arnest he might have to say.
She sat erect, with scornful eyes and glowing cheeks, and when the first
flush of excitement passed off was simply harder and gayer than before.
Who imagined such a result as that? Nobody, of course. But how perfectly
foolish and illogical! Couldn't she see that Dr. Eggleston only meant to
refer to the fact that literature, both of prose and poetry, had been
improved by being brought to the level of childish minds, and to reprove
that way of teaching religious truth, that leaves a somber, dismal
impression on youthful hearts? Apparently she could not, since she did
not. As for being absurd and illogical, I _did_ not say that she wasn't.
I am simply giving you facts as they occurred. I think myself that she
was dishonoring the memory of her father ten thousand times more than
any chance and unmeant word of the speakers could possibly have done.
The only trouble was, that she was such an idiot she did not see it; and
she prided herself on her powers of reasoning, too! But the world is
full of idiots. She sat like a stone during the rest of the brilliant
lecture. Many things she heard because she could not help hearing; many
she admired, because it was in her to admire a brilliant and charming
thing, and she could not help that, either; but she could shut her
_heart_ to all tenderness of feeling and all softening influences, and
that she did with much satisfaction, deliberately steeling herself
against the words of a man because he had quoted a chance line that her
father used to sing, while she lived every day of her life in defiance
of the principles by which her father shaped his life and his death!
Verily, the ways of girls are beyond understanding.

Eurie enjoyed it all. When Dr. Eggleston told of the men that, as soon
as their children grew a little too restless, had business down town,
she clapped her hands softly and whispered:

"That is for all the world like father. Neddie and Puss were never in a
whining fit in their lives that father didn't at once think of a patient
he had neglected to visit that day, and rush off."

She laughed over the thought that women were shut in with little steam
engines, and said:

"That's a capital name for them; we have three at home that are always
just at the very point of explosion. I mean to write to mother and tell
her I have found a new name for them."

When he suggested the blunt-end scissors, and the colored crayons with
which they could make