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 “If you are going to marry a minister,” said Aunt Jamesina, picking up Joseph and her knitting and resigning herself to the inevitable with the charming grace that made her the queen of housemothers, “you will have to give up such expressions as ‘dig in.’”

“Why?” moaned Phil. “Oh, why must a minister’s wife be supposed to utter only prunes and prisms? I shan’t. Everybody on Patterson Street uses slang—that is to say, metaphorical language—and if I didn’t they would think me insufferably proud and stuck up.”

“Have you broken the news to your family?” asked Priscilla, feeding the Sarah-cat bits from her lunchbasket.

Phil nodded.

“How did they take it?”

“Oh, mother rampaged. But I stood rock-firm—even I, Philippa Gordon, who never before could hold fast to anything. Father was calmer. Father’s own daddy was a minister, so you see he has a soft spot in his heart for the cloth. I had Jo up to Mount Holly, after mother grew calm, and they both loved him. But mother gave him some frightful hints in every conversation regarding what she had hoped for me. Oh, my vacation pathway hasn’t been exactly strewn with roses, girls dear. But—I’ve won out and I’ve got Jo. Nothing else matters.”

“To you,” said Aunt Jamesina darkly.

“Nor to Jo, either,” retorted Phil. “You keep on pitying him. Why, pray? I think he’s to be envied.