"No," I said, and I blushed for him. "I can't get him to go, and he won't let me speak."
"Or your mother?"
"Mother doesn't seem to care," I said, and I hung my head.
"Don't let them keep you from God's House," he said.
"I do go in the evening," I answered. "Mother wants me at home all the morning. Father likes a hot dinner, and if I didn't see to it things wouldn't be right for him. Grannie never would do it, but mother makes me now."
"You are but a child," he said. "If they desire it, your duty may be for the present to yield. But if it is not needful, they ought to let you go. Some day I will call and perhaps speak about it."
And he did so, very kindly, but it wasn't of much use. Mother was angry, and after he was gone she said she would not be meddled with, and I was to do as she and father liked.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
A DAMP DWELLING.
ONE gets used, more or less, to almost any sort of state; and by the time we had been seven or eight months in the house, I remember how things looked quite natural, and the old life in the cottage seemed almost like a dream to me. I don't know whether it did to the others. I am not saying that I liked the new life, or would have chosen it: but there it was, and one had to go through with it.