“Why, Carol—­” he interrupted.

“Just a minute, honey.  After this I am going to be settled and solemn and when I feel perfectly glorious I’ll just say, ’Very good, thank you,’ and—­”

“But, Carol—­”

“Yes, dear, just a second.  This is my final gasp, my last explosion, my dying outburst.  Rah, rah, rah, David.  Three cheers and a tiger.  Amen!  Hallelujah!  Hurrah!  Down with the traitor, up with the stars!  Now it’s all over.  I am a Presbyterian.”

David’s burst of laughter was echoed on every side of the room and the lights were switched on, and with a sickening weakness Carol faced the young people of her husband’s church.

“More Presbyterians, dear, a whole houseful of them.  They wanted to surprise you, but you have turned the tables on them.  This is my wife, Mrs. Duke.”

Slowly Carol rallied.  She smiled the irresistible smile.

“I am so glad to meet you,” she said, softly, “I know we are going to like each other.  Aren’t you glad you got here in time to see me become Presbyterian?  David, why didn’t you warn me that surprise parties were still stylish?  I thought they had gone out.”

Carol watched very, very closely all that evening, and she could not see one particle of difference between these mansers and the young folks in the Methodist Church in Mount Mark, Iowa.  They told funny stories, and laughed immoderately at them.  The young men gave the latest demonstrations of vaudeville trickery, and the girls applauded as warmly as if they had not seen the same bits performed in the original.  They asked David if they might dance in the kitchen, and David smilingly begged them to spare his manse the disgrace, and to dance themselves home if they couldn’t be more restrained.  The young men put in an application for Mrs. Duke as teacher of the Young Men’s Bible Class, and David sternly vetoed the measure.  The young ladies asked Carol what kind of powder she used, and however she got her hair up in that most marvelous manner.

And Carol decided it was not going to be such a burden after all, and thought perhaps she might make a regular pillar in time.

When, as she later met the elder ones of the church, and was invariably greeted with a smiling, “How is our little Methodist to-day,” she bitterly swallowed her grief and answered with a brightness all assumed: 

“Turned Presbyterian, thank you.”

But to David she said: 

“I did seriously and religiously ask the Lord to let me get introduced to the mansers without disgracing myself, and I am just a teeny bit disappointed because He went back on me in such a crisis.”

But David, wise minister and able exponent of his faith, said quickly: 

“He didn’t go back on you, Carol.  It was the best kind of an introduction, and He stood by you right through.  They were more afraid of you than you were of them.  You might have been stiff and reserved, and they would have been cold and self-conscious, and it would have been ghastly for every one.  But your break broke the ice right off.  You were perfectly natural.”