joked about going to church and the descent of man. Nothing terrible happened.
Birthdays, since they reflected glory on Mrs. Eaton who had done the bearing, were always celebrated at the Rectory. Each child had its especial friends to a spread of ice cream and cake, and when Edward's day came around he asked to have Alice and was surprised and delighted beyond measure when his mother gave her consent.
"The Christian atmosphere of this house," said Mrs. Eaton, "can't fail to impress her. And it may be, my little son, that you may be the instrument by which a brand is to be snatched from the burning."
In the years which had elapsed since that memorable day when brother John had not come from school, Ruth Eaton had graduated from school and grown up and was very busily engaged in annexing to herself a young man. He was a graduate of Harvard College, and he was one of America's first apostles of the outdoor sporting life.
Bruce Armitage had inherited an income of nearly a thousand dollars a month. In the days when a dollar could hold up its head and not only look like a dollar, but be a dollar, this was a large income. There were young men even then who had larger incomes, but there weren't many. And
