mpany you if I had been at home."

But for Flossy such an explanation was simply dreadful. It was so
natural, and would have been _so_ easy, to have murmured a word of
regret at her absence, and expressed disappointment in having missed the
choral.

But for that address to the children, given under the trees at
Chautauqua, by Dr. Hurlbut, she would have said these smooth,
sweet-sounding words as sweetly as usual, without a thought of
conscience. But had not he shown her, as plainly as though he had looked
down into her heart and seen it there, that these pleasant, courteous
phrases which are so winning and so false were among her besetting sins?
Had he not put her forever on her guard concerning them? Had she not
promised to wage solemn war against the tendency to so sin with her
graceful tongue? Yet how she dreaded the plain speaking!

How would Marion's lips have curled over the idea of such a small matter
as that being a cross! And yet Flossy could have been sweet and patient
and tender to the listless, homesick school-girls, and kissed away half
their gloom, and thought it no cross at all. Verily there is a
difference in these crosses, and verily, "every heart knoweth its own
bitterness."

Col. Baker was loth to leave the subject:

"Aren't you being unusually devout to-day?" he asked. "I heard of you at
Sabbath-school I was certain after that effort, I should find you at
home, resting. What spell came over you to give the First Church so much
of your time?"

"One would think, to hear you, that I never went to church on Sabbath
evening," Flossy said. And then to a certain degree conscience
triumphed. "I have not been very often, it is true; but I intend to
reform in that respect in the future. I mean to go whenever I can, and I
mean to go always to the First Church."

Col. Baker looked at her curiously in the moonlight.

"Is that an outgrowth of your experience in the woods?" he asked.

"Yes," Flossy said simply and bravely.

He longed to question further, to quiz her a little, but something in
the tone of the monosyllable prevented. So he said:

"I am at least surprised at part of the decision. I thought part of the
work of those gatherings was to teach fellowship and unity. Why should
you desert other churches?"

"There is no desertion about it. I do not belong to other churches, and
nobody has reason to expect me at any of them; but my pastor has a right
to expect me to be in my pew."

"Oh; then i