He remembered he did not know the religion of the Jenks family; had stupidly failed to inquire about it of Uncle John. What if Faith were strongly devout?--it was likely. What if she discovered with shock that he had not seen the inside of a meeting-house since coming to Roxbury?... He fretted at the fingernail, borrowing trouble. Could a man dissemble, hiding essential doubts from a woman if he loved her? Shabby bargain: for my pretense, your love. He gave up the fingernail as a lost cause, and begged the moral dilemma to go away a while. Slowly, as it may dawn on a wanderer in the forest that he is under examination from a thicket by the feral unconciliating eyes of a Something--bear, catamount, Indian, he doesn't know, doesn't exactly wish to know--so it dawned on Ben that he was being studied from the hallway, in perfect silence, by a square lump of girl and a smaller lump of yellowish dog. Following her inclinations, the mother of Charity's dog might have conceived and born a spaniel, but she must have been tempted by the Devil in the shape of a terrier. The snuff-colored result had been amended by years of overeating into a hairy sausage too close to the floor. His silky ears were tolerable spaniel, his eyes all spaniel in foolish sadness, blurred in the iris like some old human eyes. When Ben smiled, a wag disturbed the squirrely tail; he shambled up to analyze the smell of Ben's feet and pronounce it fair. Charity nodded. "He worships you. I foresaw it plain. Most uncommon for Sultan to worship anyone." Ben studied Sultan in some alarm. He was lying on Ben's shoes, true, but it looked more like sleep than worship. "Often he growls with menace"--Charity approached, awkward in a shapeless brown frock that did her no good--"the which he was prepared to do when we ambushed you." "I'd've gone straight up in the air. A perfect ambush." Charity planted her feet far apart and hid her hands behind her back. "Did you play Inj'an when you was young?" "Oh, I did, Mistress Charity, my brother and I. Used to sneak off to the woods where we were forbidden to go, which was wrong of us." "Why?" "The woods were dangerous--real Inj'ans." "I've seen real ones--not wild, though." She came nearer, not by walking but by a side-to-side evolution of spread feet, carrying her like a statue on small wheels. "Christian Indians, talked English all piggedy-gulp." "I remember an old Indian at Deerfield, supposed to be a Christian. A Pocumtuck. Wore a cast-off bodice for a breechclout, and was alway----" Ben remembered the failing of Captain Jenks--"was alway a little foolish." "Faith is dressing her hair different, the which you're obliged to notice or she'll be in a taking, the which I think is poo." "I'll be sure to notice it, Mistress Charity." "Be you"--Charity jerked her head; upstairs Ben could hear a muted ripple of women's voices--"in love with _her_?" Ben evaded. "Charity, I've met her but the once." No good. "I thought a person alway knew."