"Perhaps we can find out. He says: 'I don't know whether I stood up most, or sat down most, but I do know that I wouldn't have knowed when to do either if Miss Truett hadn't given me a powerful lot of nudges and coat-tail pulls, besides swapping books with me mighty lively while the minister was going forward and backward in them. I won't describe the service; for as you and your wife belong to that sect, I guess you know more than I can tell you, but I will say that there was enough "amens" in it to show where us Methodists got the habit of shouting out in meeting; and though I can't make up my mind after only one try, as a lot of our customers said when your Uncle Jethro put on sale the first box of lump sugar that ever came to Claybanks, I reckon that it is a first-rate manner of worship for them that are used to it, seeing that John Wesley was in it, and you two, and Miss Truett, for she looked like a picture of an angel when she was reading and singing and praying.'"
"Poor Caleb!" Grace sighed. "He's like all the other men who have met Mary Truett."
"Does she flirt even in church?"
"She never flirts. Don't be horrid! Go on with the letter."
"H'm. 'New York is hotter than Claybanks'—rank heresy, Caleb—'according to the thermometer, and the way the heat sizzles out of the sidewalks, and meanders upward, ought to be a warning to hardened sinners, and there are plenty of them here. Why, I asked a policeman on Broadway where was a first-class eating-house, and he pointed to one that he said was the best in town, and I had fried ham, and they charged me seventy-five cents for it, though it wouldn't have weighed half a pound raw. I don't harbor bad feelings, but the owner of that eating-house had better shy clear of me on Judgment Day. Miss Truett says it was extortionate, and I wish he could have seen her eyes when she said it.'"
"I wish I too could have seen them, for they are superb," Grace said. "I must write her for a full report on Caleb. But I'm interrupting."
"'That seaside boarding-place you engaged for me,'" continued Philip from the letter, "'is knocking my malaria endwise, which it ought to, seeing the price of board that is tacked up on the door, but anyhow, I feel like a giant every morning when I start for the city; that is, I think I do, though I never was a giant to find out for sure. I take a walk morning and evening, looking at the ocean, and trying to tell myself what I think of it, but not a word can I get hold of. Miss Truett says it's just so with her.' H'm—there's that woman again!"
"Bless her!"
"I shouldn't say so. I'm afraid Caleb has lost his head over her."
"He'll find it again. Any good man will be bettered by meeting her. Is there anything more about her?"