“A religious mountebank is the most despicable of humbugs,” said March’s breezy voice, as he whirled a pebble from the walk with his cane, and watched it leap to the middle of the street. Hester twisted her neck to look into Hetty’s eyes. “They are discussing their beloved and eloquent pastor! My heart goes out to those two people!” CHAPTER III. “HETTY! do you ever think what it would be like to be engaged?” “Engaged to do what?” said Hetty lazily. She lay as in a cradle, in a grassy hollow under an apple tree—the Anak of his tribe. The branches, freighted with pink and white blooms, dipped earthward until the extreme twigs almost brushed the grass, and shut in the two girls arbor-wise. The May sun warmed the flowers into fragrance that hinted subtly of continual fruitiness. Hester said she tasted, rather than smelled it. Bees hummed in the boughs; through the still blandness of the air a light shower of petals fell silently over Hetty’s blue gown, settled upon her hair, and drifted in the folds of the afghan covering Hester’s lower limbs. Homer had discovered in the garden fence a gate opening into this orchard, and confidentially revealed the circumstance to Hetty who, in time, imparted it to Hester, and conspired with her to explore the paradise as soon as the boys and Fanny were safely off to Sunday School. “Engaged to do what?” Hetty had said in such good faith that she opened dreamy eyes wide at the accent of the reply. “To be married, of course, Miss Ingenuous! What else could I mean?” “Oh-h-h!” still more indolently. “I don’t know that I ever thought far in that direction. Why should I?” “Why shouldn’t you, or any other healthy and passably good-looking girl, expect to be engaged—and be married—and be happy? It is time you began to take the matter into consideration, if you never did before.” “There is usually another party to such an arrangement.” “And why not in your case?” “Where should he come from? Is he to drop from the moon? Or out of the apple tree”—stirred to the simile by the flick of a tinted petal upon her nose. “Or am I to stamp him out of the earth, _à la_ Pompey? And what could I do with him if he were to pop up like a fairy prince, at this or any other instant?” “Fall in love with him, and marry him out-of-hand! I _wish_ you would, Hetty, and take me to live with you! That is one of my dearest dreams. I have thought it all out when the backache keeps me awake at night, and when I get quiet dreamy hours by day, when _he_ is off pastoraling, and the boys and Fan are at school, and baby Annie is asleep, and I can hear Tony crooning ‘Sweet Julia’ so far away I can’t distinguish the frightful words, and you are going about the house singing to yourself, and blessing every room you enter like a shifting sunbeam.” “Why, my pet, you are talking poetry!”