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 concerning which you have advised us from time to time by letter, I trust,” said her father.

“Yes,” said Mary, “I am still reviewing books for the same publication.”

After breakfast she helped wash the dishes, and then all three sat in straight-back chairs in the barefloored parlor.

“It is my custom,” said the old man, “on the Sabbath day to read aloud from the great work entitled the ‘Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy,’ by the ecclesiastical philosopher and revered theologian, Jeremy Taylor.”

“I know it,” said Mary blissfully, folding her hands.

For two hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr’s. Jeremy’s minor chords soothed her like the music of a tom-tom. “Why, oh why,” she said to herself, ‘‘does some one not write words to it?”

At eleven they went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine bench on which she sat had a penitental forward tilt that would have brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The preacher singled her out, and thundered upon her vicarious