't fair. You are unjust, isn't she, Ruth? I say he didn't
make fun of religion, as Marion persists in saying that he did."

"Of course not," Ruth said. "A minister would hardly be guilty of doing
that. He was simply comparing the advanced methods of the present with
the stupidity of the past."

And obstinate Marion said then he ought to get a new Bible, for the very
same notions were in it that were when she was a child and learned
verses. And that was all that this discussion amounted to. Nobody had
appealed to Flossy. She had stood looking with an indifferent air around
her, until Marion turned suddenly and said:

"What did the lecture say to you, Flossy? Eurie seems very anxious to
get out of it something for our 'special needs,' as they say in church.
What was yours?"

Flossy hesitated like a timid child, flushed and then paled, and finally
said, simply:

"I have been thinking ever since he spoke it of that one sentence,
'Rock-firm, God-trust, has died out of the world.' I was wondering if it
were true, and I was wishing that it wasn't."

All the girls looked at each other in astonished silence; such a
strange thing for Flossy to say.

"What of it?" said Marion, presently. "What if it has? or, rather, what
if it were never in the world?"

"It wasn't that side of it that I thought about. It was what if it
were."

"And what then?"

"Why, then, I should like to see the person who had it, just to see how
he would seem."

Marion laughed somewhat scornfully.

"Curiosity is at the bottom of your wise thought, is it? Well, my little
mousie, I am amazingly afraid you are destined never to discover how it
will seem. So I wouldn't puzzle my brains about it. It might be too much
for them. Shall we go to dinner?"

You should have seen our four young ladies taking their first meal at
Chautauqua! It was an experience not to be forgotten. They went to the
"hotel." This was a long board building, improvised for the occasion,
and filled with as many comforts as the _necessities_ of the occasion
could furnish. To Miss Erskine the word "hotel" had only one sort of
association. She had been a traveler in her own country only, and it
had been her fortune to be intimate only with the hotels in large
cities, and only with those where people go whose purses are full to
overflowing. So she had come to associate with the name all that was
elegant or refined or luxurious.

When the President of the grounds inquired whether t