"And the girls remain here while their parents are away?"
"Part of the time, yes'm. Mrs. Ansted was a schoolmate of Mrs. Foster, I have heard, and respects her very highly, and would prefer having the girls with her to sending them anywhere else. Mr. Ansted is a merchant in the city. In the summer he comes out home every night, and some of them stay in town with him a great deal. It is only ten miles away, you know. If they did not charge so dreadfully on the new railroad, we might get a chance to look at its splendors once in a while ourselves; but the Ansteds don't care for high prices. Mr. Ansted is one of the directors, and I suppose they ride for nothing, just because they could afford to pay eighty cents a day as well as not. That seems to be the way things work."
"But the family attend this church, of course, while they are here. I should think the girls would be interested to join us."
"Oh, no, ma'am; indeed, they don't. They haven't been inside the church six times in as many years. They go to town."
"Not to church!"
"Yes'm; they do. Every pleasant day their carriage rolls by our house about half-past eight, and makes me feel cross and envious all day."
"But do you really mean that they habitually go ten miles to church each Sabbath, when there is one right at their doors that they might attend? What denomination are they?"
"The very same as our own," the girl said, laughing over Miss Benedict's astonished face.
Then the gentle Nettie added her explanation: