"No, no," replied the elder. "Just tell her it's a nice class, and that the girls expect her to come, and we'll be ever go much obliged to her. Good-morning!"—and he was gone.
"Oh, Mrs. Murdoch!" exclaimed Mary, when the elder's message was given. "I can't! I don't know them! I suppose I ought; but I'd have said no, if I had seen him."
The elder had thought of that, perhaps, and had provided against any refusal by retreating. As he went away he said to himself:
"She can do it, I know; if she does, it'll help me carry out my plan."
He looked, just then, as if it were a very good plan, but he did not reveal it.
Mary Ogden persuaded Mrs. Murdoch to take her to another church that morning, so that she need not meet any of her new class.
"I hope Jack will go to church in the city," she said; and her mother said the same thing to Aunt Melinda over in Crofield.
Jack could not have given any reason why his feet turned westward, but he went slowly along for several blocks, while he stared at the rows of buildings, at the sidewalks, at the pavements, and at everything else, great and small. He was actually leaving the world in which he had been brought up—the Crofield world—and taking a first stroll around in a world of quite another sort. He met some people on the streets, but not many.
"They're all getting ready for church," he thought, and his next thought was expressed aloud.
"Whew! what street's this, I wonder?"