It was Sunday. The inevitable May cold spell was over. Like half-perished insects, the Lawtons gathered on the porch and basked in the early sunshine. Presently John Lawton, who was sensitive to heat, particularly on Sundays, remarked that by the calendar it was May, but by his feelings it was late June. And Sybil dabbed at his forehead with her wisp of a handkerchief, and answered, with affectionate impertinence: "Well, it's not excessive originality of thought that wears you out, papa, for yesterday you made the dignified and impressive statement that the calendar said it was May, but your feelings told you it was November. No, don't apologize, dear," and she gave him an explosive kiss, "but put your little calendar idea away now for a while--say till fall, and it'll come out quite bright and useful." Mrs. Lawton exclaimed: "Sybil!" then, in an excusing tone, "Ah! if we had our former surroundings I'm sure your manners and words would be quite in consonance with them!" "No doubt of it!" promptly acquiesced Sybil, while Dorothy cried: "Papa, positively you ought to take strong measures with Syb, even though she is as tall as you are--you should shake her!" And the utter absurdity of the suggestion sent them indoors in a gale of laughter that Mrs. Lawton denounced from behind the coffee urn as "absolutely heretical." Instantly Sybil, with lance in rest, came charging at her mother: "Ho--ho! To the rescue! The English language is in danger! Mamma, had I so misused a word, you would have rapped me on the head with your thimble, _à la_ governess Anna Smith, of evil memory." Mrs. Lawton pushed up the quite dry bandage from her brows--that bandage was generally visible on Sunday mornings till after church bells ceased their troubling--and said: "'Pon my word, Sybil, your conduct sometimes approaches the contumacious! Dorothy, a smile may degenerate into a grin, and what amuses you is beyond my power of vision. I do know, however, that my English is unassailable." "But," Dorothy tremulously ventured, "but, by heretical laughter, mamma, did you not mean instead that our noise was inappropriate, or----?" "Miss!" broke in Letitia Lawton, "I meant what I said. It's Sunday, and it's heresy to laugh aloud on that day! Pass your father the cream-jug; I've lived with him in honorable wedlock for twenty years, but I can't sugar or cream his coffee right to this day." "But, mamma," said Sybil, crunching a tiny radish, "is not heresy an unsound opinion----" "Well, it's got to be an opinion opposed to Scripture!" and Mrs. Lawton hammered the words to the table with her knife-handle. "Not necessarily," mildly objected John Lawton, as he pushed his cup toward the deity behind the urn. "People have committed heresy against other things than the Scriptures. You can have an unsound opinion without its being a religious one."