She had half risen, her eyebrows had risen wholly. She looked singularly alarming. Val retreated backwards to the door, and Mrs. Gano resumed her seat. "I ain't so igorunt as you think," the child persisted. "The reason I stopped going to church was because my conscience wouldn't let me join in." Mrs. Gano turned and looked at the child over the back of her arm-chair. There was a gleam of amused tolerance in the steely eyes. Val was quick to detect it. "You see, it's not worth while to waste the whole morning nearly when the only thing you can join in is a piece they don't do every Sunday." "Which is that?" asked Mrs. Gano, in an odd voice. She had turned away again, and Val couldn't see her face now. "That long piece about the weather." "The _weather_?" "Yes--lightnings, and whales, and things. Don't you know that one? It's like this." She put her hands behind her, and shrilly intoned: "'O ye green things, angels and fowls of the air, praise Him and magnify Him for-r-rever. O ye--'" "That will do," interrupted Mrs. Gano, in a stifled voice. Val felt snubbed; there was a lot more that, with encouragement, she would have endeavored to do justice to. She felt for the door-handle, but paused again on the threshold. "Mayn't I go and sit with father?" "Certainly not; you are to go to church." "Gran'ma." There was a renewal of courage in the clear little voice. With a bound she planted herself in front of the old lady's chair. "I _oughtn't_ to go. It's pertending; it's wicked. For I can't say the 'I b'lieve' any more." Mrs. Gano rose in her wrath and towered. Val stood to her guns, looking up with determined, excited face. "I used to join in when I was younger: I used to bow, just like mother. Father never bowed. _I_ don't any more, neither." Mrs. Gano seized her by the shoulder and propelled her to the door. Wild thoughts of dungeons and burned martyrs flew through the child's mind. Still clutching the infidel, Mrs. Gano opened the door. In an awful voice she called: "Jerusha! Venus!" Venus appeared with perturbed countenance, out of which all genial companionableness had fled. Yes, that was the kind of face an executioner might wear. "Take Miss Val up-stairs and get her ready for church." Venus took hold of the child none too gently, and pulled her, wriggling vainly, up the long staircase. It was no use to cling feverishly to the banisters; it only hurt her hands. Half-way up Venus stopped for breath. Val looked back to see if her grandmother was still there. Yes; leaning exhausted against the frame of the door, with her handkerchief to her lips. Now Venus was dragging her on again. In a fresh access of rage the child put her chin over the banisters and screamed: "All the time they're doing the 'I b'lieve,' I shall go like this." She shook her head with such passionate dissent that her shock of wild hair swirled madly back and forth in a cloudy circle, completely hiding the mutinous, flushed face of the infidel.