hich retort
he departed.

Soon after Nelson had left, Mrs. Burke called in, and Betty gave her a
highly amusing and somewhat colored version of the interview.

"You know, I think that our theological seminaries don't teach budding
parsons all they ought to, by any means," she concluded.

"I quite agree with you, Betty dear; and I thank my stars for college
athletics," laughed Maxwell, squaring up to the tent-pole.

"What did I tell you," reminded Hepsey, "when you had all those books
up in your room at my place. It's just as important for a country
parson to know how to make a wiped-joint or run a chicken farm or pull
teeth, as it is to study church history and theology. A parson's got
to live somehow, and a trade school ought to be attached to every
seminary, according to my way of thinking! St. Paul made tents, and
wasn't a bit ashamed of it. Well I'm mighty glad that Bascom has got
come up with for once. Don't you give in, and it will be my turn to
make the next move, if this don't bring him to his senses. You just
wait and see."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XIX

COULEUR de ROSE

Hepsey had been so busy with helping the Maxwells that for some time
no opportunity had occurred for Jonathan to press his ardent suit.
Since his first attempt and its abrupt termination, he had been
somewhat bewildered; he had failed to decide whether he was an engaged
man open to congratulations, or a rejected suitor to be condoled with.
He tried to recall exactly what she had said. As near as he could
recollect, it was: "I'll think it over, and perhaps some day--" Then
he had committed the indiscretion of grasping her hand, causing her
to drop her stitches before she had ended what she was going to say.
He could have sworn at himself to think that it was all his fault that
she had stopped just at the critical moment, when she might have
committed herself and given him some real encouragement. But he
consoled himself by the thought that she had evidently taken him
seriously at last; and so to the "perhaps some day" he added, in
imagination, the words "I will take you"; and this seemed reasonable.

The matter was more difficult from the very fact that they had been on
such intimate terms for such a long time, and she had never hitherto
given him any reason to think that she cared for him other than as a
good neighbor and a friend. Ever since the death of his wife, she
seemed to feel that he had been left an orphan in a cold