!"

During the services I was conscious of covert glances in our
direction, but whenever a pair of feminine eyes met mine, they slid
off like lizards and glided another way, with calculated Christian
indifference. They weren't hostile, nor unfriendly: they were just
deliberately indifferent. Nobody had the faintest notion of being
heedful of us strangers among them; and I should be sorry for angels
who expected to be entertained unawares in South Carolina!

When the congregation had filed out and gone about its leisurely
business, the minister and his wife came forward to greet us. They
were a bit nervous, remembering the diabolic uproar about Faith,
Hope, and Charity. Mr. Haile was a mild-mannered little man of the
saved-sheep type, with box-plaited teeth and a bleating voice. His
wife had the worried face and the anxious eyes of the minister's
helpmeet, and the painfully ready smile for newcomers who might, or
might not, prove desirable parishioners.

She wanted to be nice to us as a Christian woman to women, but not
too nice as the minister's wife of a church whose members looked
upon us as interlopers. I had deputed Judge Gatchell to inform the
trustees that the suit was dropped. I suppose Mrs. Haile was timid
about broaching the delicate subject, for she ignored it with a
nervous intensity that made me feel sorry for her. She and Mr. Haile
would call just as soon as it was convenient for us to receive
visitors; and then they shook hands with us, and I think they
breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, Sophy! And we've got to keep on going there!--next Sunday, and
Sunday after next Sunday, and maybe every Sunday after that until we
die! Perhaps after a while some of them will bow to us, or maybe
even say, 'How do you do?' _but_ we'll feel as if we'd been put in
cold storage every time we enter that door!" wailed Alicia.

"It is our Father's house," I reminded her.

"But I don't want to be made to feel like a spanked child, in
anybody's house!" Alicia said, resentfully.

"You say that because you're Irish."

"You say I say it because I'm Irish because you're English." Then
she screwed up her mouth like a coral button, and squinted her eyes:
"I'm Irish, and you're English, and we're both American. Sophy,
let's join my Irish and your English to our Yankee, and teach this
town a lesson!"

"Barkis is willin'. But in the meantime let's go home and see what
Mary Magdalen has for lunch."

We walked slowly, enjoying t