To get parish work ahead so that things would run themselves for the month’s absence which had been granted the clergyman was no small undertaking. William West was very busy, and a little preoccupied in his endeavor to put his best thought, not upon his own happiness, but upon committees, or Sunday-school matters, or his assistant’s spiritual anxieties concerning his superior’s indifference to the color of the lectern bookmarks; so it chanced that he saw less of Amy than in the earlier part of their engagement. He had but little time to think of her, and absolutely no time to think of himself. They were to be married on Thursday. Late Monday afternoon Mr. West, with great timidity, ventured into Mrs. Paul’s drawing-room, with the bold purpose of abstracting his sweetheart for a walk. The project was, of course, promptly crushed. “As though Amy had any time for that sort of thing!” said Mrs. Paul. “Do you see those presents? She has got to acknowledge every one of them! Amy, your cousin John and I will entertain Mr. West. You can write your notes here, and let him look at you; that’s quite enough for him.” Amy smiled at him across a barricade of silver bric-à-brac. “Billy thinks silver picture-frames and brushes and things are a dreadful waste of money,” she said. “Just think how thankful you ought to be, Billy, that I am making our manners for you; you couldn’t say ‘Thank you,’ with truth.” “Oh, truth,” said John Paul, lounging about the room, with his hands in his pockets--“truth, my dear little cousin, is governed by the law of benefit; didn’t you know that? If it makes the donors feel happy, tell them West has longed for nothing in the world so much as a silver glove buttoner. Now, if you told them the truth, fancy the shock! Ask the Parson.” “The Parson has no such base and cynical theory,” Miss Townsend responded promptly; “have you, Billy? You don’t think truth is governed by the law of benefit?” “I think truth-telling is,” he assured her. John Paul assumed that look of artless and simpering satisfaction which one sees on the countenance of the unprotected male, who, in the bosom of his family, finds himself indorsed by a higher power. “There, Amy, what did I tell you? I had an instance of it yesterday. I”-- “Oh, here is a third asparagus fork,” murmured Amy; “what _shall_ I say about it?” “What’s your instance?” said the minister.