t is the accident of the first choice that must determine
one's sitting in church for all future time?"

"With me it has been only an accident," she said, simply. "I suppose
there are people who had better reasons for selecting their church home.
But I am very well satisfied with my place." And then Flossy was very
glad that they were nearing her father's house. The gladness did not
last, however. There hung over it another cross. This Col. Baker had
been in the habit of being invited to enter, and of spending an hour or
more in cosy chat with the family. Nothing confidential or special in
these Sabbath evening calls; they seemed simply to serve to pass away a
dull hour. They had been pleasant to Flossy. But it so happened that the
hours of the Sabbath had grown precious to her; none of them were dull;
every moment of them was needed.

Besides, in their walk up the hill from the auditorium one evening, Evan
Roberts had said in answer to a wonderment from her that so little was
accomplished by the Sabbath services throughout the land:

"I think one reason is the habit that so many people have of frittering
a way any serious impression or solemn thought they may have had by a
stream of small talk in which they indulge with their own family or
their intimate friends, after what they call the Sabbath is past. Do you
know there are hundreds of people, good, well-meaning--in fact,
Christians--who seem to think that the old Puritan rules in regard to
hours hold yet, in part. It begins at eight or nine o'clock, when they
have their nap out; and at the very latest it closes with the minister's
benediction after the second service; and they laugh and talk on the way
home and at home as if the restraints of the day were over at last."

How precisely he had described the Sabbath day of the Shipley family.
With what a sense of relief had she often sat and chatted with Col.
Baker at the close of what had been to her an irksome day, and felt that
at last the sense of propriety would not be shocked if they laughed and
bantered each other as usual.

Things were different now. But poor Flossy's face flushed, and her heart
beat hard over the trial of _not_ asking Col. Baker to come in. Silly
child! Ruth would have said, and her calm, clear voice would not have
hesitated over the words; "Col. Baker, I can not ask you in this
evening, because I have determined to receive no more calls, even from
intimate friends, on the Sabbath. On any