“Well, the whole chapter is about being careful for the weak brother.  The Romans used to eat the flesh of the animals offered in the sacrifices to the gods, and some of the Christian Romans didn’t seem to be strong enough or sensible enough to eat it as just plain, every-day meat.  They tangled it up with the idol worship.  So Paul, or whoever it was that wrote the chapter, said:  ’He that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith,’ that is, the Christian faith, I suppose, which would teach him that the meat wasn’t any the worse for having been offered to a block of wood or stone called a god.  Now, honestly, Ardea, what would you think of a teacher who would deliberately cut a verse in two in the middle and make his half of it mean something else, just to put a fellow down?”

“It doesn’t seem quite honest,” she could not help admitting.

“Honest!  It’s low-down trickery.  And they all do it.  Last year when I was going up to Beersheba I happened to sit in the same seat with a Catholic priest.  We got to talking, I don’t remember just how, and I said something about doubting the Pope’s infallibility.  Out pops the same old text:  ’My son, hear the words of the holy Apostle, Saint Paul—­” He that doubteth is damned!"’ He was old enough to be my father, but I couldn’t help slapping the other half of the verse at him, and saying that we’d most luckily escape because there wasn’t any dinner-stop for our train.”

The flippant tone of all this disheartened Thomas Jefferson’s listener, and a silence succeeded which lasted until the train had stormed around the nose of Lebanon and the whistle was blowing for Gordonia.  Then Tom said:  “I didn’t mean to hurt you; but now you see why I can’t go back and begin all over again.”  And she nodded assent.

There was no one at the station to meet the disgraced one, news of the disaster at Beersheba being as yet only on the way.  Thomas Jefferson was rather glad of it; especially glad that there was no one from Woodlawn—­this was the name of the new home—­to recognize him and ask discomforting questions.  But Ardea was expected, and the Dabney carriage, with old Scipio on the box, was drawn up beside the platform.

Tom put Ardea into the carriage and was giving her hand luggage to Scipio when she called to him.

“Isn’t there any one here to meet you, Tom?”

“They don’t know I’m coming,” he explained.  Whereupon she quickly made room for him, holding the door open.  But he hung back.

“I reckon I’d better ride on the box with Unc’ Scipio,” he suggested.

“I am sure I don’t know why you should,” she objected.

He told her straight; or at least gave her his own view of it.

“By to-morrow morning everybody in Gordonia and Paradise Valley will know that I’m home in disgrace.  It won’t hurt Unc’ Scipio any if I’m seen riding with him.”

It was the first time that he had been given to see the Dabney imperiousness shining star-like in Miss Ardea’s slate-blue eyes.