"Veronica is ready for every good word and work, Mrs. Lowell," put in Miss Burridge, "but she's a busy child." "I know that, but I wondered if she could give half an hour to playing a game of croquet with Bert Gayne." "Oh, land!" exclaimed the girl, aghast. "He won't want to." "That's the point, Miss Veronica,"--Mrs. Lowell looked with her loving, radiant gaze into the young girl's eyes. "We want to make him know that young people don't shrink from him. He knows that I don't. I want him to know that an attractive young girl like you doesn't either. You can see that his mind is sick. He has had great sorrow." "Sure!" said Veronica. "It's sorrow enough to have that uncle of his." "Ve-ronica!" exclaimed Miss Burridge with one of her warning looks at the back of Genevieve's head. "You know now what I meant by calling it missionary work," said Mrs. Lowell. "Think about it if you have time. You will find the boy dull and distrustful. I have great hopes of you. Try to make him bright and trustful. I know it can't be done in a minute." The speaker again smiled confidentially into the girl's eyes. Diana appeared in the entrance. "Miss Emerson is in the hammock," she said softly. "Shall we take the back way?" They slipped out the kitchen door and Veronica scrubbed a plate already dry. "Mrs. Lowell is the sweetest, prettiest, most darling woman I ever saw," she stated. "But nothin' like that Miss Diana," uttered Genevieve in, for her, a lowered voice. "She's so grand it scares me when she looks at me, and Matt Blake says her father owns the whole of Pennsylvania." Veronica turned up an already aspiring nose and grunted disparagingly. It was hard to forgive Diana for being a goddess and not chewing gum. CHAPTER VI THE HAUNTED FARM "'Where every prospect pleases,'" said Diana, "'and only man is vile.'" They had crossed the field and come up to the height of the road which commanded an extensive view of the bay and other islands. They stood still for a minute. "Are you at all interested in metaphysics, Miss Diana?" asked her companion. "I think I am. I am interested in everything." "I don't like the latter half of that quotation," said Mrs. Lowell. "It stands to reason that God couldn't create anything vile." "No, of course," agreed the girl. "It is man who makes himself vile." "God's man couldn't do that either," returned Mrs. Lowell. "There is no potentiality in him for vileness." "Then," said Diana, "how do you explain Mr. Gayne and his like?" "He is a man whose real selfhood is buried under a mass of selfishness and cruelty, the beliefs of error and mortality. God doesn't even know what the poor creature believes, and all his mistakes and blundering will have to be blotted out finally by suffering, unless he should learn to turn to the Love that is always available; for God can't know anything unlike Himself." "Your ideas are quite new to me," said the girl. "I am an Episcopalian."