But beyond the fact that her father was dead and her mother in California, she could learn nothing from Eloise, and returned to the point from which they had drifted to the Episcopal Church in Rome.

“I kinder mistrusted you was a ‘Piscopal.  I do’ know why, but I can most always tell ’em,” she said.  “The Cromptons is all that way of thinkin’.  Old Colonel is a vestedman, I b’lieve they call ’em, but he swears offul.  I don’t call that religion; do you?  But folks ain’t alike.  I don’t s’pose the Church is to blame.  There’s now and then as good a ’Piscopal as you’ll find anywhere.  Ruby Ann has jined ’em, and goes it strong.  B’lieves in candles and vestures; got Tim into the choir one Sunday, and now you can’t keep him out of it.  Wears a—­a—­I don’t know what you call it,—­something that looks like a short night-gown, and I have to wash it every other week.  I don’t mind that, and I do b’lieve Tim is more of a man than he was, and he sings beautiful.  And hain’t learnt nothin’ bad there yet, but the minister does some things I don’t approve; no, don’t approve.  What do you think he does right before folks, in plain sight, sittin’ on the piazza?”

Eloise could not hazard a guess as to the terrible sin of which Mr. Mason, the rector of St. John’s, was guilty, and said so.

“Well,” and Mrs. Biggs’s voice sank to a whisper as she leaned forward, “he smokes a cigar in broad daylight!  What do you think of that for a minister of the gospel?”

She was so much in earnest, and her manner so dramatic, that Eloise laughed the first real, hearty laugh she had indulged in since she came to Crompton.  Smoking might be objectionable, but it did not seem to her the most heinous crime in the world, and she had a very vivid remembrance of a coat in which there lurked the odor of many Havanas, and to which she had clung desperately in the darkness and rain on the night which seemed to her years ago.  She did not, however, express any opinion with regard to the Rev. Arthur Mason’s habits, or feel especially interested in him.  But Mrs. Biggs was, and once launched on the subject, she told Eloise that he was from the South, and had not been long in the place; that he was unmarried, and all the girls were after him, Ruby Ann with the rest, and she at least half a dozen years older.

“But, land’s sake!  What does that count with an old maid when a young minister is in the market,” she said, adding that, with the exception of smoking, she believed the new minister was a good man, though for some reason Col.  Crompton did not like him, and had only been to church once since he came, and wouldn’t let Miss Amy go either.

This brought her back to the Cromptons generally, and during the next half hour Eloise had a pretty graphic description of the Colonel and his eccentricities, of Amy, when she was a young girl, of the way she came to the Crompton House, and the mystery which still surrounded her birth.