She listened breathlessly to the story of his evening’s
adventures. Then she said, “I have been
trying to do something, too.”
“What have you done?” he asked.
“I went to see little Ethel,” she replied.
“Ethel Vince!” he gasped.
“Yes,” said she. “She is your
friend, you know; and I went to ask her not to let
her father turn you off.”
“And what came of it?”
“She cried,” said Sophie. “She
was terribly unhappy. She said that she knew
that you were a good boy; and that she would never
rest until her father had taken you back.”
“You don’t mean it!” cried Samuel
in amazement.
“Yes, Samuel; but then her mother came.”
“Oh! And what then?”
“She scolded me! She was very angry with
me. She said I had no right to fill the child’s
mind with falsehoods about her uncle. And she
wouldn’t listen to me—she turned me
out of the house.”
There was a long silence. “I don’t
think I did any good at all,” said Sophie in
a low voice. “We are going to have to do
it all by ourselves.”
Samuel slept not a wink all that night. First
he lay wrestling with the congregation. And then
his thoughts came to Miss Gladys, and what he was
going to say to her. This kindled a fire in his
blood, and when the first streaks of dawn were in
the sky, he rose and went out to walk.
Throughout all these adventures, his feelings had
been mingled with the excitement of his love for her.
Samuel hardly knew what to make of himself. He
had never kissed a woman in his life before—but
now desire was awake, and from the deeps of him the
most unexpected emotions came surging, sweeping him
away. He was a prey to longings and terrors.
Wild ecstasies came to him, and then followed plunges
into melancholy. He longed to see her, and other
things stood in the way, and he did not know why he
should be so tormented.
Just to be in love would have been enough. But
to have been given the love of a being like Miss Gladys—peerless
and unapproachable, almost unimaginable!
After hours of pacing the streets, he called to see
her. And she came to him, her face alight with
eager curiosity, and crying, “Tell me all about
it!”
She listened, almost dumb with amazement. “And
you said that to my father!” she exclaimed again
and again. “And to Mr. Hickman! And
to old Mr. Curtis! Samuel! Samuel!”
“It was all true, Miss Gladys,” he insisted.
“Yes,” she said—“but—to
say it to them!”
“They turned me out of the church,” he
went on. “Had they a right to do that?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“Oh, my, what a time there will be!”
“And what are you going to do now?” she
asked after a pause.
“I don’t know. I wanted to talk about
it with you.”
“But what do you think of doing?”
