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Small wonder that she was tried and hampered by his failure to “act like other people,” as she would have said if she had ever put her worry into words. It had been one of many disappointments to her that he should go to mill that day, instead of putting on his best coat and sitting in sullen discomfort through the pastor’s “catechising.” She had felt such pride in his presence at church on Sabbath; and then had come the announcement, “Thursday afternoon, God willing, I shall visit the family of Mr. Alexander Randall.” How austerely respectable it had sounded! And the people had glanced toward the pew and seen Alex sitting there, with Wattie on his knee. And after all he had gone to mill, and left her to be pitied as the wife of a man who was afraid to face the preacher in his own house!

Matilda slipped the rustling splendor of her purple silk over her head, and went back to the limpness of her week-day calico with a sigh.

When Alex came in for the milk-pail, she was standing by the stove, turning the long strips of salt pork that curled and sizzled in the skillet. Her shoulders seemed to droop a trifle more in her working-dress, but her face was flushed from the heat of the cooking.

“There wasn’t any call to get a warm supper for me, Tildy. I ain’t hungry to speak of.”

“Well, I guess anyway I’d better make some milk gravy for the children; I didn’t have up a fire at noon, see’n’ you was away. It ain’t much trouble.”

Her voice was resolutely cheerful, and Alex knew that the discussion was ended. But after the supper things were cleared away, she said to Mary Frances, “Can’t you go and let your pa see how nice you can say your psa’m?”

And the child had gone outside where Alex was sitting, and had stood with her hands behind her, her sharp little shoulders moving in unison with her sing-song as she repeated the verses.

“‘That man hath perfect blessedness
Who walketh not astray
In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinners’ way,
Nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair:
But placeth his delight
Upon God’s law, and meditates
On his law day and night.'”

The child caught her breath with a long sigh, and hurried on to the end.

“‘In judgment, therefore, shall not stand
Such as ungodly are;
Nor in th’ assembly of the just
Shall wicked men appear.
For why? The way of godly men
Unto the Lord is known;
Whereas the way of wicked men
Shall quite be overthrown.'”

Then she stood still, waiting for her father’s praise.

He caught her thin little arm and drew her toward him, where she could not look into his face.

“You say it very nice, Mary Frances,–very nice indeed.”

And Mary Frances smiled, a prim little satisfied smile, and nestled her slim body against him contentedly.

II.

Ten years drifted away, and there was a new minister in the congregation at Blue Mound. The Reverend Andrew Turnbull had died, and his successor had come from a Western divinity school, with elocutionary honors thick upon him. Under his genial warmth the congregation had thawed into a staid enthusiasm. To take their orthodoxy with this generous coating of zeal and kindliness and graceful rhetoric, and know that the bitterness that proclaimed it genuine was still there, unimpaired and effective, was a luxury that these devout natures were not slow to appreciate. A few practical sermons delivered with the ardor and enthusiasm of a really earnest youth stamped the newcomer as a “rare pulpiter,” and a fresh, bubbling geniality, as sincere as it was effusive, opened a new world to their creed-encompassed souls. Not one of them thought of resenting his youthful patronage. He was the ambassador of God to them, and, while they would have been shocked beyond measure at his appearance in the pulpit in a gray coat, they perceived no incongruity between the brightness of his smile and the gloom of his theology.