Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/149

 about falling. I think that we were monkeys before we were men and pollywogs before we were monkeys, and oysters before that. . . And you think that everybody that isn't an Episcopalian will go to Hell, and I don't. . . So I'm not going to stand up and preach what I don't believe for a living—the way poor father does."

But Edward said nothing of the kind. Why spoil a whole summer? Why not wait till the very last minute, and then tell Dear Mother that he was going to duck out of being a minister? Besides, John would be home in August. If Dear Mother proved to be too awfully horrid and despotic, one could always go down to the sea with John, and John would help one to France and to the studio of a good master.

So he accepted Dear Mother's announcement about the divinity school with becoming gravity and until John's arrival in August continued to play the hypocrite.

July was a dull month for Edward. It was so hot that the pencil or the brush kept slipping sideways in his fingers, and so much water had fallen in June that mosquitoes made out-of-door sketching impossible. To make matters worse the Ruggles family had gone to the White Mountains for the summer, and both Sarah and Dear Mother were almost murderously ill with hay fever.