"But ma'am--but Mrs. Ward," said the girl, plainly hurt at the reproof,
"I was practicing. I belong to the choir."

Alfaretta had dropped the tea-towels, hot with sunshine and smelling of
clover-blossoms, upon her well-scoured dresser, and then turned and
looked at her mistress reproachfully. "I don't know what I am going to do
if I can't practice," she said.

"You don't mean to say you sing that in church?" cried Helen. "Where do
you go?"

"Why, I go to your church," said the still injured Alfaretta,--"to Mr.
Ward's. We're to have that hymn on Sabbath"--

"Oh, there must be some mistake," remonstrated Helen. "I'm sure Mr. Ward
did not notice that verse."

"But it's all like that; it says"--

"Don't tell me any more," Helen said. "I've heard enough. I had no idea
such awful words were written." Then she stopped abruptly, feeling her
position as the preacher's wife in a way of which she had never thought.

Alfaretta's father was an elder in John's church, which gave her a
certain ease in speaking to her mistress that did not mean the slightest
disrespect.

"Is it the words of it you don't like?" said Alfaretta, rather relieved,
since her singing had not been criticised.