"No," said Estelle slowly, reluctantly obliged to be truthful before this truthful young man; thinking of her mother, of her father, of her sister Louise, she must say, "No."
"Then why haven't you been a Christian these many years?"
"I don't know."
"Then why don't you be one now?"
"I don't know."
John was betrayed into an exclamation not unlike the half sneer with which he used to express his entire disapproval of an act, and his tones were very significant as he said, "Seems to me if I were you I'd find out."
Estelle was silent; this to her was an entirely new way of approaching the subject. This grave young man gave her some thinking to do. She had had her bit of scepticism to struggle with, albeit she did not know it by that name. In her heart she had believed that some persons were by nature religious in their youth; mamma was, and Louise was like her. Mamma said that Louise, when just a baby, would lie quiet by the hour to be read to from the Bible; while she, Estelle, never lay quiet at any time for anything but sleep. She was not by nature religious, she argued; some time, when she was old and gray-haired, it would become natural to her to think about these things. Some people were called in their youth, and some in later life; it must be that she was designed for a middle-aged Christian. Into the face of this theory came John—young, keen, intense, fierce by nature, as irreligious by nature as a man could be, as far-away from even outward respect for the cause as a scoffer could be. Louise, whose intuition had shown her somewhat of this reasoning, had taken pains to explain in detail John's past life and John's intense nature. Here was a problem that Estelle must work out for herself; that she had begun to work at it was evidenced by her grave, sincere answer, "I don't know."
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
THE OLD AND THE NEW.
IT is not because there is not much concerning the Morgan family which would be pleasant to me to tell that I pass in silence a stretch of years. It is simply that the lengthening chapters remind me it is high time to have done with them; and yet there are certain things that I must tell. Therefore it is that I drop you into the midst of June roses again, after a lapse of five busy, earnest years. Back at the old farmhouse, which really was not the old farmhouse at all; and yet it was—that is, it was in a new dress. A corner had been put on here, a bay-window there, a piazza at the south side, and a wide old-fashioned porch at the east, until really the house would not have recognized itself. Within, not a single room, from the yellow painted kitchen onward, remained the same. Was this the new house, planned years before? Well, not exactly. The new house was built, and built with the bricks and mortar, just as it had been planned on paper, and a gem of a house it proved to be; but its location was next to the church, in the village, and Dorothy and the minister were the occupants.