"Jim, don't be wicked," puts in Miss Lily who has a cousinship in the said Jim, and therefore can afford to be brusque. Jim shrugs his shoulders.
"Wicked," he says. "If the preacher is to be credited, it is you folks who are wicked. I don't pretend, you know, to be anything else."
A change of subject seems to the fair Lorena to be desirable, so she says:
"Why were you not at the hop last night, Mr. Merchant?"
And Jim replies, "I didn't get home in time. I was at the races. I hear you had a stunning—I beg your pardon—a perfectly splendid time. Those are the right words, I believe."
And then the two ladies gathered their silken trains into an aristocratic grasp of the left hand, and sailed down town on either side of "Jim" to continue the conversation. And those coral lips had but just sung—
"My thoughts lie open to the Lord,
Before they're formed within;
And ere my lips pronounce the word
He knows the sense I mean."
What could He have thought of her? Is it not strange that she did not ask this of herself.
"How are you to-day?" Mr. Jackson asked, shaking his old acquaintance, Mr. Dunlap, heartily by the hand. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"
Now, what will be the next sentence from the lips of those gray-headed men, standing in the sanctuary, with the echo of solemn service still in their ears? Listen: