Of the cost of such a dress, and the time and trouble to get it up, he knew nothing. He only thought Kitty should have one, and put a fifty dollar bill in his pocket for the emergency, and went home half an hour earlier than usual to tell Kitty of the honor in store for her. And Kitty was pleased, too, and her face flushed a little as she said she guessed the old black silk would have to do duty again, as a new one, such as he had in his mind, was far beyond their means. “When is it?” she asked, and then John felt again a little twinge he had experienced when Mrs. Lottie named Sunday as the most convenient time for getting “all the family,” as she termed them, together. “Sunday, at six o’clock,” she had said, adding when she saw the questioning look on John’s face: “You know it is dark now at six, and the Sabbath ends at sundown; besides that, I mean to have some sacred music in the evening, so be prepared, please.” John would rather the dinner had been on some other day, but what people like the Guiles and Steeles did must be right, and he had not a thought that Kitty would object. But she did—firmly and decidedly. “God never meant that His day should be remembered by giving dinner parties,” she said. “That was not keeping it holy, and she could not go to Mrs. Steele’s, much as she would like to.” And to this decision she stood firm; and when John met Mr. Steele next day in the office, he told him to say to Mrs. Steele that he regretted it exceedingly, but he must decline her kind invitation to dinner. “The fact is,” he said, “my wife was brought up in New England, where I guess they are more strict about some things than the people in New York, and she thinks she——” John hesitated as if fearful that to give Kitty’s reason would sound too much like a reproof, but Mr. Steele understood him and said, “She does not believe in Sunday dinner parties; that is what you mean. Well, well, I’ve seen the day when I did not, but that time seems to me ages and ages ago. Somehow here in New York first we know we get to doing things which once we would not have done for the world, and Sunday visiting is one of them I’ll tell Lottie. She will be terribly disappointed, for she wanted you badly, but I guess your wife is right. I’m sure she is. Remember the Sabbath—I’ve most forgotten how it goes, though I used to say it the best of any of them, when I was a boy at home;” and folding his hands behind him, Amasa Steele walked up and down his office, thinking of the summers years ago, when he sat in the old-fashioned pew in that little church at the foot of the mountain, and saw the sunshine lighting up the cross behind the chancel, and felt upon his cheek the air sweet with the fragrance of the hay cut yesterday in the meadow by the woods, and said his catechism to the white-haired rector, whose home was now in Heaven.