Читать книгу The Ball of Fire онлайн

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“That used to be lots of fun,” remembered Gail, looking after her Uncle Jim in envy.

“Market Square Church has dispensed millions in charity,” the rector felt it his duty to inform her, as they started up the hill again.

“If it’s like our church at home it costs ninety cents to deliver a dime,” she retorted, bristling anew with bygone aggravations. “So long as you can deliver baskets of provisions in person, it is all right, but the minute you let the money out of your sight it filters through too many paid hands. I found this out just before I resigned from our charity committee.”

He looked at her in perplexity. She was so young and so pretty, so charming in the ermine which framed her pink face, so gentle of speech and movement, that her visible self and her incisive mind seemed to be two different creatures.

“Why are you so bitter against the church?” and his tone was troubled, not so much about what she had said, but about her.

“I didn’t know I was,” she confessed, concerned about it herself. “All at once I seem to look on it as an old shoe which should be cast aside. It is so elaborate to do so little good in the world. Morality is on the increase, as any page of history will show.”