It lasted until Dr. Eggleston was announced. Then Marion's tongue broke
loose again:

"He is the 'Hoosier Schoolmaster.' Don't you know we read his book aloud
at the seminary? Looks as though he might have written it, doesn't he?
Let's listen to what he says. He always says a word or two that a body
can report; very few of them do."

This is a fair specimen of the way in which Miss Wilbur buzzed through
that meeting--that _wonderful_ meeting, that Flossy Shipley will
remember all her life. She made no answer to Marion's comments after a
little, and the pink flush glowed deeper on her face. She was
wonderfully interested--indeed she was more than interested. There was a
strange feeling of pain at her heart, a sort of sick, longing feeling
that she had never felt before, to understand what all these people
meant, to feel as they seemed to feel.

The Christian world is more to blame for the unspoken infidelity that
thrives in its circles than is generally supposed. Flossy Shipley had
been in many religious meetings, but she had really never in her life
before been among a large gathering of cultured people, who were eager
and excited and happy, and the cause for that eagerness and that
happiness been found in the religion of Jesus Christ. I do not say that
there had never been such meetings before, nor that there have not been
many of them. I simply say that it was a new revelation to Flossy, and
she had been to the church prayer-meeting at home several times. Whether
that church may have been peculiar or not I do not say, but Flossy had
certainly failed to get the idea that prayer-meetings were blessed
places; that the people who went there from week to week found their joy
and their rest and their comfort there. She began to have an unutterable