"She and James are murderers and liars and thieves and are wholly

engaging. Sue is fast learning from them the habits of their underworld

and is asleep upstairs now with Harriet's silver and jade chain, which

she brought home with her without the knowledge of the owner this

afternoon. What are you going to do about them? I take it you intend to

build a kingdom in and of their hearts."

"Weed 'em, like Dabney and I did your dahlia bank ten times at least

this spring. You didn't help with the dahlias, but maybe you will with

the young Tenderloiners." His eyes entreated mine with a soft radiance

that almost made me dizzy.

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"I wouldn't know weeds from flowers, 'Minister,'" I answered with

prompt denial of his plea, but with a soft use of the children's name

for him.

"I don't always know. Let's study botany--together," he again hazarded

daringly, and from the tenderness that suddenly curved his strong mouth

I knew my soft answer had hit its mark. "Are you coming to the

dedication of the chapel a week from Sunday?" He asked me the question

directly and with all his softness gone and a commanding note in his

voice and direct look. His jeweled eyes were so deep back under their

dull gold brows that between the bars of black lashes they looked like

stars shining down through a radiant night. They threw their rays

directly down into my heart and I could see that their owner was reading

the hieroglyphics of my uncertainties and that I could not hide them

from him.

"I am not," I answered him with the frankness that his gaze compelled.

"I'll not dedicate it until you help me do it and--" he was saying

quietly and positively, when Billy broke in over the excluding shoulder.

Billy really adores Gregory Goodloe, but he enjoys going to the limit of

his ministerial endurance. Over that limit he has never stepped and he

never will; none of them ever will, for there is that in the Harpeth

Jaguar which commands the very essence of respect for himself as well as

his cloth.

"Say, Parson, what's that about the dedication of the chapel?" he asked,

as he twirled his champagne glass to break a few bubbles. "Charlotte and

Nickols are going to give Harriet and me that tennis dressing down

Sunday week if you don't need us to dedicate with."

"No, I won't need you," answered the Reverend Mr. Goodloe, in an easy

agreeable voice, but that had in it the note that he always uses to make

Billy halt. "I'm not going to dedicate it yet."

"Why?" came in a perfect chorus.

"I've been working night and day on that altar cloth because I depended

on you to know the date of the dedication of your own church. I have

danced only once this week," said Letitia Cockrell, with her usual bland

directness.




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