"You won't have much body left when you get back: it is a good twenty
miles," remarked Mr. Ketchum.

"Oh, that is nothing." replied Mr. Ramsay.

"Forty miles there and back! Are they crazy?" Mrs. Ketchum asked of Mabel
_sotto voce_; to which a smile and shake of the head came in answer.--"The
day is very damp, Job. I am almost afraid to go out; but it is my duty,
and I will."

"That's right, ma. Do your duty. It is a good earthly as well as heavenly
investment," replied Mr. Ketchum.

"But I wish, son, that you would live in Kalsing, next to the church, or
in New York, which would be better. I saw a beautiful house advertised in
the neighborhood of Trinity Church the other day, and wrote to ask about
it," said Mrs. Ketchum, who was always in spirit moving the family away
from Fairfield.

"You are too speculative, ma, entirely," said he. "You are like my partner,
Richardson, who would write to ask the Czar what he would take for the
Winter Palace, if I'd let him, when if steamships were a dollar a dozen he
couldn't put up enough to buy a gang-plank. I can't move next to a church,
because all you womenites belong to different ones; but I can take a room
for you in the steeple and have an elevator put in that will make close
connection with the services, if you like."

"Don't be irreverent, my son," said Mrs. Ketchum, who, like some other
Protestants, believed in an infallible steeple, if not an infallible Pope.