“Oh, do shut up!  I know you do not mean any harm or any irreverence, poor boy, but you can’t seem to open your mouth without letting out things to make a person shudder.  You keep me in constant dread.  For you and for all of us.  Once I had no fear of the thunder, but now when I hear it I—­”

Her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish.  The sight of this smote Sally to the heart and he took her in his arms and petted her and comforted her and promised better conduct, and upbraided himself and remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness.  And he was in earnest, and sorry for what he had done and ready for any sacrifice that could make up for it.

And so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter, resolving to do what should seem best.  It was easy to promise reform; indeed he had already promised it.  But would that do any real good, any permanent good?  No, it would be but temporary—­he knew his weakness, and confessed it to himself with sorrow—­he could not keep the promise.  Something surer and better must be devised; and he devised it.  At cost of precious money which he had long been saving up, shilling by shilling, he put a lightning-rod on the house.

At a subsequent time he relapsed.

What miracles habit can do! and how quickly and how easily habits are acquired—­both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us.  If by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights in succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turn the accident into a habit; and a month’s dallying with whiskey —­but we all know these commonplace facts.

The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit—­how it grows! what a luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment, how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with their beguiling fantasies—­oh yes, and how soon and how easily our dream life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together that we can’t quite tell which is which, any more.

By and by Aleck subscribed to a Chicago daily and for the wall street Pointer.  With an eye single to finance she studied these as diligently all the week as she studied her Bible Sundays.  Sally was lost in admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the securities of both the material and spiritual markets.  He was proud of her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals.  He noted that she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line there—­she was always long on the others.  Her policy was quite sane and simple, as she explained it to him:  what she put into earthly futures was for speculation, what she put into spiritual futures was for investment; she was willing to go into the one on a margin, and take chances, but in the case of the other, “margin her no margins”—­she wanted to cash in a hundred cents per dollar’s worth, and have the stock transferred on the books.