m church. Except in protracted-meeting times, most people of
this town would a great deal rather risk their souls than be caught in
the rain on Sunday. We don't mind it much week days, but Sunday rain
is very dangerous to health."

"I'm afraid I'm as bad as the rest," she said, smiling. "Mother and I
usually stayed home when it rained hard."

"Oh, we don't need a hard storm in the country. People say, 'It looks
threatening,' and that settles it; but we often drive to town rainy
days to save time."

"Do you usually go to church at the meeting house I see off in the
valley?" she asked.

"I don't go anywhere," and he watched keenly to see how she would take
this blunt statement of his practical heathenism.

She only looked at him kindly and accepted the fact.

"Why don't you pitch into me?" he asked.

"That wouldn't do any good."

"You'd like to go, I suppose?"

"No, not under the circumstances, unless you wished to. I'm cowardly
enough to dread being stared at."

He gave a deep sign of relief. "This thing has been troubling me," he
said. "I feared you would want to go, and if you did, I should feel
that you ought to go."

"I fear I'm very weak about it, but I shrink so from meeting strangers.
I do thank God for his goodness many times a day and ask for help. I'm
not brave enough to do any more, yet."

His rugged features became very somber as he said, "I wish I had as
much courage as you have."

"You don't understand me--" she began gently.

"No, I suppose not. It's all become a muddle to me. I mean this
church and religious business."

She looked at him wistfully, as if she wished to say something, but did
not venture to do so. He promptly gave a different turn to the
conversation by quoting Mrs. Mumpson's tirade on churchgoing the first
Sunday after her arrival. Alida laughed, but not in a wholly mirthful
and satisfied way. "There!" he concluded, "I'm touching on things a
little too sacred for you. I respect your feelings and beliefs, for
they are honest and I wish I shared in 'em." Then he suddenly laughed
again as he added, "Mrs. Mumpson said there was too much milking done
on Sunday, and it's time I was breaking the Fourth Commandment, after
her notion."

Alida now laughed outright, without reservation.

"'By jocks!' as Watterly says, what a difference there is in women!" he
soliloquized on his way to the barn. "Well, the church question is
settled for the present, but if Alida should