CHAPTER XX.
HOW IT WAS DONE.
LOSSY came quite down the broad aisle to the seat which the girls had, by tacit understanding, chosen for their own, her face just radiant with a sort of surprised satisfaction, and the gentleman who followed her with an assured and measured step was none other than Judge Erskine himself. He may have been surprised at his own appearance in that place for prayer, but no surprise of his could compare with the amazement of his daughter Ruth. For once in her life her well-bred composure forsook her, and her look could be called nothing less than an absolute stare.
Of the four, Flossy only had succeeded. The way of it was this:
Having become a realist, in the most emphatic sense of that word, to have promised to bring some one with her to meeting if she possibly could, meant to her just that, and nothing less than that. Of course, such an understanding of a promise made it impossible to stop with the asking of one person, or two, or three, provided her invitations met with only refusals.
She had started out as confident of success as Eurie; she felt nearly certain of Col. Baker; not because he was any more likely of his own will to choose the prayer-meeting than he had been all his life thus far, but because he was growing every day more anxious to give pleasure to Flossy.
Having some dim sense of this in her heart, Flossy reasoned that it would be right to put this power of hers to the good use of winning him to the meeting, for who could tell what words from God's Spirit might reach him while there? So she asked him to go.