Katherine, Chapters XXIX-XXXI [pp. 104-120]

x885.] KATKARIArE. III
mated, and, like a sensible woman, prefers rational talk with
tobacco to silence without it. Make yourself at home, old felfow. The house is wide, you see, and I retain ownership of
just this one corner in it. But if tea is not served here I shall
be much mistaken."
"The mother of the young lady whom I found when I came
in here yesterday?" asked Mr. Giddings, with an unmoved face,
tapping the bowl of his pipe gently on the marble as he spoke.
"I might have mentioned, by the way, that I had met Miss Danforth once before. I think I told you in Boston that I spent a
week in the Adirondacks last August with a friend who hails
from this city. He turned dut to be an old acquaintance of all
the members of her party, and they passed us on their way out
of the woods."
"That is odd!" said Mrs. White. "She never mentioned
meeting you to me."
"Wouldn't it be odder still if she had?" he asked. "If one
kept in one's memory and talked of all the strangers one casually
meets, life would not be long enough to attend to what few
other things there are to speak of."
~ "That depends," said Anna, with a shrug and an enigmatic
smile. "Perhaps it will help us come to a decision on the affair
in hand. I went up there this afternoon to propose to my Cousin Kitty to come home with me and finish the evening which
her headache interrupted so mai~-propos yesterday, but her mother was unaccountably stiff in her refusal. She astonished me,
however, before I came away, by giving me the invitation I just
spoke of, and doing it so seriously that I have been wavering
ever since between surprise and curiosity as to her motive. Of
course I told her I would bring it about, if possible. I knew I
could count on Arthur, but you are such an uncertain quantity,
Mr. Giddings, that I promised to send word later on concerning
our engagements. I left you a loophole for escape, you see."
I am entirely at your disposition for the very short time I
shall be here," he returned, "but a little curious to know why
such an apparently commonplace invitation should seem to require a miracle to bring it about."
"That is because you don't know my Cousin Eliza."
"The thing is wider than that," said Mn White. "Unless
you had tried it, Louis, you would never understand the strength
and bitterness of the religious rancor that still animates the elder
generation of the orthodox part of our Amen can community.
The new ]eaven is spreading rapidly among their children, but