Now had Mary Warden called me by my Christian name she would have followed the custom of our valley and it would have passed unnoticed; but when she used that uncalled-for “Mister” her uncle looked around sharply.  First he tried to pierce the shadows and see her, but she drew farther and farther into the darkness.  So he gazed at me.  He was beginning to suspect that after all I had not come to see him.  Had Mark Hope become proud?  Was Mary falling again into the ways of the wicked world from which he was striving so hard to wean her, that she should thus address one of the humblest of God’s creatures, a mere man?  Old Luther rubbed his spectacles very carefully and slowly; blowing on them and rubbing them again; finally adjusting them, he leaned forward and tried to study the girl’s face, to find there some solution of the puzzle.

“Read to Mr. Hope,” she said clearly, and with just a touch of defiance.

Had she used some endearing term the old man could not have frowned harder than when he turned on me then, and eyed me through his great spectacles.

“Yes, read to us, Luther,” said I calmly; “Miss Warden and I will listen.”

“God has been very good to me,” said the old man solemnly, “and I’ve not yet heard Him call me Mister Luther Warden.  I s’pose with you and your kind, when He comes to you, He calls you Mister Mark Hope.”

This rather took me back, and I stammered a feeble protest, but he did not heed me.  Turning to Mary, he went on:  “And you, Mary Warden, I s’pose at such times you are ‘Miss.’  What wanity!  What wanity!  Politeness, they calls it.  Politeness?  Well, in the great eternity, up above, where they speaks from the heart, you’ll be just Mark and just Mary.  But down yander—­yander, mind ye—­the folks will probably set more store by titles.”  The old preacher was pointing solemnly in the direction of the cellar.

There was a long pause, an interval of heavy silence.  Then from Mary in the darkness came, “Well, Uncle, let us hope that when we reach that great eternity, Mark and I will be good enough friends to lay aside such vanities.”

“Right!” cried Luther, smiling again, and speaking real heartily.

“Right,” said I; “and we’ll begin eternity to-day, won’t we, Mary?”

“We will,” said she.

And in my heart I blessed Luther Warden.  Guilelessly, the old man, in a few words, had swept away the barrier Mary and I had raised between us.  He had added years to our friendship.  So had he stopped there it would have been wonderfully well; but he had to go floundering innocently on.  He was laughing softly.

“Do you know, Mark,” he said, rubbing his spectacles nervously, “she made me jealous of you when she talked that way.  I thought she’d set her cap for you, I did.  Whenever a man and woman gits polite, whenever they has to bow and scrape that way, a-misterin’ and a-missin’ one another, they’re hiding somethin’; they ain’t actin’ open.  So I was beginnin’ to think mebbe she wanted to marry you and——­”