of him," she said ruefully.

"All I meant by him was that people who conform outwardly to a standard
they don't really believe in, are in danger of getting most awfully
mixed up. And certainly they don't stand any chance of convincing
anybody else that there's anything the matter with the standard. What's
needed isn't to upset everything in a heap, but to call people's
attention to the fact that things could be a lot better than they are.
And that's hard to do. And who ever called more people's attention to
that fact than an impractical, unbalanced nobleman who took to cobbling
shoes for the peace of his soul? There wasn't a particle of sense to
what Tolstoi _did_, but--" He stopped, hesitating in an uncertainty that
Lydia understood with a touching humility.

"Oh, you needn't explain who Tolstoi is. I've heard of him."

"Well, you mustn't imagine I'm anything like Tolstoi!" cried the young
man, laughing aloud at the idea, "for I don't take a bit of stock in
his deification of working with your muscles. That was an exaggeration
he fell into in his old age because he'd been denied his fair share of
manual work when he was young. If he'd had to split kindlings and tote
ashes and hoe corn when he was a boy, I bet he wouldn't have thought
there was anything so sanctifying about callouses on your hands!"

"Oh, dear! You're awfully confusing to me," complained Lydia. "You
always seem to be making fun of something I thought just the minute
before you believed in."

Rankin looked intensely serious. "There isn't an impression I'd be
sorrier to give you," he said earnestly. "Perhaps the trouble is that
you don't as yet know much about the life I've got out of."

"I've lived in Endbury all my life," protested Lydia.

"There may still be something for you to learn about the lives of its
men," suggested her companion.

"If you think it's so wrong, why don't you reform it?" Lydia launched
this challenge suddenly at him with the directness characteristic of her
nation.

"I have to begin with reforming myself," he said, "and that's job enough
to last me a long while. I have