I was starting full of glee when the sight of Aunt Dorothy, spinning silently in the hall as we passed the door, with Placidia beside her, threw a little shadow over my contentment. Aunt Dorothy so completely represented to me the majesty of law, and at the bottom of our hearts both Roger and I so trusted and honored her, that in spite even of my Father's sanction, something of misgiving troubled me at the sight of her grave face. With a sudden impulse I ran back, and, standing before her, said-- "Aunt Dorothy, you are not angry? I shall not dance, only look, and soon be at home again, and all will go on the same as ever." She shook her head, but more sorrowfully than angrily. "Eve only looked," said she, "but nothing went on the same evermore." At that moment my father came back to seek me, and, catching Aunt Dorothy's last words, he said kindly but gravely, "Do not let us trouble the child's conscience with our scruples. It is a serious danger to force our scruples on others. When experience of their own peculiar weaknesses and besetments has led them to scruple at things for themselves, it is another matter. But to add to God's laws is almost as tremendous a mistake as to subtract from them. Our additions, moreover, are sure to end in subtractions in some other direction. Indifferent things done with a guilty conscience lead to guilty things done with an indifferent conscience. In inventing imaginary sins you create real sinners." "Well, brother, it is as you please," said Aunt Dorothy, "but I should have thought our new parson reading from that blasphemous 'Book of Sports' from the pulpit, commanding the people to dance around the May-poles on the Sabbath afternoons, was enough to turn any serious person against them." "Nay; that is exactly one of the strongest reasons why I go to-day," said my father. "I go to show that it is not the May-poles we scruple at, but the cruel robbing of the poor by the desecration of the day given them by God for higher things." And he led me away. But my free, innocent gladsomeness was gone.