no use
trying to put me in yours. See what I bring you! See what you get for
it! See what--"

She stood still, rocking back and forth as she stood there. "It was too
much for me to hear her talking about _God!_ That was a little too much!
_My_ father was a minister!" And Ann laughed.

A minister was one thing Katie had not thought of. Even in that moment
she was conscious of relief. Certainly the ministry was respectable.

But why should it be "too much" for the daughter of a minister to hear
anything about God?

"Ann," she began quietly, "I don't want to force anything. If you want
to be alone I'll even take my things and sleep somewhere else. But, Ann,
dear, if you could tell me a little I wouldn't be so much in the dark; I
could do better for us both."

Ann did not seem to notice what she was saying. "She was tired of things!
She was tired of things! Tired of hanging her hat on the same kind of
peg! Why it's awful--it's awful, I tell you--to always be hanging your
hat on the same kind of peg!

"She was tired of not having any fun! Oh so tired of not having any fun!
Why you don't care what you do when you get tired of not having any fun!

"Then people laugh--the people who have all the fun. Oh they think it's
so funny!--the people who don't have to hang their hats on any kind of
peg. So trivial. So--what's that nervous word? Katie--you're not like the
rest of them! Why, you seem to _know_--just know without knowing."

"But it's hard for me," suggested Katie. "Trying to know--and not
knowing."

Ann was still walking about the room. "I was brought up in a little town
in Indiana. You see I'm going to tell you. I've got to be doing
something--and it may as well be talking. Now how did I start? Oh yes--I
was brought up in a little town in Indiana. Until three years ago, that
was where I lived. Were you ever in a little town in Indiana?"

Katie replied in the negative.

"Maybe there are little towns in Indiana that are different. I don't
know. Maybe there are. But this one-in this one life was just one long
stretch of hanging your hat on exactly the same kind of peg!

"It was so square--so flat--so dingy--oh, so dreadful! It didn't have
anything around it--as some towns do--a hill, or a river, or woods.
Around it was something that was just nothing. It was just walled in by
the nothingness all around it.

"And the people in it were flat, and square, and dingy. And the things
around them were just nothing. Th