"I suppose it's because I'm so much worse a sinner," she admitted, "but I just can't feel it." "You must give yourself into the Lord's hands, Pauline dear." Flora Haines had heard the evangelist. I began to offer myself passionately in prayer as a vicarious atonement for Pauline's shortcomings. "Don't you feel anything?" Flora urged, "not the least thing?" "Well ... sort of ... something," Pauline confessed. "Well, of course, that's it." "Yes, that's it," I insisted. "Well, I suppose it is," Pauline gave in, mopping her eyes with her handkerchief, "but it isn't the least like what I expected." We heard the school clock strike the quarter hour, and got up, brushing our knees rather guiltily. Flora Haines and I were kept in all that afternoon recess for exceeding our excuse, but Pauline saved herself by bursting into tears as soon as she reached her room, and being sent home with a headache. That was on Thursday, and Saturday afternoon we were all to meet at our house and go together to a great children's meeting, where we were expected to announce that we were saved. Pauline was a little late. I was explaining to Flora Haines that I was to join our church on probation on Sunday, but Flora, being a Baptist, had been put off by her minister until the Revival should be over and he could attend to all the baptisms at once. We naturally expected something similar from Pauline. "I hardly think," she said, stroking her muff and looking very ladylike, "that I shall take such an important step in life until I am older." "But," I objected, "how can anything be more important?" "It's your _soul_, Pauline!" Flora Haines was slightly scandalized. "That's just the reason; it's so important my mother thinks I ought not to take any steps until I can give it my most mature judgment." Flora Haines and I looked at one another silently; we might have known Pauline's mother wouldn't let her do anything so common as get converted. CHAPTER VI I was duly taken into the church on the following Sabbath, to the great relief of my family, having for once exhibited the normal reaction of a young person in my circumstances, and though I have laid much to the door of that institution of the retarding of my development and the dimming of the delicate surface of happiness, I think now it was not wholly bad for me. If I hadn't up to this time found any way of being good by myself, I was now provided with a criterion of conduct toward which even those who hadn't been able to manage it for themselves, moved a public approbation. I have heard my mother say that even Mr. Farley, the banker, who read books on evolution and was a Freethinker (opprobrious term), had been known to pronounce the church an excellent thing for women.