“I guess Mr. Elliot forgot his cream,” the girl had said, with a spark of malice.  “I saw him out in the yard awhile ago talking to that Miss Orr.”

Fanny had humiliated herself still further by pretending she didn’t know it was the minister who had left his ice cream to dissolve in a pink and brown puddle of sweetness.  Whereat Joyce Fulsom had giggled disagreeably.

“Better keep your eye on him, Fan,” she had advised.

Of course she couldn’t speak of this to Jim; but it was all plain enough to her.

“I’m going down to the village for awhile, Fan,” her brother said, as he arose from the table.  But he did not, as was his custom, invite her to accompany him.

After Jim had gone, Fanny washed the dishes with mechanical swiftness.  Her mother had asked her if she would come to prayer meeting, and walk home with her afterwards.  Not that Mrs. Dodge was timid; the neighborhood of Brookville had never been haunted after nightfall by anything more dangerous than whippoorwills and frogs.  A plaintive chorus of night sounds greeted the girl, as she stepped out into the darkness.  How sweet the honeysuckle and late roses smelled under the dew!  Fanny walked slowly across the yard to the old summer-house, where the minister had asked her to call him Wesley, and sat down.  It was very dark under the thick-growing vines, and after awhile tranquillity of a sort stole over the girl’s spirit.  She gazed out into the dim spaces beyond the summer-house and thought, with a curious detachment, of all that had happened.  It was as if she had grown old and was looking back calmly to a girlhood long since past.  She could almost smile at the recollection of herself stifling her sobs in her pillow, lest Jim should hear.

“Why should I care for him?” she asked herself wonderingly; and could not tell.

Then all at once she found herself weeping softly, her head on the rickety table.

Jim Dodge, too intently absorbed in his own confused thoughts to pay much attention to Fanny, had walked resolutely in the direction of Mrs. Solomon Black’s house; from which, he reflected, the minister would be obliged to absent himself for at least an hour.  He hoped Mrs. Black had not induced Lydia to go to the prayer meeting with her.  Why any one should voluntarily go to a prayer meeting passed his comprehension.  Jim had once attended what was known as a “protracted meeting,” for the sole purpose of pleasing his mother, who all at once had appeared tearfully anxious about his “soul.”  He had not enjoyed the experience.

“Are you saved, my dear young brother?” Deacon Whittle had inquired of him, in his snuffling, whining, peculiarly objectionable tone.

“From what, Deacon?” Jim had blandly inquired.  “You in for it, too?”

Whereat the Deacon had piously shaken his head and referred him to the “mourner’s pew,” with the hope that he might even yet be plucked as a brand from the burning.