But Miles' head had disappeared, following his hands in a dive beneath the table for his egg-cup, rolled off by a movement of his arm that would have seemed scarcely accidental could this young gentleman have been suspected of an ulterior wish to cut short some embarrassing allusion. Every one is endowed with some propensity tending to the discomfiture of others. Laura's talent in this direction, unknown to herself, lay in bringing up people's outgrown inclinations; so keeping them to the mortified level of a self they conceived they had risen above and would fain forget. Reminiscences of this kind are peculiarly afflicting to young divines, to whom the problem of preserving an appearance commensurate with the severity of their doctrine is often in danger from the good memories of their intimate friends. Can we wonder that the ordained preacher of twenty-two shrank sensitively from reminders of the peccadilloes committed by the gay youth of twenty? Miles suffered, in the privacy of family life, from the tendency to treat him as an ordinary young man, whereas, he felt that he had become remarkable. To be informed, at the instant of assuming a superior tone, that he had been used to joining in the customs he condemned was sufficiently humiliating. But Laura's observation held a sting for his irritable conscience that she had no idea of. The dropping of the egg-cup had stopped her slow speech, for she had an acute sense of sympathy for awkwardness in a person ordinarily free from it, being herself studiously graceful. "Let Sally bring you another egg," she was good enough to suggest. The yellow damsel dawdling against the side table put herself to some trouble to carry out the order, for the admiration that was but lukewarm in the house glowed effulgently in the kitchen; the young preacher being idolized by the negroes. But Miles' appetite had been satisfied. He pushed back his plate and looked past his offending sister into space; his mind taking a flight in search of consolation ending at Benvenew, making some pretty notes of a pair of confiding eyes and a sweetly deferential tongue that had never uttered a word hurtful to his self-esteem. Of one devout disciple he was sure. Mingled with his triumph in it was a grateful acknowledgment of the immense advantage in this connection of quality over quantity; the sweetbriar rose being worth all the rest of feminine creation. "What's that about the tournament?" the judge inquired. Three girlish voices chimed an answer of which he extracted the gist at his leisure; managing to arrive at the important item, that Miles was setting himself above all innocent amusements, and declined to accompany his sisters to the tournament.