"Great Smokes! We all forgot it was prayer meeting to-night, and it'll be no trotting the fox for ours," Billy groaned, while he rose to his feet with a smile of angelic sweetness. "Hello, Parson! We were just beginning to think about you," was his greeting to the Sacred Jaguar who had come through the garden and around the house. I felt sure that he had heard Billy's plaint of disappointment about the dance, for there was a quick glint of the amethysts as he halted and stood on the walk below us and smiled up at us.
"I welcomed Miss Powers for breakfast, and now I find I want to come over and do it again for tea," he said, and as I was perfectly cool, sober and in my right mind at the moment he spoke, I had to concede that his voice was the most wonderful I had ever heard, and something in me made me resent it as well as the curious veneer that had spread over my friends at his entry upon the scene. There they stood and sat, six perfectly rational, fairly moral, representative free and equal citizens, cowed by the representative of something that they neither understood nor cared about, and it made me furious. They all wanted to go to the Club to dance, to do the natural, usual, perfectly harmless thing, and they were being constrained. If they had wanted to go to the prayer meeting as they wanted to dance, they would have been natural and joyful and eager about it.
"I resent, even I resent people's being bored with the God they think exists, and I think it is disrespectful to go into His presence like that," I said to myself, and then I suddenly determined to begin my rescue work for the religiously involved, and now I felt was the appointed time. Also I felt the excitement that comes from turning and facing the foe which has pursued.
"I'm glad you came over, Mr. Goodloe," I said with nice, cool friendliness in my voice. "Billy was just planning a glorious fox-trot for this evening and then suddenly remembered with dismay that you were to have your—entertainment at the Club to-night. Couldn't we—we make some sort of compromise? Or at least couldn't you cut your—prayers short so he can get in an hour or two of his favorite pleasure after—after duty well done?" As I spoke I had come to the edge of the steps and thus stood alone above him, looking down on him with a kind of cool aloofness as if he belonged to another world, while I heard all of his recent converts grouped back of me give little gasps of dismay.
CHAPTER III
THE GAUNTLET
Was that young Methodist minister crushed by my plainly intended gauntlet flung down to him? He was not.
"I'm glad I came over in time to put Billy out of his misery," he answered, smiling up at me with a quick comprehension that was enraging. "I'm going to have informal services in the chapel to-night to try out the acoustics before the contractor turns over the building. I am not satisfied about the sounding board he has put in, and the only way is to try it with at least part of the seats occupied. We'll sing a bit and plan the dedication; not have a formal service. So then, Billy, you can have your fox-trotting and a good time to all of you, bless you, my children." As he spoke he smiled at the entire group with the most delightful interest and pleasure. He was dressed in a straight black coat with a plain silk vest cut around a white collar that buttoned in the back, and his dull gold mane was brushed down sleek and close to his beautiful head. Not a flash of expression in his strong face showed that he felt any resentment or dismay at thus having some of his most prominent church members backslide from his prayer meeting into a fox-trot, and yet I knew—knew that he fully appreciated the situation and laid the blame of it where the blame was due.