As Missy entered the Methodist church that evening with the O'Neills, it didn't occur to her memory that it was in this very edifice she had once felt the flame divine. It was once when her mother was away visiting and her less rigidly strict grandparents had let her stay up evenings and attend revival meetings with them. But all that had happened long ago—five years ago, when she was a little thing of ten. One forgets much in five years. So she felt no stir of memory and no presentiment of a coincidence to come.
Reverend MacGill, the new minister, at first disappointed her. He was tall and gaunt; and his face was long and gaunt, lighted with deep-set, smouldering, dark eyes and topped with an unruly thatch of dark hair. Missy thought him terribly ugly until he smiled, and then she wasn't quite so sure. As the sermon went on and his harsh but flexible voice mounted, now and then, to an impassioned height, she would feel herself mounting with it; then when it fell again to calmness, she would feel herself falling, too. She understood why grandma called him “inspired.” And once when his smile, on one of its sudden flashes from out that dark gauntness of his face, seemed aimed directly at her she felt a quick, responsive, electric thrill. The Methodist girls were right—he was fascinating.
She didn't wait until after the service to express her approbation to Tess—anyway, to a fifteen-year-old surreptitiousness seems to add zest to any communication. She tore a corner from the hymnal fly-leaf and scribbled her verdict while the elder O'Neills and most of the old people were kneeling in prayer. Assuring herself that all nearby heads to be dreaded were reverentially bent, she passed the missive. As she did so she chanced to glance up toward the minister.
Oh, dear heaven! He was looking straight down at her. He had seen her—the O'Neill pew was only three rows back. It was too awful. What would he think of her? An agony of embarrassment and shame swept over her.
And then—could she believe her eyes?—right in the midst of his prayer, his harshly melodious voice rising and falling with never a break—the Reverend MacGill smiled. Smiled straight at her—there could be no mistake. And a knowing, sympathetic, understanding kind of smile! Yes, he was human.
She liked him better than she had ever thought it possible to like a minister—especially an ugly one, and one whom she'd never “met.”
But after service she “met” him at the door, where he was standing to shake hands with the departing worshippers. As Mrs. O'Neill introduced her, rather unhappily, as “one of Tess's little friends,” he flashed her another smile which said, quite plainly: “I saw you up to your pranks, young lady!” But it was not until after Dr. and Mrs. O'Neill had passed on that he said aloud: “That was all right—all I ask is that you don't look so innocent when your hands are at mischief.”
Oh, she adored his smile!
The following Sunday evening she was invited to the O'Neills' for supper, and the Reverend MacGill was invited too. The knowledge of this interesting meeting impending made it possible for her to view Genevieve and Arthur, again out on a Sunday afternoon stroll, with a certain equanimity. Genevieve, though very striking and vivacious in her white fox, was indubitably a frivolous-minded girl; she, Missy, was going to eat supper with the Reverend MacGill. Of course white fox furs were nice, and Arthur's eyelashes curled up in an attractive way, but there are higher, more ennobling things in life.
The Reverend MacGill did not prove disappointing on closer acquaintance. Grandpa said he knew everything there is to know about the Bible, but the Reverend MacGill did not talk about it. In a way this was a pity, as his talk might have been instructive, but he got Tess and Missy to talking about themselves instead. Not in the way that makes you feel uncomfortable, as many older people do, but just easy, chatty, laughing comradeship. You could talk to him almost as though he were a boy of the “crowd.”