She found herself, half-pondering, half-praying:

"How can I help Arthur, dear Jesus? Please help me find some way--so that he won't go on being light-minded and liking light-mindedness. How can I save him from his ways--maybe he IS dissipated. Maybe he smokes cigarettes! Why does he fall for light-mindedness? Why doesn't he feel the real beauty of services?--the rumbling throb of the organ, and the thrill of hearing your own voice singing sublime hymns, and the inspired swell of Reverend MacGill's voice when he prays with such expression? It is real ecstasy when you get the right kind of feeling--you're almost willing to renounce earthly vanities. But Arthur doesn't realize what it MEANS. How can I show him, dear Jesus? Because they've forbidden me to have anything to do with him. Would it be right, for the sake of his soul, for me to disobey them--just a little bit? For the sake of his soul, you know. And he's really a nice boy at heart. THEY don't understand just how it is. But I don't think it would be VERY wrong if I talked to him just a little--do you?"

Gradually it came over her that she was chilly; she dragged a comforter from her bed and resumed her kneeling posture by the window and her communings with Jesus and her conscience. Then she discovered she was going off to sleep, so she sprang to her feet and jumped back into bed. A great change had come over her spirit; no longer was there any restlessness, bitterness, or ugly rebellion; no; nothing but peace ineffable. Smiling softly, she slept.

The next morning brought confusion to the Merriam household for father was catching the 8:37 to Macon City on a business trip, Aunt Nettie was going along with him to do some shopping, mother was in bed with one of her headaches, and Missy had an inexplicably sore throat. This last calamity was attributed, in a hurried conclave in mother's darkened room, to Missy's being out in the snow-storm the night before. Missy knew there was another contributory cause, but she couldn't easily have explained her vigil at the window.

"I didn't want her to go to church in the first place," mother lamented.

"Well, she won't go any more," said father darkly. Missy's heart sank; she looked at him with mutely pleading eyes.

"And you needn't look at me like that," he added firmly. "It won't do you the least good."

Missy's heart sank deeper. How could she hope to exert a proper religious influence if she didn't attend services regularly herself? But father looked terribly adamantine.

"I think you'd better stay home from school today," he continued, "it's still pretty bl.u.s.tery."

So Missy found herself spending the day comparatively alone in a preternaturally quiet house--noisy little brother off at school, Aunt Nettie's busy tongue absent, Marguerite, the hired girl, doing the laundry down in the bas.e.m.e.nt. And mother's being sick, as always is the case when a mother is sick, seemed to add an extra heaviness to the pervasive stillness. The bl.u.s.tery day invited reading, but Missy couldn't find anything in the house she hadn't already read; and she couldn't go to the Public Library because of her throat. And couldn't practice because of mother's head. Time dragged on her hands, and Satan found the mischief--though Missy devoutly believed that it was the Lord answering her prayer.

She was idling at the front-parlour window when she saw Picker's delivery wagon stop at the gate. She hurried back to the kitchen, telling herself that Marguerite shouldn't be disturbed at her washtubs.

So she herself let Arthur in. All sprinkled with snow and ruddy-cheeked and mischievous-eyed, he grinned at her as he emptied his basket on the kitchen table.

"Well," he bantered, "did you pray for my sins last night?"

"You shouldn't make fun of things like that," she said rebukingly.

Arthur chortled.

"Gee, Missy, but you're sure a scream when you get pious!" Then he sobered and, casually--a little too casually, enquired: "Say, I s'pose you're going again to-night?"

Missy regretfully shook her head. "No, I've got a. sore throat." She didn't deem it necessary to say anything about parental objections.

Arthur looked regretful, too.

"Say, that's too bad. I was thinking, maybe--"

He shuffled from one foot to the other in a way that to Missy clearly finished his speech's hiatus: He'd been contemplating taking HER home to-night instead of that frivolous Genevieve Hicks! What a shame! To lose the chance to be a really good influence--for surely getting Arthur to church again, even though for the main purpose of seeing her home, was better than for him not to go to church at all. It is excusable to sort of inveigle a sinner into righteous paths. What a shame she couldn't grasp at this chance for service! But she oughtn't to let go of it altogether; oughtn't to just abandon him, as it were, to his fate.

She puckered her brows meditatively.

"I'm not going to church, but--"

She paused, thinking hard. Arthur waited.

An inspiration came to her. "Anyway, I have to go to the library to-night. I've got some history references to look up."

Arthur brightened. The library appealed to him as a rendezvous more than church, anyway. Oh, ye Public Libraries of all the Cherryvales of the land! Winter-time haunt of young love, rivalling band-concerts in the Public Square on summer evenings! What unscholastic reminiscences might we not hear, could book-lined shelves in the shadowy nooks, but speak!

"About what time will you be through at the Library?" asked Arthur, still casual.

"Oh, about eight-thirty," said Missy, not pausing to reflect that it's an inconsistent sore throat that can venture to the Library but not to church.

"Well, maybe I'll be dropping along that way about that time," opined Arthur. "Maybe I'll see you there."

"That would be nice," said Missy, tingling.

She continued to tingle after he had jauntily departed with his basket and clattered away in his delivery wagon. She had a "date" with Arthur.

The first real "date" she'd ever had! Then, resolutely she squashed her thrills; she must remember that this meeting was for a Christian cause.

The motive was what made it all right for her to disobey--that is, to SEEM to disobey--her parents' commands. They didn't "understand." She couldn't help feeling a little perturbed over her apparent disobedience and had to argue, hard with her conscience.

Then, another difficulty presented itself to her mind. Mother had set her foot down on evening visits to the Library--mother seemed to think girls went there evenings chiefly to meet boys! Mother would never let her go--especially in such weather and with a sore throat. Missy pondered long and earnestly.

The result was that, after supper, at which mother had appeared, pale and heavy-eyed, Missy said tentatively:

"Can I run up to Kitty's a little while to See what the lessons are for to-morrow?"

"I don't think you'd better, dear," mother replied listlessly. "It wouldn't be wise, with that throat."

"But my throat's better. And I've GOT to keep up my lessons, mother! And just a half a block can't hurt me if I bundle up." Missy had formulated her plan well; Kitty Allen had been chosen as an alibi because of her proximity.

"Very well, then," agreed mother.

As Missy sped toward the library, conflicting emotions swirled within her and joined forces with the sharp breathlessness brought on by her haste. She had never before been out alone at night, and the blackness of tree-shadows lying across the intense whiteness of the snow struck her in two places at once--imaginatively in the brain and fearsomely in the stomach. Nor is a guilty conscience a rea.s.suring companion under such circ.u.mstances. Missy kept telling herself that, if she HAD lied a little bit, it was really her parents' fault; if they had only let her go to church, she wouldn't have been driven to sneaking out this way.

But her trip, however fundamentally virtuous--and with whatever subtly interwoven elements of pleasure at its end--was certainly not an agreeable one. At the moment Missy resolved never, never to sneak off alone at night again.

In the brightly lighted library her fears faded away; she warmed to antic.i.p.ation again. And she found some very enjoyable stories in the new magazines--she seemed, strangely, to have forgotten about any "history references." But, as the hands on the big clock above the librarian's desk moved toward half-past eight, apprehensions began to rise again.

What if Arthur should fail to come? Could she ever live through that long, terrible trip home, all alone?

Then, just as fear was beginning to turn to panic, Arthur sauntered in, nonchalantly took a chair at another table, picked up a magazine and professed to glance through it. And then, while Missy palpitated, he looked over at her, smiled, and made an interrogative movement with his eyebrows. More palpitant by the second, she replaced her magazines and got into her wraps. As she moved toward the door, whither Arthur was also sauntering, she felt that every eye in the Library must be observing. Hard to tell whether she was more proud or embarra.s.sed at the public empress.e.m.e.nt of her "date."

Arthur, quite at ease, took her arm to help her down the slippery steps.

Arthur wore his air of a.s.surance gracefully because he was so used to it. Admiration from the fair s.e.x was no new thing to him. And Missy knew this. Perhaps that was one reason she'd been so modestly pleased that he had wished to bestow his gallantries upon her. She realized that Raymond Bonner was much handsomer and richer; and that Kitty Allen's cousin Jim from Macon City, in his uniform of a military cadet, was much more distinguished-looking; and that Don Jones was much more humbly adoring. Arthur had red hair, and lived in a boarding-house and drove a delivery-wagon, and wasn't the least bit humble; but he had an audacious grin and upcurling lashes and "a way with him." So Missy accepted his favour with a certain proud grat.i.tude.

She felt herself the heroine of a thrilling situation though their conversation, as Arthur guided her along the icy sidewalks, was of very ordinary things: the weather--Missy's sore throat (sweet solicitude from Arthur)--and gossip of the "crowd"--the weather's probabilities to-morrow--more gossip--the weather again.

The weather was, in fact, in a.s.sertive evidence. The wind whipped chillingly about Missy's shortskirted legs, for they were strolling slowly--the correct way to walk when one has a "date." Missy's teeth were chattering and her legs seemed wooden, but she'd have died rather than suggest running a block to warm up. Anyway, despite physical discomforts, there was a certain deliciousness in the situation, even though she found it difficult to turn the talk into the spiritual trend she had proposed. Finally Arthur himself mentioned the paper-wad episode, laughing at it as though it were a sort of joke.

That was her opening.

"You shouldn't be so worldly, Arthur," she said in a voice of gentle reproof.

"Worldly?" in some surprise.

She nodded seriously over her serviceable, unworldly brown collarette.

"How am I worldly?" he pursued, in a tone of one not entirely unpleased.

"Why--throwing wads in church--lack of respect for religious things--and things like that."

"Oh, I see," said Arthur, his tone dropping a little. "I suppose it was a silly thing to do," he added with a touch of stiffness.