By this time the tears were falling fast from his mother's eyes.
"My boy," she said, "it is what your father believed; but I have let the mother in my heart come between me and Christ. I was so anxious for you, that I thought I must yield even his honor to save you."
But Blanche, bewildered, and flushing red, declared this:
"I must say I don't see why a boy should coax a girl to do what he is ashamed to have her do; and be all changed around because she refuses to do it."
Yet there is many a boy who coaxes a girl to go where he wishes in his soul she may have Christian firmness enough to refuse.
[CHAPTER I.]
THERE was a time when our church had no choir, but gloried in the fact that we had congregational singing. At least the conservative fathers gloried in it; but the aggressive young people grumbled much.
And certainly the most gentle spirit might have found some occasion for grumbling. If the thing had been named "congregational drawling" instead of "singing," perhaps it would have been as correct. Our church was large, and the leader, a dear old man who had led the singing from time immemorial, until his ears had deafened and his voice cracked in the service, was unable to keep the scattered elements of his army in order. Sing as slow as he might, he always finished the line at least two syllables in advance of old Auntie Barber, who sat in the southwest corner back pew, and who had a chronic affection of the nose and throat which caused her to pronounce her words somewhat after this fashion:
"Naow be the gospil banner
I-n'every lan-d'unfurl';
An' be the shout hosanner
Re-yeehoed raound the worl'."