Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/63

 thimble, symbol of spinsterhood, and young Edward's heart had sunk to a very low position in his breast. The dime, indicative of riches, had fallen to his own lot, but there was no comfort in that. If Alice were never going to marry anybody, why, then, of course she was never going to marry him, and he felt very miserable about it. But she did her best to comfort him—and to shock him at the same time. She leaned close and whispered in his ear:

"My father says that marriage is all poppycock anyway."

Oddly enough, at that very moment Alice's father arrived to fetch her home.

Edward, who had never seen him before, expected an abnormal, perhaps a monstrous parent, with a malicious and rather diabolic face, the laugh of an ogre and a loud assertive voice. But Ruggles was unimpeachably quiet and easy. He was not even big. It was not possible to believe that the smooth, untroubled forehead concealed so many sardonic and outrageous thoughts.

One saw before one a man who by not believing in God had defied Him, who by not attending church had defied Edward's own father, who believed man to be only a superior monkey, who would go to Hell when he died and burn in ever-