Grace said nothing, but the expression of her mouth seemed to cry aloud. Duty, indeed! What did Mrs. Gregory know about duty, neglecting the G.o.d who had made her, to stay with an old lady who ought to be wheeled to church! Mrs. Gregory was willing for her husband to fight his Christian warfare alone. But alone? No! not while Grace could go with him. If all the rest of Walnut Street church should remain in tents of indifference, she and Hamilton Gregory would be found on the field.

Gregory coldly addressed Fran: "Then, will _you_ go to church?" It was as if he complained, "Since my wife won't--"

"I might laugh," said Fran. "I don't understand religion."

Grace felt her purest ideals insulted. She rose, a little pale, but without rudeness. "Will you please excuse me?" she asked with admirable restraint.

"Miss Grace!" Hamilton Gregory exclaimed, distressed. That she should be driven from his table by an insult to their religion was intolerable. "Miss Grace--forgive her."

Mrs. Gregory was pale, for she, too, had felt the blow. _"Fran!"_ she exclaimed reproachfully.

Old Mrs. Jefferson stared from the girl seated at the table to the erect secretary, and her eyes kindled with admiration. Had Fran commanded the "dragon" to "stand"?

Simon Jefferson held his head close to his plate, as if hoping the storm might pa.s.s over his head.

"Don't go away!" Fran cried, overcome at sight of Mrs. Gregory's distress. "Sit down, Miss Noir. Let me be the one to leave the room, since it isn't big enough for both of us." She darted up, and ran to the head of the table.

Mrs. Gregory buried her face in her hands.

"Don't you bother about me," Fran coaxed; "to think of giving _you_ pain, dear lady! I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world, and the person who would isn't worthy of being touched by my foot," and Fran stamped her foot. "If it'll make you a mite happier, I'll go to church, and Sunday-school, and prayer meeting, and the young people's society, and the Ladies' Aid, and the missionary society, and the choir practice, and the night service and--and--"

Hamilton Gregory felt that he should take some part in this small drama, but he did not know exactly what part: "It would make us all happier for you to go. And what is far more important, child, it would make you happier; you'd be learning how to do right, and be good."

"Oh, and would it?" she flashed at him, somewhat incoherently. "Yes, I know some folks think it makes 'em good just to sit in meeting-houses, while somebody's talking about religion. But look at me. Why! the people who ought to have loved me, and cared for my mother--the people that didn't know but what we were starving--they wouldn't have missed a service any sooner than you would; no, sir. I want to tell you,"

Fran cried, her face flaming, her voice vibrating with emotion long pent-up, "just the reason that religion's nothing to me. It's because the only kind I've known is going to the church, dressed up, and sitting in the church feeling pious--and then, on the outside, and between times, being just as grasping, and as anxious to overreach everybody else, and trying just as hard to get even with their enemies, as if there wasn't a church on the ground."

"This is sacrilege!" gasped Hamilton Gregory.

"You show me a little religion," Fran cried, carried beyond herself, "that means doing something besides ringing bells and hiring preachers; you show me a little religion that means making people happy--not people clear out of sight, but those living in your own house--and maybe I'll like it and want some of it. Got any of that kind? But if I stay here, I'll say too much--I'll go, so you can all be good together--" She darted from the room.

Grace looked at Gregory, seeming to ask him if, after this outrageous behavior, he would suffer Fran to dwell under his roof. Of course, Mrs. Gregory did not count; Grace made no attempt to understand this woman who, while seemingly of a yielding nature, could show such hardness, such a fixed purpose in separating herself from her husband's spiritual adventures. It made Grace feel so sorry for the husband that she quietly resumed her place at the table.

Grace was now more than ever resolved that she would drive Fran away-- it had become a religious duty. How could it be accomplished? The way was already prepared; the secretary was convinced that Fran was an impostor. It was merely needful to prove that the girl was not the daughter of Gregory's dead friend. Grace would have to delve into the past, possibly visit the scenes of Gregory's youth--but it would pay.

She looked at her employer with an air suggesting protection.

Gregory's face relaxed on finding himself once more near her.

Fortunately for his peace of mind, he could not read the purposehidden behind those beautiful eyes.

"I wonder," Simon Jefferson growled, "why somebody doesn't badger _me_ to go to church!" Indignant because Fran had fled the pleasing fields of his interested vision, he paused, as if to invite antagonism; but all avoided the anticlimax.

He announced, "This talk has excited me. If we can't live and let live, I'll go and take my meals at Miss Sapphira Clinton's."

No one dared to answer him, not even Grace. He marched into the garden where Fran sat huddled upon a rustic bench. "I was just saying," Simon told her ingratiatingly, "that if all this to-do over religion isn't put a stop to, I'll take _my_ meals at the Clintons'!"

Fran looked up at him without moving her chin from her palms, and asked as she tried, apparently, to tie her feet into a knot, "Isn't that where Abbott Ashton boards?"

"Do you mean Professor Ashton?" he returned, with subtle reproof.

Fran, still dejected, nodded carelessly. "We're both after the same man."

Simon lit the pipe which his physician had warned him was bad for his heart. "Yes, Professor Ash-ton boards at the Clintons'."

"Must be awfully jolly at the Clintons'," Fran said wistfully.

CHAPTER X

AN AMBUSCADE

Fran's conception of the Clinton Boarding-House, the home of jollity, was not warranted by its real atmosphere. Since there were not many inhabitants of Littleburg detached from housekeeping, Miss Sapphira Clinton depended for the most part on "transients"; and, to hold such in subjection, preventing them from indulging in that noisy gaiety to which "transients" are naturally inclined--just because they are transitory--the elderly spinster had developed an abnormal solemnity.

This solemnity was not only beneficial to "drummers" and "court men"

acutely conscious of being away from home, but it helped her brother Bob. Before the charms of Grace Noir had penetrated his thick skin, the popular Littleburg merchant was as unmanageable as the worst.

Before he grew accustomed to fall into a semi-comatose condition at the approach of Grace Noir, and, therefore, before his famous attempt to "get religion", the bachelor merchant often swore--not from aroused wrath, but from his peculiar sense of humor. In those Anti-Grace and heathen days, Bob, sitting on the long veranda of the green frame building, one leg swinging over the other knee, would say, "Yes, d.a.m.n it," or, "No, d.a.m.n it," as the case might be. It was then that the reproving protest of his sister's face would jelly in the fat folds of her double chin, helping, somewhat, to cover profanity with a prudent veil.

Miss Sapphira liked a joke--or at least she thought so--as well as anybody; but like a too-humorous author, she found that to be as funny as possible was bad for business. Goodness knows there was enough in Littleburg to be solemn over, what with the funerals, and widowers marrying again, yes, and widows, too; and there wasn't always as much rejoicing over babies as the county paper would have you believe!

The "traveling men" were bad enough, needing to be reminded of their wives whom they'd left at home, and, she'd be bound, had forgotten.

But when one man, whether a traveler or not--even a staid young teacher like Abbott Ashton, for instance--a young man who was almost like a son to her--when _he_ secluded himself in the night-time--by himself? with another male? oh, dear, no!--with a Fran, for example-- what was the world coming to?

"There they stood," she told Bob, "the two of them, all alone on the foot-bridge, and it was after nine o'clock. If I hadn't been in a hurry to get home to see that the roomers didn't set the house afire, not a soul would have seen the two colloguing."

"And it don't seem to have done _you_ any good," remarked her brother, who, having heard the tale twenty times, began to look upon the event almost as a matter of course. _"You'd_ better not have saw them,"--at an early age Bob had cut off his education, and it had stopped growing at that very place. Perhaps he had been elected president of the school-board on the principle that we best appreciate what does not belong to us.

"My home has been Abbott Ashton's home," said Miss Sapphira, "since the death of his last living relation, and her a step, and it a mercy, for n.o.body could get along with her, and she wouldn't let people leave her alone. You know how fond I am of Abbott, but your position is very responsible. You could get rid of him by lifting your finger, and people are making lots of talk; it's going to injure you. People don't want to send their tender young innocent girls--they're a mighty hardened and knowing set, nowadays, though, I must say--to a superintendent that stands on bridges of nights, holding hands, and her a young slip of a thing. All alone, Robert, all alone; there's going to be a complaint of the school-board, that's what there's going to be, and you'll have to look out for your own interests. You must talk to Abbott. Him a-standing on that bridge--"

"He ain't stood there as often as I've been worried to death a-hearing of it," growled the ungrateful Bob, who was immensely fond of Abbott.

Miss Sapphira spoke with amazingly significant double nods between each word--"And...I...saw...only...four...days...ago--"

She pointed at the school-house which was almost directly across the street, its stone steps facing the long veranda. "They were the last to come out of that door. You may say she's a mere child. Mere children are not in Miss Bull's cla.s.ses."

"But Abbott says the girl is far advanced."

"Far advanced! You may well say! I'll be bound she is--and carrying on with Abbott on the very school-house steps. Yes, I venture she _is_ advanced. You make me ashamed to hear you."

Bob tugged at his straw-colored mustache; he would not swear, for whatever happened, he was resolved to lead the spiritual life. "See here, Sapphira, I'm going to tell you something. I had quite a talk with Abbott about that bridge-business--after you'd spread it all over town, sis--and if you'll believe me, she waylaid him on those school- steps. _He_ didn't want to talk with her. Why, he left her standing there. She made him mad, finding fault with the very folks that have taken her up. He's disgusted. That night at the camp-meeting, he had to take her out of the tent--he was asked to do it--"

"He didn't have to stand, a-holding her hand."

"--And as soon as he'd shown her the way to Brother Gregory's, he came on back to the tent, I saw him in the aisle."

"And she whistled at me," cried Miss Sapphira--"the limb!"

"Now, listen, Sapphira, and quit goading. Abbott says that Miss Bull is having lots of trouble with Fran--"