He found the Jordans very cordial. He was their star, and they made much of him; he was pleased that they showed him a real deference; when he spoke at the table, the others paused to listen. He knew the other young men slightly; one was a clerk in a railway office, and the other was the assistant manager of the city's largest dry goods house. The guests were young women from Mrs. Jordan's old home, in Piqua, Ohio. (Mrs. Jordan always gave the name of the state.) Wheaton realized that these young women were much easier to get on with than Miss Porter and other young women he had known latterly; they were more pointedly interested in pleasing him.
After a few days the carnival seemed to be forgotten; Wheaton's fellows at The Bachelors' stopped joking him about it. Raridan had never referred to it at all. On Sunday the newspapers printed a résumé of the social features of the carnival, and Wheaton read the familiar story, and all the other social news in the paper, in bed. He noticed with a twinge an item stating that Mrs. J. Elihu Jordan had entertained at dinner on Thursday evening for the Misses Sweetser, of Piqua, but was relieved to find that neither paper printed the names of the guests. The bachelors were very lazy on Sunday morning, excepting Raridan, who attended what he called "early church." This practice his fellow-lodgers accepted in silence as one of his vagaries. That a man should go to church at seven o'clock and then again at eleven, signified mere eccentricity to Raridan's fellow-boarders, who were not instructed in catholic practices, but divided their own Sunday mornings much more rationally between the barber shop, the post-office and their places of business.
It was a bright morning; the week just ended had been, in a sense, epochal, and Wheaton resolved to go to church. It had been his habit to attend services occasionally, on Sunday evenings, at the People's Church, whose minister frequently found occasion to preach on topics of the day or on literary subjects. Doctor Morningstar was the most popular preacher in Clarkson; the People's Church was filled at all services; on Sunday evenings it was crowded. Doctor Morningstar's series of lectures on the Italian Renaissance, illustrated by the stereopticon, and his even more popular course of lectures on the Victorian novelists, had appealed to Wheaton and to many; but the People's Church was not fashionable; he decided to go this morning to St. Paul's, the Episcopal Cathedral. It was the oldest church in town, and many of the first families attended there. All fashionable weddings in Clarkson were held in the cathedral, not because it was popularly supposed to confer a spiritual benefit upon those who were blessed from its altar, but for the more excellent reason that the main aisle of this Gothic edifice gave ample space for the free sweep of bridal trains, and the chancel lent itself charmingly to the decorative purposes of the florist.
Wheaton found Raridan breakfasting alone, the others of the mess not having appeared. Raridan's good morning was not very cordial; he had worn a gloomy air for several days. Whenever Raridan seemed out of sorts, Caldwell always declared solemnly that Warry had been writing poetry.
"Going to church as usual?" Wheaton asked amiably.
Every Sunday morning some one asked Raridan this question; he supposed Wheaton was attempting to be facetious.
"Yes," he answered patiently; and added, as usual, "better go along."
"Don't care if I do," Wheaton replied, carelessly.