Unleavened Bread | Page 9

you know."
Mr. Glynn, who had followed with more measured tread, now mingled
his hearty bass voice in the conversation. His mental attitude was
friendly, but inquisitorial; as seemed to him to befit one charged with
the cure of souls. He proceeded to ask questions, beginning with
inquiries conventional and domestic, but verging presently on points of
faith. Babcock, to whom they were directly addressed, stood the ordeal
well, revealing himself as flattered, contrite, and zealous to avail
himself of the blessings of the church. He admitted that lately he had
been lax in his spiritual duties.
"We come every Sunday now," he said buoyantly, with a glance at
Selma as though to indicate that she deserved the credit of his
reformation.
"The holy sacrament of marriage has led many souls from darkness into
light, from the flesh-pots of Egypt to the table of the Lord" Mr. Glynn
answered. "And you, my daughter," he added, meaningly, "guard well
your advantage."
It was agreeable to Selma that the clergymen seemed to appreciate her
superiority to her embarrassed husband, especially as she thought she
knew that in England women were not expected to have opinions of
their own. She wished to say something to impress him more distinctly
with her cleverness, for though she was secretly contemptuous of his
ceremonials, there was something impressive in his mandatory zeal.
She came near asking whether he held to the belief that it was wrong
for a man to marry his deceased wife's sister, which was the only
proposition in relation to the married state which occurred to her at the
moment as likely to show her independence, but she contented herself
instead with saying, with so much of Mrs. Taylor's spontaneity as she
could reproduce without practice, "We expect to be very happy in your
church."

Selma, however, supplemented her words with her tense spiritual look.
She felt happier than she had for weeks, inasmuch as life seemed to be
opening before her. For a few moments she listened to Mr. Glynn
unfold his hopes in regard to the new church, trying to make him feel
that she was no common woman. She considered it a tribute to her
when he took Lewis aside later and asked him to become a junior
warden.

Chapter III.
At this time the necessity for special knowledge as to artistic or
educational matters was recognized grudgingly in Benham. Any
reputable citizen was considered capable to pass judgment on statues
and pictures, design a house or public building, and prescribe courses
of study for school-children. Since then the free-born Benhamite, little
by little, through wise legislation or public opinion, born of bitter
experience, has been robbed of these prerogatives until, not long ago,
the un-American and undemocratic proposition to take away the laying
out of the new city park from the easy going but ignorant mercies of the
so-called city forester, who had been first a plumber and later an
alderman, prevailed. An enlightened civic spirit triumphed and special
knowledge was invoked.
That was twenty-five years later. Mrs. Hallett Taylor had found herself
almost single-handed at the outset in her purpose to build the new
church on artistic lines. Or rather the case should be stated thus:
Everyone agreed that it was to be the most beautiful church in the
country, consistent with the money, and no one doubted that it would
be, especially as everyone except Mrs. Taylor felt that in confiding the
matter to the leading architect in Benham the committee would be
exercising a wise and intelligent discretion. Mr. Pierce, the individual
suggested, had never, until recently, employed the word architect in
speaking of himself, and he pronounced it, as did some of the
committee, "arshitect," shying a little at the word, as though it were
caviare and anything but American. He was a builder, practised by a

brief but rushing career in erecting houses, banks, schools, and
warehouses speedily and boldly. He had been on the spot when the new
growth of Benham began, and his handiwork was writ large all over the
city. The city was proud of him, and had, as it were, sniffed when Joel
Flagg went elsewhere for a man to build his new house. Surely, if it
were necessary to pay extra for that sort of thing, was not home talent
good enough? Yet it must be confessed that the ugly splendor of the
Flagg mediaeval castle had so far dazed the eye of Benham that its
"arshitect" had felt constrained, in order to keep up with the times, to
try fancy flights of his own. He had silenced any doubting Thomases
by his latest effort, a new school-house, rich in rampant angles and
scrolls, on the brown-stone front of which the name Flagg School
appeared in ambitious, distorted hieroglyphics.
Think