he Reverend MacGill did not talk about it. In a way this was a pity,
as his talk might have been instructive, but he got Tess and Missy to
talking about themselves instead. Not in the way that makes you feel
uncomfortable, as many older people do, but just easy, chatty, laughing
comradeship. You could talk to him almost as though he were a boy of the
"crowd."

It developed that the Reverend MacGill was planning a revival. He said
he hoped that Tess and Missy would persuade all their young friends to
attend. As Missy agreed to ally herself with his crusade, she felt a
sort of lofty zeal glow up in her. It was a pleasantly superior kind
of feeling. If one can't be fashionable and frivolous one can still be
pious.

In this noble missionary spirit she managed to be in the kitchen the
next time Arthur delivered the groceries from Pieker's. She asked him
to attend the opening session of the revival the following Sunday night.
Arthur blushed and stammered a little, so that, since Arthur wasn't
given to embarrassment, Missy at once surmised he had a "date." Trying
for an impersonal yet urbane and hospitable manner, she added:

"Of course if you have an engagement, we hope you'll feel free to bring
any of your friends with you."

"Well," admitted Arthur, "you see the fact is I HAVE got a kind of date.
Of course if I'd KNOWN--"

"Oh, that's all right," she cut in with magnificent ease. "I wasn't
asking you to go with me. Reverend MacGill just appointed me on a kind
of informal committee, you know--I'm asking Raymond Bonner and all the
boys of the crowd."

"You needn't rub it in--I get you. Swell chance of YOU ever wanting to
make a date!"

His sulkiness of tone, for some reason, gratified her. Her own became
even more gracious as she said again: "We hope you can come. And bring
any of your friends you wish."

She was much pleased with this sustained anonymity she had given
Genevieve.

When the opening night of the Methodist revival arrived, most of the
"crowd" might have been seen grouped together in one of the rearmost
pews of the church. Arthur and Genevieve were there, Genevieve in her
white fox furs, of course. She was giggling and making eyes as if she
were at a party or a movie show instead of in church. Missy--who had
had to do a great deal of arguing in order to be present with her, so to
speak, guests--preserved a calm, sweet, religious manner; it was far too
relentlessly Christian to take note of waywardness