Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/142

 out the rest of the dances, Alice; I cannot have an uncorseted female gamboling about the rectory."

Alice, hot with rage and shame, flung out of the room. She was for getting her hat and cloak and walking home, all the long miles, in her little high-heeled slippers. But Edward, who had followed her into the hall, begged and pleaded with her. And James, too, infatuated with the girl's beauty, came and added his pleadings to Edward's. She consented to stay then until her father came for her. But she would stay on the veranda—cloaked and hatted and ready to go.

"Even if she is your mother, Eddie," she exclaimed, "I don't ever want to see her again, and I won't ever speak to her."

The two children found two chairs in a dark corner of the veranda. Presently Edward had made her laugh.

Suddenly she laid her little hand on his and said: "You're sweet, Eddie. You're good as gold. Nobody could help loving you. I wish you weren't going to be a minister."

Edward smiled in the dark. He was not going to be a minister. But that was his secret. He was going to be a great artist. He was going to fill the world with paintings of a slim Alice in a black velvet dress with an Irish lace collar.

"When you are a minister, Eddie," said Alice,