phy laughed out.

"Oh, Sue," she cried, "that's the first old-maidish thing I ever heard
you say!"

"Old maids are very wise sometimes," returned Miss Pickett calmly. "The
Delphian Oracle was an old maid as far as I can make out."

Sophy said in a disappointed voice:

"Sue ... don't you believe in friendship between men and women?"

"I certainly do. No one has stauncher men friends than I have."

"Then why on earth don't you think I can have them?"

Miss Pickett twinkled.

"'Twasn't a question of _them_," she said demurely. "There's safety in
numbers. I was referring to this particular one."

Sophy said reproachfully:

"Sue ... do you really think I'm the sort of woman to flirt with a man
on paper, while I'm getting a divorce?"

Miss Pickett, still quite calm, replied:

"No, honey, you know I don't think so."

"Then what _do_ you think?" demanded Sophy, beginning to bristle a
little.

"I think," said her cousin, putting down her embroidery on her lap for a
moment, and looking quizzical but profound, "that _sometimes_
congeniality is more dangerous than passion."

Sophy returned her look a little loftily.

"Dear Sue," said she, "haven't you really taken in that all that side of
me is dead ... quite dead?"

"No ... 'playing 'possum,'" flashed Miss Pickett.

"Oh, have your little joke by all means," said Sophy, smiling. "But
after all it's '_my_ funeral' as they say out here.... I suppose the
corpse knows better than any one else whether it's dead or not."

"On the contrary--the corpse doesn't know anything whatever about it,"
said her cousin. "If you were really a corpse, my lamb, you wouldn't
know it."

Sophy looked almost hurt.

"Won't you allow me to know about my own nature, Sue?" she asked.

Now Miss Pickett smiled.

"Nature," said she, "is as fond of revivals as a nigger."

On a hot, gusty, dusty day in summer, having returned to Ontowega, they
set forth with the lawyer to go before the Judge who was to give Sophy a
decree of divorce. The little town looked more hideous than ever in the
glare of summer. Such trees as grew along the board sidewalks were grey
with dust. The pettish wind flung handfuls of grit into their eyes and
nostrils. Sophy followed Mr. Dainton's tall, scraggy figure like a
hypnotised "subject." She had but to follow that round-shouldered,
obstinate looking back into the yellow-brick square of the "Town Hall"
that loomed just ahead, and she would be free. That lank,