"And should you become one," said her husband, "think of your many friends, and the opinions they will have of you."
"Well, I haven't joined the Mormons yet," said Claire; "but if I do, it will be because I believe them to be right; and if I have your good will, Herbert, and that of papa and mamma, what care I for the opinions of others?"
"Well said," answered Herbert, with a smile; "but we will see if we cannot 'corner' your missionary, get him into an argumentative jail, if you please, from which it will be difficult or impossible for him to escape. Should he be able to make the gospel he teaches as plain and as reasonable as the doctrines that are set forth in the tracts which he left here, I can see no reason why any earnest, sincere searcher after knowledge cannot adopt that gospel as a living truth."
It was agreed, thereupon, that when the promised telegram from Durant should be received, giving the date of his arrival, the neighbors were to be invited, and the large dining room would be turned into an informal meeting place where the principles of the gospel, as believed in by the Mormons, could be further explained. This was accordingly done.
CHAPTER X.
THE MISSIONARY'S RETURN.
Elder Charles Durant returned to Westminster just ten days after the time of his meeting with Mr. Marshall, at the station. He was heartily welcomed by the family, and being comfortably seated at the dinner table, the conversation naturally drifted to a detailed account of his experience since his first visit. His labors had been divided somewhat in two or three different states. He had met with many kinds of people, and with a variety of treatments, since leaving the home of the Marshalls; he made many friends as well as a few enemies, but had endeavored to perform his work in a way to meet the approbation of that Being who had commissioned him to spread His word among the children of men. Having performed his work to the satisfaction of those under whom he labored, he was, as previously stated, released therefrom, for a time at least, and had commenced his journey towards the land of his birth, where dwelt his loved ones, when the telegram reached him from the president of the Mission to the effect that several Elders had been mobbed in a neighboring county, and asking that he visit his brethren on his way home, as stated before.
After the meal, the family adjourned to the sitting room when the missionary was requested to give an account of the mobbing of the Elders whom he had just visited.
He said that they had been laboring for several months holding meetings wherever they could get an opportunity, and had succeeded in obtaining the permission of the trustees to hold their meetings in a schoolhouse they being solicited to hold religious services by the people, and explain the gospel to them.
A family named Brooks expressed a desire to be baptized, and the Elders had consented to perform the ordinance on a fixed day, according to their custom, and in conformity with the plan of salvation as pointed out by Christ, the early Apostles, and by John the Baptist who baptized openly in the river Jordan, and near "Aenon near to Salim because there was much water there."