"Seems to me you do not enjoy the opera as well as usual, nor the hops either. What is the matter? Do you really miss me? If there is any such foolish fancy in your heart as that, prepare to enjoy yourself next week, for I shall be with you at every one of them after Tuesday. It will take me until then to get something decent to wear.
"I hear the girls coming up the hill, and I must leave you.
"Au revoir,
"RUTH."
Folding and addressing this epistle with a satisfied air, and still full of the spirit which had prompted her to write a religious letter, Ruth, finding that Marion had come in alone, and that Flossy and Eurie were still loitering up the hill, gave herself the satisfaction of communicating her change of views.
"I have been thinking a good deal about what you said this afternoon, Marion, and there is truth in it. I do not think as you do, and I ought to take some measures to let people know it. I have the most perfect respect for and confidence in religion, and I mean to prove it by uniting with the church. I have decided to attend to that matter as soon as I get home again after the season is over. I am surprised at myself for not doing so before, for I certainly consider it eminently proper, in fact a duty."
Now, it was very provoking to have so religious a sentence as this received in the manner that it was. Marion tilted her stool back against the bed, and gave herself up to the luxury of a ringing laugh.
"Really," Ruth said, "you have returned from church in a very hilarious mood; something very funny must have happened; it can not be that anything in my sentence had to do with your amusement."
"Yes, but it has," squealed Marion, holding her sides and laughing still. "Oh, Ruthie, Ruthie, you will be the death of me! And so you think that this is religion! You honestly suppose that standing up in church and having your name read off constitutes Christianity! Don't do it, Ruthie; you have never been a hypocrite, and I have always honored you because you were not. If this is all the religion you can find, go without it forever and ever, for I tell you there is not a single bit in it."
Her laughter had utterly ceased, and her voice was solemn in its intensity.