"Why, yes—that is, maybe he will. Sometimes couples walk about between the games and dances. I don't dance. My father and mother oppose it, and our church does not sanction it; but you dance, don't you?"
"No, I've never even been to a dance. I hardly know what they are like. The young folks at Ridgeville have them often at their club and at the hotels and in their homes, but the boys are a lot of dudes that have nothing else to do, and I hate them. I've always had to work for a living and most of them are well off and look down on poor folks. People here treat a fellow like me different somehow."
"It seems very strange that you don't dance," Tilly mused aloud, "especially when you don't belong to the church. How does it happen that you never joined?"
He shrugged and sniffed with uncurbed contempt, unaware of the fact that what he was saying was an unheard-of thing in Tilly's circle. "I don't believe in them," he jerked out. "They are a bunch of close-fisted, grafting hypocrites. Most of them haven't the brains of a gnat. I've helped build meeting-houses, run against the leaders, and know their private lives. They say they believe there is a God— I don't!"
Tilly sighed unresentfully. "You will see it differently some day," she said. "Will you do me a favor?"
"Will I? Try me," he laughed, and he sat eagerly waiting for her to continue.
In her earnestness she put her hand on his knee as she leaned closer to him. "Then don't tell father how you feel about it—please don't. You don't know him. You can't imagine how furious that would make him. A man stopped at our house once to stay overnight. He was selling harvesting-machines, and after supper he and my father had an argument on the veranda. He said—the man said something like what you've just said to me, and father made him leave the house—made him pack up and leave at once, for father said it would be a sin for us to sleep under the same roof. Mother did not object, either. She was glad to see him go. Our preacher preached a sermon on it and said my father did right. I'm sorry you believe as you do, but won't you promise me not to say anything about it while you are here?"
"I'll promise you anything on earth you ask." John sat up straight. Her little hand was still on his knee. He yearned to take it into his calloused grasp and fondle into it his assurances of compliance with her desires. "I don't object to any man's religion unless it rubs against my rights as a man," he went on. "These church folks here may be better than any I've run across, but down home the breed doesn't suit me. Why, when I was a little fellow in the public school I've had them—women and men—invite other boys to go to Christmas-tree parties, Sunday-school festivals, or picnics, and leave me out. They would do it right before my face, as if I was the very dirt under their feet. A thing like that would be noticed by a little boy who wonders why he can't go along with the rest."
"I didn't know there were such church members as that anywhere," Tilly said, thoughtfully. "Oh, I see. I wonder if your folks are Catholics?"
"No. My father is dead. My mother doesn't go to any church."