This was one of the little winds which Père Michaux occasionally sent over the self-esteem of his two Protestant companions: he could not help it. Dr. Gaston frowned: he had not an acquaintance between New York and the island, and Père Michaux knew it. But Miss Lois, undaunted, rushed into the fray.
"Oh, certainly, it would be quite easy for us to have her met by friends on the way," she began, making for the moment common and Protestant cause with Dr. Gaston; "it would require only a few letters. In New England I should have my own family connections to call upon—persons of the highest respectability, descendants, most of them, of the celebrated patriot Israel Putnam."
"Certainly," replied Père Michaux. "I understand. Then I will leave Anne to you."
"But unfortunately, as Anne is going to New York, not Boston, my connections do not live along the route, exactly," continued Miss Lois, the adverb standing for a small matter of a thousand miles or so; "nor," she added, again admitting Dr. Gaston to a partnership, "can we make them."
"There remain, then, the pastors of your church," said the priest.
"Certainly—the pastors. It will be the simplest thing in the world for Dr. Gaston to write to them; they will be delighted to take charge of any friend of ours."
The chaplain pushed his wig back a little, and murmured, "Church Almanac."
Miss Lois glanced at him angrily. "I am sure I do not know what Dr. Gaston means by mentioning 'Church Almanac' in that way," she said, sharply. "We know most of the prominent pastors, of course. Dr. Shepherd, for instance, and Dr. Dell."
Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Dell, who occasionally came up to the island during the summer for a few days of rest, lived in the lower-lake town where Anne's long railway journey began. They were not pastors, but rectors, and the misuse of the terms grated on the chaplain's Anglican ear. But he was a patient man, and accustomed now to the heterogeneous phrasing of the Western border.
"And besides," added Miss Lois, triumphantly, "there is the bishop!"