ble, just _went_. I'm no 'sonny'; I'm sissy. S-a-p
sap, p-h-i----" began the little one, glibly and distinctly.

"You can't be! You surely are Ananias! Your hair is cut exactly like a
boy's and you wear boy's panties! You're spelling the wrong name. Look
out! What next?" cried Molly anxiously, as the active baby suddenly
climbed over the back of that seat to join her mate behind. There
master Ananias--or was it really Sapphira?--cuddled down on the rug in
the bottom of the cart and settled himself--herself--for sleep.

Neither Alfy nor Melvin interfered with these too-close small
neighbors; but withdrawing to the extreme edges of the seat left them
to sleep and get dry at their leisure. After that the homeward drive
proceeded in peace; only Herbert calling out now and then from his
place in the big wagon to make Melvin admire some particular beauty of
the scene, challenging the Provincial to beat it if he could in that
far away Markland of his own.

"But you haven't the sea!" retorted Melvin, proudly.

"We don't need it. We have the HUDSON RIVER!" came as swiftly back;
and as they had come just then to a turn in the road where an ancient
building stood beneath a canopy of trees, he asked: "Hold up the
horses a minute, will you, Littlejohn? I'd like our English friend to
say if he ever saw anything more picturesque than this."

"This" was a more than century-old Friends' meeting-house. Unpainted
and shingled all over its outward surface. "Old shingle-sides" was its
local name, and a lovelier location could not have been chosen even by
a less austere body of worshipers.

Meeting had been prolonged that First Day. The hand clasp of neighbor
with neighbor which signaled its close had just been given. From the
doorways on either side, the men's and the women's, these silent
worshipers were now issuing; the men to seek the vehicles waiting
beneath the long shed and the women to gossip a moment of neighborhood
affairs.

Mr. Winters was willing to rest and "breathe the horses" for a
little, the day being warm and the drive long, and to observe with
interest the decorous home-going of these Plain People; and it so
chanced that the big wagon, where Dorothy sat on the front seat with
Luna resting against her, halted just beside the entrance to the
meeting-house grounds. From her place she watched the departing
congregation with the keen interest she brought to everything; and
among them she recognized the familiar outlines