"Now, John! didn't you tell me only a few days ago what you expected of me in that regard? Do you think I want to disappoint your expectations?"
"Well, then, what is the reason that you don't?"
"Mr. Butler, think of my being called upon to answer such an immense question as that at a church social. John, you will have to be my champion, and explain, if you are hard pressed, that the reasons are too numerous to be given now and here. Meantime, you may vouch for me that I have excellent ones."
John turned away, a grim smile on his face. Louise, looking after him, feeling much less bright and undisturbed than she appeared, saw that he was not displeased with her answers, but wondered uneasily what he might be enduring, in the way of banter, for her sake. She had grown to have that degree of confidence in him; she believed that he would endure something for her sake. She need not have been disturbed; there had been no bantering; Mrs. Lewis Morgan was at present held in too great respect for that. Still, John had been surprised into some abrupt admissions, which he had felt obliged to have corroborated by her.
"Does your sister dance?" had been asked him abruptly by one of the pretty visions in curls whom his eyes had been following half the evening. He had given a confused little start, and glanced instinctively at the corner where Dorothy sat, being kindly talked to by a nice old lady.
"Dorothy!" he exclaimed, a surprise note in his voice. How absurd it seemed to suppose such a thing! "No; she never dances."
"Oh, I don't mean Dorothy," and the pretty vision echoed his surprise in her voice; "I mean your brother's wife."
Then did John turn and look at her as she stood a little at one side, conversing animatedly with the minister. How pretty she was; how unlike any one that he knew! What a strange sound it had to him, that sentence, "your sister," when he applied it to this fair young woman! She was his acknowledged sister, then, in the eyes of all his people. He had not realized it before—to be sure she had called him her brother, and it had pleased him; but, at the same time, the idea that other people so spoke had not before occurred to him. It certainly was by no means an unpleasant idea. He was in danger of wandering off over the strangeness of this relation and its possible pleasantness, unmindful of the small questioner who waited.
"Well," she said inquiringly, a little laugh closing the word, "are you trying to decide the momentous question?"
"No," he said with emphasis, "she doesn't dance."