"Really!" said Miss Banks, with an embarrassed laugh, astonishment and confusion struggling for the mastery on her flushed face. "'Is Saul also among the prophets?' There! I declare, I am quoting again. Is that wicked, too? Prof. Easton, how is that? Miss Wilbur has been to camp-meeting, and is not responsible for her words, but you ought to be good authority. Is it wicked for me to quote Scripture? Haven't I as good a right to Bible verses as any of you? Here has Miss Wilbur been giving us lessons in that art for the last two years, and she suddenly deserts and takes to preaching at us. Is that fair, now? If it were not wicked I might say to her, 'Physician, heal thyself.'" Marion bestowed a quick, searching, almost pleading glance on Prof. Easton, and then looked down with a flushed and disappointed face. He was not equal to a bold spreading of his professed colors. He laughed, not easily, or as if he enjoyed the sharp words veiled so thinly by pleasantry, but as if he were in an awkward position, and did not see his way out. "You were just a little hard on Miss Wilbur in your selections, you must remember," he said at last. "People can always be excused for more or less sombreness on the first day of the term." And then he went away hurriedly, as if he desired to avoid anything further in that strain. Hard on Miss Wilbur? Did he suppose she cared for such vapid nonsense? What surprised and hurt her was that he so utterly ignored the question at issue. Did he, a professed Christian of many years' standing, see no impropriety in this manner of quoting the very words of the Lord himself! or hadn't he sufficient moral courage to rebuke it? Either conclusion was distasteful; especially distasteful to her, Marion found, because the one in question was Prof. Easton. Hitherto she had held him a little above the ordinary. Was he then so _very_ common after all? This little occurrence did not serve to sweeten her day. The more so, that after she had quieted down a little, at noon, she tried to join the other teachers as usual, and felt an air of stiffness, or embarrassment, or unnaturalness, of some sort, in their manner to her. Twice, as she came toward them, Miss Banks, who was talking volubly, hushed into sudden and utter silence. After that, Marion went into the upper hall and ate her lunch by herself. Matters grew worse, rather than better, as the afternoon session dragged its slow hours along. The air of the school-room seemed close and unbearable, and the moment a window was raised the driving rain rushed in and tormented the victim who sat nearest to it. Poor Marion, who was as susceptible to the temperature of rooms as a thermometer, tried each window in succession during the afternoon, and came to the desperate conclusion that the rain came from all quarters of the leaden sky at once.