ou can find in sitting in a stable in company with a negro! It
certainly shows a most depraved taste."

"Christ was born in a stable, Isabelle."

"What in the world has that to do with you?"

"I am beginning to think he has everything to do with me," answered her
cousin quietly.

"Well," said Isabelle with a toss of her head, "we are known by the
company we keep. I should imagine Pompey's curriculum of manners was not
on a very elevated plane."

"Pompey! Isabelle," said Judge Hildreth suddenly. "Why, my dear, Pompey
is a modern Socrates, bound in ebony. There is no danger to be
apprehended from him."

"Well, it is a peculiar companionship for Judge Hildreth's niece, that
is all I have to say," said Isabelle coldly, "but _chacun a son gout_."

"I read this morning in your Bible that God had chosen the base things
of the world, and things which are despised, and things which are not,
to bring to nought things that are. What does that mean, Isabelle?"

"Really, Evadne, we shall have to send you to live with Doctor Jerome!"
said her aunt, with a careless laugh. "You are getting to be a regular
interrogation point. We are not Bible commentators, child, you cannot
expect us to explain all the difficult passages.

"The Embroidery Club meets here tomorrow, Evadne," exclaimed Marion,
"and I don't believe you have touched your table scarf since they were
here before. What will Celeste Follingsby think? She works so rapidly,
and her drawn work is a perfect poem."

"No, I have not," confessed Evadne. "It seems such silly work, to draw
threads apart and then sew them together again."

Isabelle elevated her eyebrows with a look of horror.

Louis laughed. "She's a hopeless case, Isabelle. You'll never convert
her into an elegant trifler. You might as well throw up the contract."

"It seems to me, Evadne," said his sister icily, "that you might have a
little regard for the decorums of society. Don't, I beg of you, give
utterance to such heresies before the girls. And I wish you would not
call it _my_ Bible. I did not make it."

"That is quite true, Evadne," said Louis gravely. "If she had, there
would have been a good deal left out."

Isabella shot an angry glance at him but made no remark. Her brother's
sarcasms were always received in silence.

"Eva," she said after a pause, "I intend to call you by that name in
future,--your full one is too troublesome."

Evadne shivered. Her father was the only one who had ever