“Look out, Allison, that isn’t any better; and there comes Cloudy. Don’t make her feel bad again.”
“Well, parson, then––doesn’t seem to have much use for a person who’s had the misfortune to have her father commit forgery and her mother die of a broken heart, or is it because she has to work her way through college? He may be all right, sister; but I’d bank on that girl’s religion over against his any day in the week, Sundays included.”
Then Julia Cloud came up the steps, and they went in to a rather dreary evening service with a sparse congregation and a bored-looking choir, who passed notes and giggled during the sermon. Allison and Leslie sat and wondered what kind of a shock it would be to them all if the Great Companion should suddenly become visible in the room. If all that about His being always present was true, it certainly was a startling thing.
CHAPTER XIV
The next morning dawned with a dull, dreary drizzle coming noisily down on the red and yellow leaves of the maple by the window; but the three rose joyously and their ardor was not damped.
“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work,” quoted Allison at the breakfast-table. “Cloudy, we’ve got to hustle. Do you mind if it does rain? We’ve got our car.”
But Julia Cloud smiled unconcernedly.
“I should worry,” she said with a gay imitation of Leslie’s inimitable toss of the head, and the two young people laughed so hilariously that the other staid couples already in the dining-room turned in amaze to see who was taking life so happily on a day like this.