have cherished her like any ten-year-old in his Sunday School Class. He saw Elmer's whole body stiffen as he looked at Lulu. And there was nothing he could do.
He was afraid that if he spoke to Mr. Bains, or even to Lulu, in the explosion Elmer might have to marry her, and suddenly the Frank who had always accepted "the holy institution of matrimony" felt that for a colt like Lulu any wild kicking up of the heels would be better than being harnessed to Elmer's muddy plow.
Frank's minister father and his mother went to California for Christmas time, and he spent the holiday with Dr. Zechlin. They two celebrated Christmas Eve, and a very radiant, well-contented, extremely German Weihnachtsabend that was. Zechlin had procured a goose, bullied the osteopath's wife into cooking it, with sausages for stuffing and cranberry pancake to flank it. He brewed a punch not at all Baptist; it frothed, and smelled divinely, and to Frank it brought visions.
They sat in old chairs on either side of the round stove, gently waving their punch glasses, and sang:
Alles schläft, einsam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar,
Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh,
Schlaf in himmlischer Ruh.
"Ah, yes," the old man meditated, "that is the Christ I still dream of—the Child with shining hair, the dear German Christ Child—the beautiful fairy-tale—and your Dean Trospers make Jesus into a monster that hates youth and laughter—Wein, Weib und Gesang. Der Arme! How unlucky he was, that Christ, not to have the good Trosper with him at the wedding feast to explain that he must not turn the water into wine. Chk! Chk! I wonder if I am too old to start a leetle farm with a big vineyard and seven books?"
Elmer Gantry was always very witty about Dr. Bruno Zechlin. Sometimes he called him "Old Fuzzy." Sometimes he said, "That old coot ought to teach Hebrew—he looks like
