with the mature severity of Boyne’s character that Ellen could not help being pleased and won.  She told some little stories of Boyne that threw a light also their home life in Tuskingum, and Miss Rasmith declared herself perfectly fascinated, and wished that she could go and live in Tuskingum.  She protested that she should not find it dull; Boyne alone would be entertainment enough; and she figured a circumstance so idyllic from the hints she had gathered, that Ellen’s brow darkened in silent denial, and Miss Rasmith felt herself, as the children say in the game, very hot in her proximity to the girl’s secret.  She would have liked to know it, but whether she felt that she could know it when she liked enough, or whether she should not be so safe with Breckon in knowing it, she veered suddenly away, and said that she was so glad to have Boyne’s family know the peculiar nature of her devotion, which did not necessarily mean running away with him, though it might come to that.  She supposed she was a little morbid about it from what Mr. Breckon had been saying; he had a conscience that would break the peace of a whole community, though he was the greatest possible favorite, not only with his own congregation, which simply worshipped him, but with the best society, where he was in constant request.

It was not her fault if she did not overdo these history, but perhaps it was all true about the number of girls who were ready and willing to marry him.  It might even be true, though she had no direct authority for saying it, that he had made up his mind never to marry, and that was the reason why he felt himself so safe in being the nicest sort of friend.  He was safe, Miss Rasmith philosophized, but whether other people were so safe was a different question.  There were girls who were said to be dying for him; but of course those things were always said about a handsome young minister.  She had frankly taken him on his own ground, from the beginning, and she believed that this was what he liked.  At any rate, they had agreed that they were never to be anything but the best of friends, and they always had been.

Mrs. Kenton came and shyly took the chair on Miss Rasmith’s other side, and Miss Rasmith said they had been talking about Mr. Breckon, and she repeated what she had been saying to Ellen.  Mrs. Kenton assented more openly than Ellen could to her praises, but when she went away, and her daughter sat passive, without comment or apparent interest, the mother drew a long, involuntary sigh.

“Do you like her, Ellen?”

“She tries to be pleasant, I think.”

“Do you think she really knows much about Mr. Breckon?”

“Oh yes.  Why not?  She belongs to his church.”

“He doesn’t seem to me like a person who would have a parcel of girls tagging after him.”

“That is what they do in the East, Boyne says.”

“I wish she would let Boyne alone.  She is making a fool of the child.  He’s round with her every moment.  I think she ought to be ashamed, such an old thing!”