On the whole, the flight to Mayville was not viewed entirely in the light of a success.  Ruth had been quiet and grave for some time, when she suddenly spoke in her most composed and decided voice: 

“I shall go to Saratoga on Monday, whether any one else will or not; I shall find plenty of friends to welcome me, and I shall take the morning train from here.”

But she didn’t.

Meantime Flossy’s afternoon had been an uninterrupted satisfaction to her.  She attended the children’s meeting, and it was perfectly amazing to her newly awakened brain how many of the stories, used to point truths for the children, touched home to her.

Dr. Hurlbut, of Plainfield, seemed to have especially planned his address for the purpose of hitting at some of the markedly weak points in her character, though no doubt the good man would have been utterly amazed had he known her thoughts.

She listened and laughed with the rest over the story of the poor tailor who promised a coat to a customer for one, two and three weeks, heaping up his promises one on the other until he had a perfect pyramid of them, only to topple about his ears.  She heard with the rest the magnificent voice ring out the solemn conclusion: 

“Children, he did not mean to lie.  He did not even think he was a liar.  He only broke his promises.”

They all heard, and I don’t know how many shivered over it, but I do know that to Flossy Shipley it seemed as if some one had struck her an actual blow.  Was it possible that the easy sentences, the easy promises, to “write,” to “come,” to “bring this,” to “tell that,” made so gracefully, sounding so kindly, costing so little because forgotten almost as soon as her head was turned away, actually belonged in that list described by the ugly word “lie.”  Flossy had been a special sinner in this department of polite wickedness because it just accorded with her nature; such promises were so easy to make, and seemed to please people, and were so easy to forget.  Like the tailor, she hadn’t meant to be a liar, nor dreamed that she was one.

But her wide-open ears took it all in, and her roused brain turned the thought over and over, until, be it known to you, that that girl’s happy pastor, when he receives from her a decided, “Yes, sir, I will do it,” may rest assured that unless something beyond her control intervenes she will be at her post.

So much did Dr. Hurlbut accomplish that afternoon without ever knowing it.  There were many things done that afternoon, I suspect, that only the light of the judgement day will reveal.  Over the story of the two workmen, who each resolved to stick to a certain effort for six months, and did it, the one earning thereby a patent right worth thousands of dollars, and the other teaching a little dog how to dance to the whistling of a certain tune, Flossy looked unutterably sober, while the laughter swelled to a perfect roar around her.  It was hard to feel that