He joined her laughter.
"Come in and have dinner with us," she said warmly. "Please do. I am a wonderful cook. Zee says my mashed potatoes taste almost exactly like—plum pudding. Would you consider that a compliment?"
"By all means. But I can not come for dinner to-day. We wizards do not eat, you know. Be kind now, and get into more morning difficulties so I may laugh at you, will you?"
Doris walked into the manse with a very thoughtful air.
"I have always told Rosalie it was silly to be constantly finding mystery in every little thing—but I see now that mystery is more fun than anything else. The silly old thing—why he must be nearly as old as father. But how he does laugh! He isn't a minister, that's certain. And he isn't a doctor, for everybody knows doctors, besides they always talk shop. And he doesn't look like a worker—I mean a hard worker— Isn't it ridiculous? What do I care who he is—but it is lots of fun."
As they sat at dinner, Rosalie said suddenly, "Oh, father, you must scold the General. She is getting very worldly. She was flirting with a stranger in the congregation. She picked out a handsome man, and kept looking at him, and he smiled at her, and she asked if I knew him right in the middle of the second point."
"Could you know him in the second point if you didn't know him anywhere else?" demanded Zee.
"There wasn't a handsome man in church except father," declared Treasure.
"General, I am astonished," said their father with smiling eyes and solemn face.
"Don't you believe her. He wasn't a stranger in the first place, and in the second I only looked at him once—or twice," she finished feebly.