"Why don't I listen to the sermon?" thought she. "It's very wicked not to listen. Oh, he's gone way by the text! What is he saying about the brook of Cherith? They don't have Bible places in my geography, and I never heard of the brook of Cherith."
Next moment, after a fond glance at Ethel, her eye fell upon Preston, and this gave still another turn to her thoughts.
"I should think Preston would be ashamed ever to say anything more to me about my 'Domestic Animals.' The composition he wrote the other day is ever so much worse than that."
It was "The Story of Evangeline." Miss Pike had read Longfellow's beautiful poem aloud, and then asked the children to write down all they could remember of it.
Here, in Preston's own words, is
THE STORY OF EVANGELINE.
"Evangeline lived in Nova Scotia. She was engaged to Gabriel. He was a blacksmith's son. The English soldiers came and told the French to leave. They left. Evangeline and Gabriel did not go on the same boat. They got mixed up and separated. Evangeline did not like it. She and her priest went all round out West to try to find Gabriel. He did not try to find her. Then she heard he had gone up North to trade for mules, and she went to hunt him up. She did not find him. Then she grew very old and went to live with the Quakers. She was a nun. One Sunday morning she picked some flowers and went to the poor-house, and found an old man in bed dying. She said, Gabriel. He looked up. They kissed each other and he died."
Dr. Gray said this story ought to be entitled "The Fatal Effects of a Kiss." Even grandma had laughed heartily on reading it, though Preston himself could see nothing in it to laugh at.
But it was by no means of Evangeline or her fatal kiss that Preston was thinking just now. Sitting quietly beside his father, he was looking up at the minister and drinking in every word of the sermon. He had long been noted for his excellent behavior at church, and Mr. Lee had more than once said to the boy's father that none of the grown people listened to their pastor with more respectful attention than young Preston Gray. I am afraid Mr. Lee would not have said anything like that about Flaxie. She sat still enough, often very still indeed, but her eyes were roving all about, and so were her thoughts.
Miss Pike observed this, and it occurred to her that it would be a very sad thing if Flaxie should allow her inattention to grow into a confirmed habit. Very likely she said something of the sort to Dr. Gray, for she felt a great interest in the child's improvement. At any rate, that afternoon, when the four o'clock dinner was over and the Gray family were seated in the back parlor,—Miss Pike, grandma, and all,—Doctor Papa said, rather unexpectedly,—