"I wonder," Simon Jefferson growled, "why somebody doesn't badger me to go to church!" Indignant because Fran had fled the pleasing fields of his interested vision, he paused, as if to invite antagonism; but all avoided the anticlimax.
He announced, "This talk has excited me. If we can't live and let live, I'll go and take my meals at Miss Sapphira Clinton's."
No one dared to answer him, not even Grace. He marched into the garden where Fran sat huddled upon a rustic bench. "I was just saying," Simon told her ingratiatingly, "that if all this to-do over religion isn't put a stop to, I'll take my meals at the Clintons'!"
Fran looked up at him without moving her chin from her palms, and asked as she tried, apparently, to tie her feet into a knot, "Isn't that where Abbott Ashton boards?"
"Do you mean Professor Ashton?" he returned, with subtle reproof.
Fran, still dejected, nodded carelessly. "We're both after the same man."
Simon lit the pipe which his physician had warned him was bad for his heart. "Yes, Professor Ash-ton boards at the Clintons'."
"Must be awfully jolly at the Clintons'," Fran said wistfully.