Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/47

 look a little drunken. She was really a graceful child with a fine sense of rhythm.

While they staggered about the room, and Miss Bent thumped upon the piano, and Mr. Bent beat upon a xylophone, Alice teased Edward and shocked him and infatuated him.

"You're Doctor Eaton's little boy, aren't you?" Edward mumbled that he was. "Are you pious? Do you go to church every Sunday?"

"Twice."

"We never go. Father don't believe in it. And he says it's a horrible bore. Your brother John ran away from home and went to sea, didn't he? That's what I'd do if I was a preacher's son and they made me go to church."

"What do you do on Sunday?"

"Father's almost always home on Sunday. We go boating and fishing and play ball in the back yard. And at night he reads Walter Scott and Cooper out loud to us. Do you know what father believes? He believes that we were once monkeys and lived in trees."

"My mother says that people who don't keep the Sabbath will go to Hell when they die."

"Do you believe that?"

"Of course," said Edward.

"Shucks!" said Alice. "And anyway I'd rather go to Hell than play a harp, wouldn't you?"