This was a vain hope, however. She had not been home very long, sitting cowering in the dark, when a sudden knock came, and a voice cried, “Julie--Aw, Julie!” Julie waited a hesitant moment, but the voice came again and the knock insisted. It was Mrs. Sam Wicket. When she called, people had to answer and doors had to open. With fingers that were still tremulous, Julie turned the key. Three faces peered in at her, sharp with inquiry, in the flare of electricity that Julie turned on again. Mrs. Wicket had in tow her old aunt, Mrs. Stover, and Miss Mary Humphries also. It was a delegation of inquiry. “Well,” Mrs. Wicket announced. “I didn’t b’lieve you’d gone to bed this early.” “Walk in,” Julie said, with dutiful hospitality, which was superfluous, for, headed by Mrs. Wicket, the three were already trooping through to the sitting-room. “Here, I can’t see a thing. Where’s that hateful button? There, now!” Mrs. Wicket flooded the neat little room with light. “Now, then, Julie, we stopped by to see what was the matter with you,” she announced. She was a thin woman, with dark and snappy eyes, very precise in her brown dress, to which there was not a superfluous ruffle, as there was not an extra ounce of flesh on her spare body. “No’m, thank you, I always prefer a stiff-backed chair; you take the rocker yourself,” she interpolated to Miss Mary Humphries. Miss Mary sat down in the patent plush rocker,--one that Julie’s father had bought in the old days,--and her square figure firmly established there and her hands clasped upon her Gospel Hymn book, she stared at Julie. “What made you slip away like that, Julie?” she demanded. “Was you feelin’ bad, honey?” old Mrs. Stover asked. She was a tired old woman whose eighty years found it hard to keep up with her niece’s forty-five energetic ones, but she was afraid to be left alone and so was forced to trail feebly in the other’s wake. She gasped now as she sank upon the sofa, her mouth open and tremulous, although she tried every now and again to shut it. But uncertain and dim as her eyes were, they were the only ones that held any comfort for Julie. “Was you sick?” she repeated. But Mrs. Wicket, who never paid any attention to what her aunt said, cut her short and demanded again, “What made you slip out of church like that, Julie?” “I--I felt kind of funny,” Julie parried, her cheeks turning red. “Mrs. Anderson said you stole out like that because you were afraid Brother Seabrook would call on you to pray,” Miss Humphries announced heavily. “Mrs. Anderson’s right hot with you, Julie, for givin’ her the slip like that,” Mrs. Wicket stated. Julie said nothing. She sat with tightly folded hands on her knees and forced herself to look straight at first one inquisitor and then the other, with what might appear to be an air of composure, although the eyes seemed to bore into her soul, and to meet them squarely caused her almost a physical discomfort.