“Now, what would Lottie say to such a thing as that?” asked Ellen, gayly.

“Something terribly cutting, I’m afraid.  But don’t you!  From you I don’t want to believe I deserve it, no matter what Miss Rasmith said me.”

“Oh, she didn’t say anything very bad.  Unless you mind being a universal favorite.”

“Well, it makes a man out rather silly.”

“But you can’t help that.”

“Now you remind me of Miss Lottie again!”

“But I didn’t mean that,” said Ellen, blushing and laughing.  “I hope you wouldn’t think I could be so pert.”

“I wouldn’t think anything that wasn’t to your praise,” said Breckon, and a pause ensued, after which the words he added seemed tame and flat.  “I suspect Miss Rasmith has been idealizing the situation.  At any rate, I shouldn’t advise you to trust her report implicitly.  I’m at the head of a society, you know, ethical or sociological, or altruistic, whatever you choose to call it, which hasn’t any very definite object of worship, and yet meets every Sunday for a sort of worship; and I have to be in the pulpit.  So you see?”

Ellen said, “I think I understand,” with a temptation to smile at the ruefulness of his appeal.

Breckon laughed for her.  “That’s the mischief and the absurdity of it.  But it isn’t so bad as it seems.  They’re really most of them hard-headed people; and those that are not couldn’t make a fool of a man that nature hadn’t begun with.  Still, I’m not very well satisfied with my work among them—­that is, I’m not satisfied with myself.”  He was talking soberly enough, and he did not find that she was listening too seriously.  “I’m going away to see whether I shall come back.”  He looked at her to make sure that she had taken his meaning, and seemed satisfied that she had.  “I’m not sure that I’m fit for any sort of ministry, and I may find the winter in England trying to find out.  I was at school in England, you know.”

Ellen confessed that she had not known that.

“Yes; I suppose that’s what made me seem ‘so Englishy’ the first day to Miss Lottie, as she called it.  But I’m straight enough American as far as parentage goes.  Do you think you will be in England-later?”

“I don’t know.  If poppa gets too homesick we will go back in the fall.”

“Miss Kenton,” said the young man, abruptly, “will you let me tell you how much I admire and revere your father?”

Tears came into her eyes and her throat swelled.  “But you don’t know,” she begun; and then she stopped.

“I have been wanting to submit something to his judgment; but I’ve been afraid.  I might seem to be fishing for his favor.”

“Poppa wouldn’t think anything that was unjust,” said Ellen, gravely.

“Ah,” Breckon laughed, “I suspect that I should rather have him unjust.  I wish you’d tell me what he would think.”

“But I don’t know what it is,” she protested, with a reflected smile.