“I thought you had given that up, too!” she replied ruefully.  Then before he could speak, she went on:  “Never mind the piano; that can wait.  What I’ve got on my mind just now isn’t piano; it’s potatoes.  Do you know, I saw some the other day at Rasbach’s, splendid potatoes—­these are some of them—­and fifteen cents a bushel cheaper than those dried-up old things Brother Barnum keeps, and so I bought two bushels.  And Sister Barnum met me on the street this morning, and threw it in my face that the Discipline commands us to trade with each other.  Is there any such command?”

“Yes,” said the husband.  “It’s Section 33.  Don’t you remember?  I looked it up in Tyre.  We are to ’evidence our desire of salvation by doing good, especially to them that are of the household of faith, or groaning so to be; by employing them preferably to others; buying one of another; helping each other in business’—­and so on.  Yes, it’s all there.”

“Well, I told her I didn’t believe it was,” put in Alice, “and I said that even if it was, there ought to be another section about selling potatoes to their minister for more than they’re worth—­potatoes that turn all green when you boil them, too.  I believe I’ll read up that old Discipline myself, and see if it hasn’t got some things that I can talk back with.”

“The very section before that, Number 32, enjoins members against ’uncharitable or unprofitable conversation—­particularly speaking evil of magistrates or ministers.’  You’d have ’em there, I think.”  Theron had begun cheerfully enough, but the careworn, preoccupied look returned now to his face.  “I’m sorry if we’ve fallen out with the Barnums,” he said.  “His brother-in-law, Davis, the Sunday-school superintendent, is a member of the Quarterly Conference, you know, and I’ve been hoping that he was on my side.  I’ve been taking a good deal of pains to make up to him.”

He ended with a sigh, the pathos of which impressed Alice.  “If you think it will do any good,” she volunteered, “I’ll go and call on the Davises this very afternoon.  I’m sure to find her at home,—­she’s tied hand and foot with that brood of hers—­and you’d better give me some of that candy for them.”

Theron nodded his approval and thanks, and relapsed into silence.  When the meal was over, he brought out the confectionery to his wife, and without a word went back to that remarkable book.

When Alice returned toward the close of day, to prepare the simple tea which was always laid a half-hour earlier on Thursdays and Sundays, she found her husband where she had left him, still busy with those new scientific works.  She recounted to him some incidents of her call upon Mrs. Davis, as she took off her hat and put on the big kitchen apron—­how pleased Mrs. Davis seemed to be; how her affection for her sister-in-law, the grocer’s wife, disclosed itself to be not even skin-deep; how the children leaped upon the candy as if they had never seen any before; and how, in her belief, Mr. Davis would be heart and soul on Theron’s side at the Conference.