"You mistake, Mr. Bouché," said Rose, turning her clear, grave eyes upon him. "Getting into mischief one's self, never helps anybody else out." "How would you get in?" Bouché said eagerly. "I'd max it on care of you." "Ah, yes, I do not doubt. But--I was not brought up so," Rose said, hesitating over her words. "At home, Sunday is such a special, set-apart, happy day. We never take it for common things." "It would be a very special and happy day for me, if you would take the walk," said Bouché. "Of course _you_ would count it 'common' doings to go with me, any day." "It is not fair to twist my words," said Rose, looking troubled. "Then if it would be _un_common, you can go. You are throwing down opportunities, Miss Rose. I'll take you to some remote, far-wilderness corner, and you shall preach to me till the drum beats. I'm as meek as skim-milk on Sunday. Why, if you only tell me to take my cap and go to chapel, I shall do it." "But you have to do that." "You'd better believe I wouldn't be there else," said Bouché. "But I'll listen to you a quarter longer than we give the chaplain." "I do not think you will--for I shall not speak, on Sunday," said Rose. "Not speak! Turning into 'a sweet, silent Carthusian,' and thinking up hard things to say to me on Monday." Rose did not at once answer. "Mr. Bouché," she said, "I think you make a great mistake about the chapel." "It's the biggest-sized mistake to make me go there." "But if you went willingly, you would forget all about being made to go," said Rose. How Bouché laughed! Rose coloured a little, but stood her ground. "I mean," she said, "the bonds you strive against are the ones that press hard." "Good beginning," said the cadet, controlling himself. "Go on, Miss Rose." "Well," she said, "then you need not have laughed at me quite so much. But somebody says, there are two ends to a sermon." "Only one here," said Bouché, "and that's at the beginning." "Two ends," Rose went on steadily; "the human and the Divine, the text and the preacher. If you begin with the preacher, one man may not like him, and another one may----" "That man hasn't reported yet," Bouché interrupted her. "And it would be just the same," Rose said, "if an angel came and preached to you. Some men would be sure to criticise him, and study the length of his wings." "Wishing he'd use 'em to fly away with; that would be me, every time--unless he wore your bonnet." "So the best speaker would not please you all," Rose concluded. "But if you would begin with the text, you could not dispute that authority, nor question that style. You would not _dare_ to criticise it. And if you were studying the text all the way through, no sermon could seem dull, because it would have such living light upon it, from the Lord's own living words." There was such a light and glow on the girl's own face, that Mr. Bouché gazed at her with evident admiration.