The Heart's Kingdom

is one of the wonderful variety of women who patch out life, piece by piece, in a beautiful symmetrical pattern and who do not have imagination enough to admire anything about a riotous crazy qui

to do about him, and would do it when you came home. We suspected Judge Powers hadn't written you all the fa

etitia only half knows the flavor of. "But don't try to sketch things, Letiti

romance, don't you?" asked Letitia, hopeful that

hop, ever. I forget things about that ki

ver here beyond the garden where the chapel stands now? Your father bought the property. Part of your garden is old Madam Goodloe's garden and that's why it was so wonderful for Judge Powers to give the lot and let Mr. Goodloe build the chapel there. We all felt that, though some of us were scared when we thought about what you might do when you came home. Still, after we saw t

ng down the rage in the dar

own to the General Conference in Nashville, was examined and ordained, and the presiding bishop sent him out here to Goodloets last November. We don't know anything about him except that he has been fighting in the trenches in France for a year and has had a bullet cut out of his left lung. Everybody adores him, and we all sit spellbound listening to him preach, I think mostly on account of his voice, because none of us ever seems to remember what he is preaching about. He's been having services in the bal

spree?" I asked with a laugh th

wful way to

ru

ent beyond the Phosphate Mills, who all smelled terribly. She worked hard with them twice a week for a month, and then Mother Spurlock, who is the front pillar of his congregation, found that she had taught all the dirty little things to sew with their left hands. She came in one morning and found them all s

out of your purgatory an

a with a laugh. "But we just wan

ut the ball out at the Club we are going to gi

ve the times of our lives. Billy Harvey says his ankles are getting stiff, it's been so long since he has fox-trotted. Do call Mammy or Sallie and let's look at y

their delight my eyes would glance out and fix themselves wistfully on the dim line of Paradise Ridge which was cut by the square steeple of we

he tune of "Drink to me only," and my hand curled around

arently all my friends have been getting the drink habit badly. I'll rescue the poor dears and have an interesting time doing it," I said to myself a

remarkable little baseball evangelist, the tide of which had been rolled back when Nickols had bent his beautiful dark head against mine in Aunt Clara's music room and whispered above the roar of New York, "religion is the most potent form of intoxication" to me, again welled from my heart an

ction, the call for which was upon me by the time Sallie had put me into her

ion and Miss Jessie in another, so I reckon Sallie had better hurry with that New York twilight she's fixing on you," Mammy announced as she stood in my doorway and beamed upon me. "

sped, as Sallie fastened the last hook an

lored Methodist, I am, and if I do say it, I knows how to shake a young pullet in the skillet fer a preacher's taste, black or white. Now go on down and stop that buzzing fer you on the front porch. Sallie,

d the steps and went out on the wide porch to find my friends assembled unde

on was n

e. They all laughed and Hampton Dibrell held my other hand as ardently, though not in quite such light vein. I had to rescue it to

th you a week and not hesitate," ex

d warmly. Billy is contagious and

car and mine, have a chicken supper a

dy asks her-all the men, I mean," Letitia added with enthusiasm to match Billy's. Harriet Henderson is th

into the frying pan and over the fire," said Hampton, who is alw

o stop to dress, I'm afraid," said Letitia meekl

iteral directness and in which he delights greatly. "They undress. You are unclothed enough as to ankles and if you roll the sleeves of your tennis shirt to your shoulders,

" Letitia answered hi

do, for we want chicken dressed with cream gravy and d

a fraction of an inch, rolled down her sleeves another fraction and pushed back into her braids a brown lock that was rioting across her brow. Jessie shook out her muslin ruffles, reefed a fold o

tness. "Hello, Parson! We were just beginning to think about you," was his greeting to the Sacred Jaguar who had come through the garden and around the house. I felt sure tha

e resent it as well as the curious veneer that had spread over my friends at his entry upon the scene. There they stood and sat, six perfectly rational, fairly moral, representative free and equal citizens, cowed by the representative of something that they neither understood nor cared a

presence like that," I said to myself, and then I suddenly determined to begin my rescue work for the religiously involved, a

ent at the Club to-night. Couldn't we-we make some sort of compromise? Or at least couldn't you cut your-prayers short so he can get in an hour or two of his favorite pleasure after-after duty well done?" As I spoke I had come t