"I didn't 'run after' her. You do call things such dreadful names, Mary Beck! There, I'm getting cross, my foot is all stinging." "Turn it just the other way," advised Mary eagerly. "Let me pound it for you," and she briskly went to the rescue. Betty wondered afresh why she liked this friend herself so much, and yet disliked so many things that she said and did. Serena always said that Betty had a won't-you-please-like-me sort of way with her, and Mary Beck felt it more than ever as she returned to her rocking-chair and jogged on again, but she could not bend from her high sense of disapproval immediately. "What do you think the unjust steward parable means, then?" she asked, not exactly returning to the fray, but with an injured manner. "It is in the Sunday-school lesson to-morrow, and I can't understand it a bit,--I never could." "Nor I," said Betty, in a most cheerful tone. "See here, Becky, it doesn't rain, and we can go and ask Mr. Grant to tell us about it." "Go ask the minister!" exclaimed Mary Beck, much shocked. "Why, would you dare to?" "That's what ministers are for," answered Betty simply. "We can stay a little while and see the girls, if he is busy. Come now, Becky," and Becky reluctantly came. She was to think a great many times afterward of that talk in the garret. She was beginning to doubt whether she had really succeeded in settling all the questions of life, at the age of fifteen. The two friends went along arm-in-arm under the still-dripping trees. The parsonage was some distance up the long Tideshead street, and the sun was coming out as they stood on the doorsteps. The minister was amazed when he found that these parishioners had come to have a talk with him in the study, and to ask something directly at his willing hands. He preached the better for it, next day, and the two girls listened the better. As for Mary Beck, the revelation to her honest heart of having a right in the minister, and the welcome convenience of his fund of knowledge and his desire to be of use to her personally, was an immense surprise. Kind Mr. Grant had been a part of the dreaded Sundays, a fixture of the day and the church and the pulpit, before that; he was, indirectly, a reproach, and, until this day, had never seemed like other people exactly, or an every-day friend. Perhaps the good man wondered if it were not his own fault, a little. He tried to be very gay and friendly with his own girls at supper-time, and said afterward that they must have Mary Beck and Betty Leicester to take tea with them some time during the next week. "But there are others in the parish who will feel hurt," urged Mrs. Grant anxiously; and Mr. Grant only answered that there must be a dozen tea-parties, then, as if there were no such things as sponge-cake and ceremony in the world! XII. BETTY AT HOME.