ou know perfectly well that the moment you get on
the other side, if you do, you'll be jerking the cross off your collar
and bullying some wretched soldier to give you his gun."

He had a guilty feeling that she was right.

It was February then, and they were sitting in the parish house. Delight
had been filling out Sunday-school reports to parents, an innovation she
detested. For a little while there was only the scratching of her pen
to be heard and an occasional squeal from the church proper, where
the organ was being repaired. The rector sat back in his chair, his
fingertips together, and whistled noiselessly, a habit of his when he
was disturbed. Now and then he glanced at Delight's bent head.

"My dear," he commented finally.

"Just a minute. That wretched little Simonton girl has been absent three
Sundays out of four. And on the fourth one she said she had a toothache
and sat outside on the steps. Well, daddy?"

"Do you see anything of Graham Spencer now?"

"Very little." She looked at him with frank eyes. "He has changed
somehow, daddy. When we do meet he is queer. I sometimes think he avoids
me."

He fell back on his noiseless whistling. And Delight, who knew his every
mood, got up and perched herself on the arm of his chair.

"Don't you get to thinking things," she said. And slipped an arm around
his neck.

"I did think, in the winter--"

"I'll tell you about that," she broke in, bravely. "I suppose, if he'd
cared for me at all, I'd have been crazy about him. It isn't because
he's good looking. I--well, I don't know why. I just know, as long as
I can remember, I--however, that's not important. He thinks I'm a nice
little thing and lets it go at that. It's a good bit worse, of course,
than having him hate me."

"Sometimes I think you are not very happy."

"I'm happier than I would be trying to make him fall in love with me.
Oh, you needn't be shocked. It can be done. Lots of girls do it. It
isn't any moral sense that keeps me from it, either. It's just pride."

"My dear!"

"And there's another angle to it. I wouldn't marry a man who hasn't got
a mind of his own. Even if I had the chance, which I haven't. That silly
mother of his--she is silly, daddy, and selfish--Do you know what she is
doing now?"

"We ought not to discuss her. She--"

"Fiddlesticks. You love gossip and you know it."

Her tone was light, but the rector felt that arm around his neck
tighten. He surmised a depth of feeling