“Yes, it is a sad affair. I cannot help thinking it would have been a pardonable lie if Miss Adams had denied the truth when the girl confronted her with the story. It is the one situation in life where a lie is excusable, I think. It would have saved this poor girl no end of sorrow, and it could not have added much to the mother’s burden. I think lying must have originated with an erring woman.” Joy looked at her rector with startled eyes. “A lie is never excusable,” she said, “and I do not believe it ever saves sorrow. But I see you do not mean what you say, you only feel very sorry for the girl; and you surely do not forget that the lie originated with Satan, who told a falsehood to Eve.” CHAPTER X EVER since early girlhood Joy Irving had formed a habit of jotting down in black and white her own ideas regarding any book, painting, concert, conversation or sermon, which interested her, and epitomising the train of thought to which they led. The evening after her walk and talk with the rector of St Blank’s, she took out her note-book, which bore a date four years old under its title “My Impressions,” and read over the last page of entries. They had evidently been written at the close of some Sabbath day and ran as follows:— Many a kneeling woman is more occupied with how her skirts hang than how her prayers ascend. I am inclined to think we all ought to wear a uniform to church if we would really worship there. God must grow weary looking down on so many new bonnets. I wore a smart hat to church to-day, and I found myself criticising every other woman’s bonnet during service, so that I failed in some of my responses. If we could all be compelled by some mysterious power to _think aloud_ on Sunday, what a veritable holy day we would make of it! Though we are taught from childhood that God hears our thoughts, the best of us would be afraid to have our nearest friends know them. I sometimes think it is a presumption on the part of any man to rise in the pulpit and undertake to tell me about a Creator with whom I feel every whit as well acquainted as he. I suppose such thoughts are wicked, however, and should be suppressed. It is a curious fact, that the most aggressively sensitive persons are at heart the most conceited. I wish people smiled more in church aisles. In fact, I think we all laugh at one another too much and smile at one another too seldom. After the devil had made all the trouble for woman he could with the fig leaf, he introduced the French heel. It is well to see the ridiculous side of things, but not of people. Most of us would rather be popular than right. To these impressions Joy added the following:— It is not the interior of one’s house, but the interior of one’s mind which makes home.