"I am going to walk over to Dale with Bijou Brown and her father," said Ethel. "That isn't as nice a church as ours. We will take the others into Kalsing, eh, husband?" said Mabel; "that is, if they will come." "I will go to the scaffold with Mrs. Ketchum," protested Sir Robert gallantly. "What do you youngsters say?" "Ramsay and I thought we would walk over to that little village on the crest of a hill that one can see from my window," said Mr. Heathcote. "You had much better go to church, --much better. But of course your soul is your own," said Sir Robert. "You won't have much body left when you get back: it is a good twenty miles," remarked Mr. Ketchum. "Oh, that is nothing." replied Mr. Ramsay. "Forty miles there and back! Are they crazy?" Mrs. Ketchum asked of Mabel _sotto voce_; to which a smile and shake of the head came in answer.--"The day is very damp, Job. I am almost afraid to go out; but it is my duty, and I will." "That's right, ma. Do your duty. It is a good earthly as well as heavenly investment," replied Mr. Ketchum. "But I wish, son, that you would live in Kalsing, next to the church, or in New York, which would be better. I saw a beautiful house advertised in the neighborhood of Trinity Church the other day, and wrote to ask about it," said Mrs. Ketchum, who was always in spirit moving the family away from Fairfield. "You are too speculative, ma, entirely," said he. "You are like my partner, Richardson, who would write to ask the Czar what he would take for the Winter Palace, if I'd let him, when if steamships were a dollar a dozen he couldn't put up enough to buy a gang-plank. I can't move next to a church, because all you womenites belong to different ones; but I can take a room for you in the steeple and have an elevator put in that will make close connection with the services, if you like." "Don't be irreverent, my son," said Mrs. Ketchum, who, like some other Protestants, believed in an infallible steeple, if not an infallible Pope. "I don't expect _my_ wishes to be considered in anything." "Oh, come, now, ma; that isn't fair. Except that I married to suit myself, which is about the only foolish thing that I have done, I have been tolerably obedient, I think," said Mr. Ketchum, aware that he was on dangerous ground. "Do tell us about it. You wanted him to marry some one else,--some one with a fortune, didn't you?" said Mrs. Sykes. "Quite natural, I am sure." "She wanted me to marry the ugliest woman east of the Rockies," said Mr. Ketchum. "But I couldn't stand that face behind my cups and saucers three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and I bolted to England, where my wife picked me up." "She wasn't so ugly at all, Job, except that her nose was a little aquiline," protested Mrs. Ketchum. "Aquiline as a camel's back," asserted her son, in an aside. "And her hair _was_ rather auburn," Mrs. Ketchum went on, in reluctant concession.