"Everything has to be made," he ruminated.

She agreed, absently. David put his spoon down, deeply interested.

"Who made God?--another god, higher up?"

"I think," she said, "that I'll send word I have a headache!"

David sighed, and gave up theological research, "Dr. King didn't look
at my scar, but I made Theophilus Bell pay me a penny to show it to
him. Mrs. Richie, when I am a man, I'm _never_ going to wash behind my
ears. I tell Sarah so every morning, I'm going to see my rabbits, now.
Good-by."

He slipped down from his chair and left her to her perplexity--as if
she had not perplexity enough without this! For the last few days she
had been worried almost to death about Mr. Benjamin Wright. She had
not written to Lloyd yet of that terrible interview in the garden
which would drive her from Old Chester; she had been afraid to. She
felt instinctively that his mood was not hospitable to any plan that
would bring her to live in the East. He would be less hospitable if
she came because she had been found out in Old Chester. But her
timidity about writing to him was a curious alarm to her; it was a
confession of something she would not admit even long enough to deny
it. Nevertheless, she did not write. "I will to-morrow," she assured
herself each day, But now, on top of her worry of indecision and
unacknowledged fear, came this new dismay--a party! How furious Lloyd
would be if he heard of it; well, he must not hear of it. But what
could she do? If she put it off with a flimsy excuse, it would only
defer the descent upon her. How helpless she was! They would come,