Leave it to Doris. Ethel Hueston
squeeze it, and if I had my arm around your waist like this—I'd probably squeeze that, too."
Merry laughter greeted the admission. Then in the silence that followed he said slowly. "There are many things I could do, Rosalie, that would do me no harm, and others no harm. But would I get pleasure enough out of the doing to make it worth my while? Suppose even one person should say, 'He is a vain and worldly man, I do not wish to go to him in my trouble.' If one person should say that of me, I would consider I had paid too big a price for the little amusement. It may be one of the things we give in return for the badge of the ministry, my dear—I, for one, am willing to give it. It is the one big talent of our profession—the talent of giving up."
Rosalie looked at him steadily.
"And I believe that any one who is not willing to exercise that talent does not fit into a manse."
Rosalie swallowed hard. "I—I do fit, father—I want to. I—I could never be happy any place in the world—outside the manse." Then she added brightly, "So I must never dance any more?"
"Ask the General," he hedged quickly. "She is the head of the family."
"Well, General, speak up, how about it?"
"What a naughty Problem you are," said the General tenderly. "Well, then, if it is up to me, I say this: Father has put it to you squarely. And I know this, Rosalie, that when anything is put squarely on your own shoulders, you straighten up and carry it without flinching. You are old enough to solve your own troubles. This is yours—find the answer for yourself."
"Oh, you bad General," cried Rosalie, laughing. "Now I can not blame it on any one but myself, and I did so want to sympathize with myself, and say, 'I can dance wonderfully, but they won't let me.' Oh, well, I should worry. And, General, by the way, I may as well confess that I was jealous of you last night. You were so different, and so remote—every one had to go to you, away from the whirl, back into your corner where you stood serene. I kept thinking what a nice manse type you are, always distinct, always different, and sweeter than anything. So I had already decided—I just wanted to find out what you would say."
Then Rosalie was gone in a flash, chasing Zee out into the garden for a merry frolic.
CHAPTER III THE IMP
"Why, Zee, however did you happen to get here ahead of time?" demanded Doris, glancing up from the potatoes she was watching so closely, for potatoes have a most annoying way of burning if you leave them a minute. It had taken Doris a long time to learn that.
"Um, yes, I am a little early, I guess," said Zee, in a still small voice. She busied herself about the table without reminder from her sister, an unwonted procedure for the Imp, but Doris was too concerned with the meal to pay much heed.
Rosalie and Treasure came in together a few moments later, and Zee was sent to call their father to the table.
"And don't dawdle, Babe, for things are piping hot, and we must allow three minutes for the blessing, you know."
Zee's appetite, usually above reproach, was negligible that day, and her gay voice, always so persistent in conversation, was quite subdued. But when the meal was over she lifted modest eyes to her father's face.
"I hope you aren't very exceptionally busy to-day, father," she began ingratiatingly.
"I am. I have Davison's funeral to-morrow—and it is not easy to conduct the funeral services of a bad man in a way that will afford comfort to his mourning relatives."
"I knew you would have a hard time of it, father," said Doris sympathetically. "I was hoping they would get some one else—The Methodist minister is new here, and doesn't know Davison as we did."
"One good thing about him, father," said Rosalie, "he never killed any one that we know of. You can come down strong on that, and sort of glide over everything else we know about him."
"I suppose one should come out flat-footed and hold him up as a model to other people who won't keep to the straight and narrow," said Doris thoughtfully.
"Perhaps. But a kind Providence has made it unnecessary for us to judge, you must remember."
"We can have our opinions, like other people, but we must not air them in the pulpit," said Rosalie.
"But whatever will you say, father? He was everything a good Presbyterian is not, and—"
"Doctor Burgess used to say that death blots out all evil," said Rosalie helpfully. "Can't you play that up?"
Mr. Artman smiled at their eagerness to be of help. "I shall just speak of the rest and sweetness of death after a life of turmoil and confusion, and shall emphasize very strongly how blessed it is that the soul goes direct to the presence of God, who knows all the secret motives hidden from human eyes."
"That is downright genius," approved Doris.
"Pretty slick, I call it," smiled Rosalie.
"Will you be busy the whole afternoon, father?" asked Zee, returning to the original subject.
"Did you want something?" He turned and looked at her, and from her sober face he caught the underlying need. "I always have time for my girls, you know. What can I do for you?"
"I am sorry but I am in bad at school again."
"Again," repeated Rosalie. "Don't you mean still?"
"Miss Hodges wants you to come with me—that is, she says I can not come back until you do. She is going to ask you to give a sort of pledge of good behavior for me, and you can't do it, for I am sure to break over once in a while. So there you are. Don't you think Doris could teach me at home this year?"
"But what in the world did you do, dear?" demanded Doris.
"Well, you will be horrified, of course, Doris—but it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I did not feel well to begin with, and things went wrong from the first. Walter Dwight had some candy, and he passed it to me, and I was eating it—"
"In school?"
"Yes. And Miss Hodges saw me and told me to go to the window and throw it out—a very bad and unsanitary thing, throwing candy all over the play-grounds, but Miss Hodges makes us do it—and so I went to the window and looked out—and—I stood there a minute or so looking around to see what was going on in the playground, and I saw a robin sitting in the big maple, and I squinted my eye up at him, and aimed with the candy, and shot it at him."
Zee looked up sadly, and then lowered her eyes again. "Everybody laughed, and Miss Hodges was not at all pleased. She said I was a little nuisance."
A vague flickering smile passed from face to face around the table.
"What else?"
"She sent me into the science room to sit by myself half an hour and think. Professor was not there."
"What did you do?"
"I sat there."
"Yes?"
"Well, I kept on sitting there, and it was awfully monotonous. You know we have a skeleton in the physiology department now—I told you, didn't I? It was stuck up on the side of the wall on long hooks. And Professor's big amber glasses were on the desk—the girls say he wears them for style—so I put them on the skeleton. It looked awfully funny. And then Satan must have tempted me, for I did a terrible thing."
A long sigh went up from the table.
"The teachers' cloak-room opens from the science room."
"I see it all," said Doris solemnly.
"Go on, Zee. I don't get you, yet."
"The teachers' wraps were in the cloak-room. So I got Miss Hodges'