He liked this letter so much that he read it over a great many times. It
committed him to nothing; it was dignified and yet sufficiently
grateful, and the large-hearted piety which appeared to inform it
pleased him even more than the alliteration of the words "born and
brought up." He had at first written "born and reared;" but in spite of
the fear lest "brought up" should strike the simple Deacons of the
Second Baptist Church in Chicago as unfamiliar and far-fetched, he could
not resist the assonance. After directing the letter he went upstairs to
bed, and his prayers that night were more earnest than they had been of
late--perhaps because he avoided the dangerous topic. The exercise of
his talent as a letter-writer having put him on good terms with himself,
he slept soundly.

When he awoke in the morning his mood had changed. The day was cloudy; a
thunderstorm was brewing, and had somehow affected his temper. As soon
as he opened his eyes he was aware of the fact that Mrs. Hooper had not
written to him, even on Tuesday morning, when she must have been free,
for the Deacon always went early to his dry-goods store. The
consciousness of this neglect irritated him beyond measure. He tried,
therefore, to think of Chicago and the persons who frequented the Second
Baptist Church. Perhaps, he argued, they were as much ahead of the
people in Kansas City as Mrs. Hooper was superior to any woman he had
previously known. But on this way of thought he could not go far. The
houses in Chicago were no doubt much finer, the furniture more elegant;
the living, too, was perhaps better, though he could not imagine how
that could be; there might even be cleverer and handsomer women there
than Mrs. Hooper; but certainly no one lived in Chicago or anywhere else
in the world who could tempt and bewitch him as she did. She was formed
to his taste, made to his desire. As he recalled her, now laughing at
him; now admiring him; to-day teasing him with coldness, to-morrow