“Yes, yes; maybe ’tis; but she never came right out as you do, rough shod, on a feller. She reads her prayer-book at home, and adorns her profession that way. Yes, yes; you want to go to the _true_ church,” Uncle Phil said, adding that he “didn’t think no great things of that persuasion, or leastwise never had till he knew Louise and Maude. They were the right stripe, if they were ’Piscopals; and maybe for once he’d go to the doin’s; but they mustn’t expect him to jine in the performance, nor bob his head down when he went in, nor keep jumping up like a dancing-jack. He should jest snuggle down in the pew, and sleep it out,” he said. Maude gave him full permission to do as he liked, and, just as the bell of St. Jude’s was pealing forth its last summons, old Bobtail drew up in front of the church, and deposited his load upon the steps. Whether it was from a wish to surprise his young ladies, or because of the softening influence around him, Uncle Phil did not lounge or sleep in one corner of the pew, but, greatly to Edna’s astonishment, took a prayer-book from the rack in front, and followed the service tolerably well for a stranger. Only in the Creed he was silent, and in the fourth response to the Litany; “The _Trinity_ part,” he “couldn’t go;” and he took a pinch of snuff on the sly, and glanced furtively at the two young maidens kneeling so devoutly at his side. “They act kinder as if they did mean it, and were not puttin’ on, and thinkin’ of their neighbors’ bunnets,” he thought, as he listened to the services, which he decided were “confoundedly long, and a very trifle tedious.” It was many a year since Uncle Phil had heard our church service; and something in its singular beauty and fitness impressed him as he never was impressed before. All those kneeling people around him were _not_ “putting on.” Some of them surely were earnest and sincere, and were actually talking to somebody who heard, and whose presence even he could almost feel, as he sat listening to the sermon, which was from the text, “For he loveth our nation, and hath builded us a synagogue.” The sermon was a plain, straightforward one; and, as the clergyman took the ground, as an inducement for good works, that the building of a synagogue was the direct means of commending the centurion to the Saviour’s notice, Uncle Phil, who believed more in works than in faith, began to prick up his ears, and to wonder if he hadn’t better do something which would be put to his credit in Heaven’s great book of record. “I can’t snivel, and say I’m sorry when I ain’t, but I should like to have a balance sheet in my favor, when I get on t’other side,” he thought; and then he began to wonder if “it wouldn’t please the _gals_, and the Lord, too,” if he was to build a chapel at Rocky Point.