"Oh, yes"; then quickly she added, "I am parsing it."
"Oh!" There was a faint disappointment in his tone.
"But," she confessed, "I read it all through the first day I began to parse it, and—and I wish I was parsing something else, because I keep reading this instead of parsing it, and—"
"You enjoy the story and the poetry?" he questioned.
"But a body mustn't read just for pleasure," she said timidly; "but for instruction; and this 'Hiawatha' is a temptation to me."
"What makes you think you ought not to read 'just for pleasure'?"
"That would be a vanity. And we Mennonites are loosed from the things of the world."
"Do you never do anything just for the pleasure of it?"
"When pleasure and duty go hand in hand, then pleasure is not displeasing to God. But Christ, you know, did not go about seeking pleasure. And we try to follow him in all things."
"But, child, has not God made the world beautiful for our pleasure? Has he not given us appetites and passions for our pleasure?—minds and hearts and bodies constructed for pleasure?"