Eurie turned her pillow, thumped the scant feathers into little heaps, and gave a dismal groan as she laid her head back on it.

“It is very queer,” she said, “that as soon as ever I make up my mind to be orthodox, and go to meeting every time the bell rings, I should be dumped into a heap on this hard bed with the headache.  I haven’t had a touch of it before.”

“‘The way of transgressors is hard,’” quoted Marion, going on calmly with her writing.  “If you hadn’t taken that horrid tramp yesterday instead of going to meeting like a Christian, you would have been all right to-day.”

“I believe you sit up nights to read your Bible, so as to have verses to fling at people who are overtaken in any possible trial or inconvenience.  You always have them ready.  Didn’t you bring it with you, and don’t you prepare a list for each day’s use?” This was Eurie’s half merry, half petulant reply to the Bible verse that had been “flung” at her.

Marion carefully erased a word that seemed to her fastidious taste too inexpressive before she answered: 

“I don’t own such an article as a Bible, my child; so your suspicions are entirely unfounded.  My early education was not defective in that respect, however, and I confess that I find many verses that seem to very aptly describe the ways of sinful mortals like yourself.”

Eurie raised herself on one elbow, regardless of headache and the cloth wet in vinegar that straightway fell off.

“You don’t own a Bible!” she said, in utter surprise, and with a touch of actual dismay in her voice.

“I am depraved to that degree, my dear little saint.  I conclude that you are more devoutly inclined, and have one of your own.  Pray how many chapters a day do you read in it?”

Eurie lay down again, and Flossy came with the vinegar cloth and bound it securely on her forehead.

“I don’t read in it very often, to be sure,” Eurie murmured.  “In fact I suppose I may as well say that I never do.  But then I own one, and always have.  I am not a heathen; and really and truly it seems almost queer not to have a Bible of one’s own.  It is a sort of mark of civilization, you know.”

Marion laughed good-naturedly.

“I never make a great deal of pretense in that line,” she said, gayly.  “As for being a heathen, that is only a relative term.  According to Dr. Calkins, they were more or less in advance of us.  I am one of the ‘advanced’ sort.  Ruth, your toilet ought to be nearly completed; I hear that indefatigable bell.”

“You are very foolish not to go this morning and let your writing wait.  We shall be certain to have something worth listening to; it is a strange time to select for absence.”  This was Ruth’s quiet answer, as she pinned her lace ruffle with a gleaming little diamond.