Mullen's vanishing back, which had, even from a distance, a look of
slight yet earnest endeavour. He still liked the young rector for his
sincerity and his uprightness, but he had found, on the whole, that he
could approach his God more comfortably when the straight and narrow
shadow of the clergyman did not come between.
"Aren't you going to pat it any more?" he asked presently, returning to
his consideration of the butter.
Picking up a square linen cloth, Judy dipped it into a basin of brine,
and, after wringing it out, carefully folded it over the yellow bowl.
"All the buttermilk is out of it," she answered, and thought of the
unfinished pair of purple slippers laid away in tissue paper upstairs in
her bureau drawer. As a married woman could she, with virtue, continue
to embroider slippers in pansies for her rector? These had been laid
aside on the day of her engagement to Abel, but she yearned now to riot
in purple shades with her needle. While she listened with a detached
mind to Abel's practical plans for the future, her only interest in
the details lay in the fact that they would, in a measure, insure the
possibility of a yearly offering of slippers.
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