was just as sure of him I thought as I was of
myself, and then I coaxed him harder than I ever did before in my life,
and he wouldn't come in." He came to the door with me, and said I
needn't be afraid but that he would be on hand to see me home, and he
would see safely home any number of girls that I chose to drum up, but
as for sitting in here a whole hour waiting for it to be time to go
home, that was beyond him--too much for mortal patience!

"Wasn't it just too bad! I was so sure of it, too. I told him about our
plans--about our promise, indeed, and how I had counted on him, and all
he said was: 'Don't you know the old proverb, sis: "Never count your
chickens before they are hatched;" or, a more elegant phrasing of it,
"Never eat your fish till you catch him?" Now, I'm not caught yet;
someway the right sort of bait hasn't reached me yet.' I was never so
disappointed in my life! Didn't you try to get some one to come?"

"Yes," said Marion, "and failed." She forced herself to say that much.
How _could_ Eurie go through with all these details? "If her heart had
ached as mine does, she couldn't," Marion told herself. She might have
known if she had used her judgment that Eurie's heart was not of the
sort that would ever ache over anything as hers could; and yet Eurie was
bitterly disappointed.

She had counted on Nell, and expected him, had high hopes for him; and
here they were dashed into nothingness! Who knew that he could be so
obstinate over a trifle? Surely it was a trifle just to come to
prayer-meeting once! She knew she would have done it for him, even in
the days when it would have been a bore. She did not understand it at
all.

Meantime, Ruth had been having her experiences. This promise of hers
troubled her. Perhaps you cannot imagine what an exceedingly
disagreeable thing it seemed to her to go hunting up somebody to go to
prayer-meeting with her. Where could she turn? There were so few people
with whom she came in contact that it would not be absurd to ask.

Her father she put aside at once as entirely out of the question. It was
simply an absurdity to think of asking him to go to prayer-meeting! He
rarely went to church even on the Sabbath; less often now than he used
to do. It would simply be annoying him and exposing religion to his
contempt; so his daughter reasoned. She sighed over it while she
reasoned; she wished most earnestly that it were not so; she prayed, and
she thought it was with all h