hanks to Him for having made ours of a different pattern."

"And what do the women as have doubts need, I should like to know?"

"A husband and children is the best cure for them. Why, when a woman has
a husband and children to look after, and washes at home, she has no
time, bless you! to be teaching the Lord His business; she has enough to
do minding her own."

CHAPTER VIII

GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS

The world is weary of new tracks of thought
That lead to nought--
Sick of quack remedies prescribed in vain
For mortal pain,
Yet still above them all one Figure stands
With outstretched Hands.

"Cousin Maria, do you like Alan Tremaine?" asked Elisabeth, not long
after her return from Yorkshire.

"Like him, my dear? I neither like nor dislike persons with whom I have
as little in common as I have with Mr. Tremaine. But he strikes me as a
young man of parts, and his manners are admirable."

"I wasn't thinking about his manners, I was thinking about his views,"
said the girl, walking across the room and looking through the window at
the valley smiling in the light of the summer morning; "don't you think
they are very broad and enlightened?"

"I daresay they are. Young persons of superior intelligence are
frequently dazzled by their own brilliance at first, and consider that
they were sent into the world specially to confute the law and the
prophets. As they grow older they learn better."

Elisabeth began playing with the blind-cord. "I think he is awfully
clever," she remarked.

"My dear, how often must I beg you not to use that word _awfully_,
except in its correct sense? Remember that we hold the English tongue in
trust--it belongs to the nation and not to us--and we have no more right
to profane England's language by the introduction of coined words and
slang expressions than we have to disendow her institutions or to
pollute her rivers."

"All right; I'll try not to forget again. But you really do think Alan
is clever, don't you?"

"He is undoubtedly intelligent, and possesses the knack of appearing
even more intelligent than he is; but at present he has not learned his
own limitations."

"You mean that he isn't clever enough to know that he isn't cleverer,"
suggested Elisabeth.

"Well, my dear, I should never have put it in that way, but that
approximately expresses my ideas about our young friend."

"And he is aw--I mean frightfully wel