et smile,
for the love of Christ and the glory of the English Episcopal Church."

The crowd soon began to pour slowly out of the building and the two
observers were swept along with the rest until at length they found
themselves outside, and strolled down the avenue. A voice from behind
stopped them.

"Esther!" it called.

Esther turned and greeted the caller as aunt. She was a woman of about
fifty, still rather handsome, but with features to which time had given
an expression of character and will that harmonized only with a manner a
little abrupt and decided. She had the air of a woman who knew her own
mind and commonly had her own way.

"Well, Esther, I am glad to see you taking George to church. Has he
behaved himself?"

"You are wrong again, Aunt Sarah," said George; "it is I who have been
taking Esther to church. I thought it was worth seeing."

"Church is always worth seeing, George, and I hope your friend Mr.
Hazard's sermon has done you good."

"It did me good to see Wharton there," answered George; "he looked as
though it were a first representation, and he were in a stage box.
Hazard and he ought to have appeared before the curtain, hand in hand,
and made little speeches. I felt like calling them out."

"What did you think of it, Esther?" asked her aunt.

"I thought it very entertaining, Aunt Sarah. I felt like a butterfly in
a tulip bed. Mr. Hazard's eyes are wonderful."

"I shall never get you two to be reverential," said her aunt sternly.
"It was the best sermon I ever heard, and I would like to hear you
answer it, George, and make your answer as little scientific as you
can."

"Aunt Sarah, I never answered any one in my life, not even you, or
Esther, or the man who said that my fossil bird was a crocodile. Why do
you want me to answer him?"

"Because I don't believe you can."

"I can't. I am a professor of paleontology at the college, and I answer
questions about bones. You must get my colleague who does the
metaphysics to answer Hazard's sermon. Hazard and I have had it out
fifty times, and discussed the whole subject till night reeled, but we
never got within shouting distance of each other. He might as well have
stood on the earth, and I on the nearest planet, and bawled across. So
we have given it up."

"You mean that you were beaten," rejoined his aunt. "I am glad you feel
it, though I always knew it was so. After all, Mr. Hazard has got more
saints on his church walls than he will