"But I wouldn't give up those things even then—card-playing and dancing and everything like that. I've always done those things—and I love them, Mr. Laird. You don't understand me, I'm afraid. You see, your life has been a very different one from mine, hasn't it?"
"Wide as the poles asunder," he answered without looking at me. "I never knew any of those things. Yes, very different," he repeated. And he smiled.
"Your parents are very religious people, I suppose?" I ventured.
"My mother's not living," he said in a hushed voice. "She died when I was ten."
"And your father?" I asked in a burst of boldness.
"Yes," he said. We were sitting by the river at the time, and the sun was setting, and its last rays bathed the trees with amber light. His head was lying on the ground; and the dying sun shed its beauty on the wavy hair and the wonderfully modulated face. Modulated is the fitting word, for various voices spoke through the different features, yet the master note was tenderness, always so lovable in a man when it is joined to strength.
"I'd love to be religious," I said suddenly. "I believe I would have been, too, if I'd been a man."
He smiled. "Why would you like to be religious?" he said, picking up a pebble and throwing it far out into the river. "You've just said you love those other things so much."
"Oh, yes, I know I did. But I mean what I say, just the same. I admire that sort of people," I went on enthusiastically; "religious people, you know. Really good people—like you," I broke out recklessly. "I knew an awfully religious girl in Richmond once. She was naturally good, no struggle for her at all. Well, she married a minister,"—I laughed as I said it—"and nearly all her friends pity her so. She and her husband live in the country, and he takes care of his own horse—he has three stations. But I never pitied her," I declared earnestly; "I think it must be a perfectly lovely life—when your heart's in it. She loves him to distraction—and his work too; and she visits the people, and she teaches in the Sunday-school. Besides, she has two children—and I think he preaches all his sermons at her on Saturday nights and she fixes them up. But then, of course, she's fitted for that sort of thing—she can pray out loud," I concluded, nodding my head towards Mr. Laird as though this were the acme of all eulogy.
"There are better kinds of prayer than that," he answered, smiling again; "and I'm so glad you don't pity her," he added, turning his earnest eyes on me again.