said Jim, and therefore can afford to be brusque. Jim shrugs his
shoulders.

"Wicked," he says. "If the preacher is to be credited, it is you
folks who are wicked. I don't pretend, you know, to be anything
else."

A change of subject seems to the fair Lorena to be desirable, so she
says:

"Why were you not at the hop last night, Mr. Merchant?"

And Jim replies, "I didn't get home in time. I was at the races. I
hear you had a _stunning_--I beg your pardon--a _perfectly splendid_
time. Those are the right words, I believe."

And then the two ladies gathered their silken trains into an
aristocratic grasp of the left hand, and sailed down town on either
side of "Jim" to continue the conversation. And those coral lips had
but just sung--

"My thoughts lie open to the Lord,
Before they're formed within;
And ere my lips pronounce the word
He knows the sense I mean."

What _could_ He have thought of her? Is it not strange that she did
not ask this of herself.

"How are you to-day?" Mr. Jackson asked, shaking his old