Christopher bowed his head to the storm and was still--he was one of the people who early learn the power of silence; but Elisabeth, having once mounted her high horse, dug her spurs into her steed and rode on to victory. In those days she was so dreadfully sure of herself that she felt competent to teach anybody anything. "You laugh at me as long as I am funny and I amuse you; but the minute I begin to talk about serious subjects--such as feelings and sentiments and emotions--you lose your interest at once, and turn everything into a joke. The truth is, you have so persistently suppressed your higher self that it is dying of inanition; you'll soon have no higher self left at all. If people don't use their hearts they don't have any, like the Kentucky fish that can't see in the dark because they are blind, don't you know? Now you should take a leaf out of Mr. Tremaine's book. The first minute I saw him I knew that he was the sort of man that cultivated his higher self; he was interested in just the things that interest me." The preacher paused for breath, and looked up to see whether her sermon was being "blessed" to her hearer; then suddenly her voice changed-- "What is the matter, Chris?" "Nothing. Why?" "Because you look so awfully white. I was talking so fast that I didn't notice it; but I expect it is the heat. Do sit down on the grass and rest a bit; it is quite dry; and I'll fan you with a big dock leaf." "I'm all right," replied Christopher, trying to laugh, and succeeding but indifferently. "But I'm sure you are not, you are so pale; you look just as you looked the day that I tumbled off the rick--do you remember it?--and you took me into Mrs. Bateson's to have my head bound up. She said you'd got a touch of the sun, and I'm afraid you've got one now." "Yes, I remember it well enough; but I'm all right now, Betty. Don't worry about me." "But I do worry when you're ill; I always did. Don't you remember that when you had measles and I wasn't allowed to see you, I cried myself to sleep for three nights running, because I thought you were going to die, and that everything would be vile without you? And then I had a prayer-meeting about you in Mrs. Bateson's parlour, and I wrote the hymns for it myself. The Batesons wept over them and considered them inspired, and foretold that I should die early in consequence." And Elisabeth laughed at the remembrance of her fame. Christopher laughed too. "That was hard on you! I admit that verse-writing is a crime in a woman, but I should hardly call it a capital offence. Still, I should like to have heard the hymns. You were great at writing poetry in those days." "Wasn't I? And I used to be so proud when you said that my poems weren't 'half bad'!" "No wonder; that was high praise from me. But can't you recall those hymns?"