y of the ideal he has
for her."

"Ah, that's just it, Mrs. Gay, I sometimes tell myself there isn't a
woman in the world that's fit for him."

She spoke as fast as she could, eager to dilate on the subject of the
embarrassed Orlando's virtues, flattered in her motherly old heart by
the praise of his sermons, and yet, all the time, while her peaked chin
worked excitedly, thinking about the roasted young pig that waited for
her to attend to the garnishing.

The delay was short; Orlando silenced her at last by a gentle admonitory
pressure of her elbow, and the two ladies drove off in their carriage,
while Molly walked sedately out of the churchyard between the clergyman
and his mother. The girl was pleasantly aware that the eyes of the
miller and of Jim Halloween followed her disapprovingly as she went; and
she thought with complacency that she had never looked better than
she did in her white felt hat with its upturned brim held back by
cherry-coloured ribbon. It was all very well for the rector to say
that beauty was of less importance than visiting the sick, but the fact
remained that Judy Hatch visited the sick more zealously than she--and
yet he was very far, indeed, from falling in love with Judy Hatch! The
contradiction between man and his ideal of himself was embodied before
her under a clerical waistcoat.

"I believe," remarked the Reverend Orlando, thrusting his short chin as
far as possible over his collar, which buttoned at the back, "I believe
that the elder Doolittle nourishes some private grudge against me. He
has a most annoying habit of shaking his head at me during the sermon as
though he disagreed with my remarks."

"The man must be an infidel," observed Mrs. Mullen, with asperity, as
she moved on in front of him.

"He doesn't know half the time what he is doing," said Molly, "you know
he passed his ninetieth birthday last summer."

"But surely you cannot mean that you consider age an excuse for
either incivility or irreligion," rejoined her lover, pushing aside an
impertinent carrot flower that had shed its pollen on his long coat,
while he regarded his mother's back with the expression of indignant
suspicion he unconsciously assumed on the rare occasions when his
opinions were disputed. "Age should mellow, should soften, should
sweeten."

"I suppose it should, but very often it doesn't," retorted Molly, a
trifle tartly, for the sermon had bored her and she looked forward with
dread to the di