he judge and Mrs. Kenton as opportunity offered. He gave the judge his
card across the table, and when the judge had read on it, "Rev. Hugh
Breckon," he said that his name was Kenton, and he introduced the young
man formally to his family. Mr. Breckon had a clean-shaven face, with an
habitual smile curving into the cheeks from under a long, straight nose;
his chin had a slight whopper-jaw twist that was charming; his gay eyes
were blue, and a full vein came down his forehead between them from his
smooth hair. When he laughed, which was often, his color brightened.

Boyne was named last, and then Mr. Breckon said, with a smile that
showed all his white teeth, "Oh yes, Mr. Boyne and I are friends
already--ever since we found ourselves room-mates," and but for us, as
Lottie afterwards noted, they might never have known Boyne was rooming
with him, and could easily have made all sorts of insulting remarks
about Mr. Breckon in their ignorance.

The possibility seemed to delight Mr. Breckon; he invited her to make
all the insulting remarks she could think of, any way, and professed
himself a loser, so far as her real opinion was withheld from him by
reason of his rashness in giving the facts away. In the electrical
progress of their acquaintance she had begun walking up and down the
promenade with him after they came up from breakfast; her mother had
gone to Ellen; the judge had been made comfortable in his steamer-chair,
and Boyne had been sent about his business.

"I will try to think some up," she promised him, "as soon as I HAVE
any real opinion of you," and he asked her if he might consider that a
beginning.

She looked at him out of her indomitable blue eyes, and said, "If it
hadn't been for your card, and the Reverend on it, I should have said
you were an actor."

"Well, well," said Mr. Breckon, with a laugh, "perhaps I am, in a way.
I oughtn't to be, of course, but if a minister ever forces himself, I
suppose he's acting."

"I don't see," said Lottie, instantly availing herself of the opening,
"how you can get up and pray, Sunday after Sunday, whether you feel like
it or not."

The young man said, with another laugh, but not so gay, "Well, the case
has its difficulties."

"Or perhaps you just read prayers," Lottie sharply conjectured.

"No," he returned, "I haven't that advantage--if you think it one. I'm a
sort of a Unitarian. Very advanced, too, I'm afraid."

"Is that a kind of Universalist?"

"Not--not