The Faith Doctor. Eggleston Edward
think, he asked me if I liked Wagner's music."
"How did you get out of it?"
"I didn't get out of it at all. I just told him I had never heard anything of Wagner's. But when he found that I was Mrs. Gouverneur's niece it made things all right with him, and he made as handsome a speech about my great-grandfather and all the rest as Aunt Harriet could have done herself."
"Wasn't Mrs. Hilbrough surprised to hear that you were somebody?"
"I don't know."
"Well, don't you think she was?"
"May be so."
"Didn't she seem pleased?"
"I think she was relieved, for my confession that I hadn't heard many operas bothered her."
"You said Mr. Millard was polite. How was he polite?"
"He made you feel that he liked you, and admired you; I can't tell you how. He didn't say a single flattering word to me, but when he promised to meet Mrs. Hilbrough again, to arrange about the people she is to have at the reception, he bowed to me and said, 'And Miss Callender, I hope.'"
"I'll tell you what, Phillida, I'll bet he took a fancy to you."
"Nonsense, Agatha Callender; don't talk such stuff. He's been for years in society, and knows all the fine people in New York."
"Nonsense, yourself, Phillida; you're better than any of the fine ladies in New York. Mr. Millard isn't good enough for you. But I just know he was taken with you."
"Do you think I'm going to have my head turned by bows and fine speeches that have been made to five hundred other women?"
"There never was any other woman in New York as fine as you, Phillida."
"Not among your acquaintance, and in your opinion, my dear, seeing you hardly know any other young woman but me."
"I know more than you think I do. If you had any common sense, Phillida, you'd make the most of Aunt Harriet, and marry some man that would furnish you with a horse and a carriage of your own. But you won't. You're just a goosey. You spend your time on the urchins down in Mackerelville. The consequence is you'll never get married, and I shall have you on my hands an old maid who never improved her opportunities."
"What stuff!" laughed Phillida.
"You've got a fine figure—a splendid figure," proceeded the younger, "and a face that is sweet and charming, if I do say it. It's a dreadful waste of woman. You wrap your talent in a Sunday-school lesson-paper and bury it down in Mackerelville."
At this point Mrs. Callender put away her elaborate hand-finished stocking, saying softly:
"Agatha, why do you tease Phillida so?"
"Because she's such a goose," said the younger sister, stubbornly.
Twenty minutes later Agatha, looking from her bedside in the dark corner of the room, saw her sister kneeling by a chair near the fireside. The sight of Phillida at prayer always awed her. Agatha herself was accustomed to say, before jumping into bed, a conventional little prayer, very inclusive as to subjects embraced, and very thin in texture, but Phillida's prayers were different. Agatha regarded the form of her sister, well developed and yet delicately graceful, now more graceful than ever as she knelt in her long night-dress, her two hands folded naturally the one across the other, and her head bowed. As she arranged the bed, Agatha followed mentally what she imagined to be the tenor of the prayer—she fancied that Phillida was praying to be saved from vanity and worldliness; she knew that each of the little urchins in the mission Sunday-school class was prayed for by name. She turned away a moment, and then caught sight of Phillida as she unclasped her hands and rested them on the chair. Agatha knew that when Phillida changed her position at the close of her prayer it was to recite, as she always did, the "Now I lay me," which was associated in her mind, as in Agatha's, with an oriental environment, a swarthy nurse in waist-cloth and shoulder scarf, and, more than all, was linked with her earliest memories of the revered father at whose knees the children were accustomed to repeat it. When Phillida rose to her feet in that state of exaltation which prayer brings to one who has a natural genius for devotion, the now penitent and awe-stricken Agatha went to her sister, put her arms about her neck, and leaned her head upon her shoulder, saying softly:
"You dear, good Phillida!"
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