“Just what I please!  That is what I came for.  Just think of the absurdity of we four girls rushing to meeting at the rate we have been doing for the last week.  What do you suppose the people at home would think of us?  Why, I didn’t expect to hear any of their sermons when I came.  I as good as promised Flossy that I would frolic about with her all the time, and now the absurd little dunce acts as if she were under a wager to be on the ground every time the bell rings!  I’ve declared off.  I can tell you to an item just what I am going to hear.  There is a performance to come off this afternoon some time that I shall be ready for.  I loitered behind the King tent last night, and heard him say so.  That Frank Beard is going to give his chalk talk—­caricatures:  that I shall hear, and especially see.  It will be hard work to poke a sermon into that.  I guess that is to be this afternoon; it is to be some time soon, anyway, and I shall watch for it.  Then there is to be another extra.  Mrs. Miller is going to read a story.  I can give you the title of it.  I didn’t sit on that horrid stump in the dark listening to Dr. Vincent for nothing.  It is to be ‘Three Blind Mice.’  Now it stands to reason that a story with such a title will not be very far above my intellectual capacity, and it can’t very well develop into a sermon, or close with a prayer-meeting.  Then I’m going to the concert by the Tennesseeans;’ their jargon won’t hurt me; and, of course, I shall attend the President’s reception.  I must have a stare at him—­and that is every solitary meeting I am going to attend.  I’ve heard the last preaching that I mean to for some time.”

Now this was what Eurie Mitchell said.  Let me tell you a little bit about what she thought.  She was by no means so indifferent, nor so bored as she would have Marion understand.  She was by no means in the state of mind that Ruth had been, or that Marion was.  No doubts as to the general truth of all the vital doctrines of Christianity had ever troubled her.  She accepted without question the belief of the so-called Christian World.  Neither was she bewildered as to what constituted Christian life.  No vague notion that to unite herself with some church would let her into the charmed circle had ever befogged her brain.

On the contrary, she knew better than many a Christian does just what the Christian profession involved, and just how narrow a path ought to be walked by those professing to follow Christ.  In proportion to the keenness of her sarcasm over blundering, stumbling Christians, had her eyes been open to what they ought to be.

There was just this the matter with Eurie.  She knew so well what religious professions involved that she wanted to make none.  She hated the thought of self-abnegation, of bridling her eager tongue, of going only where her enlightened conscience said a Christian should go, of looking out for and calling after others to go with her.  She wished deliberately to ignore it all.  Not forever, she would have been shocked at the thought.  Some time she meant to give intense heed to these things, and then indeed the church should see what a Christian could be!  But not now.