One evening, a week after their arrival, they were planning the campaign and estimating the value of lay helpers, when two important visitors were announced. A maiden appeared and informed the clergyman that Thomas Gollop and Eliza Gollop desired to see him.
"Show them into the common room," said he; then he twisted a little bronze cross that he wore at his watchchain and regarded Miss Masterman.
"The parish clerk and his sister—I wonder if you'd mind, Alice?" he asked.
For answer she put down her work.
"Certainly. Since you saw Joe Voysey alone and, not only engaged him, but promised he might have a boy for the weeding, I feel—well, you are a great deal too easy, Dennis. Gollop is a very masterful person, clearly, and his sister, so I am told, is just the same. You certainly must not see women alone. They'll get everything they want out of you."
"Of course, one wishes to strike a genial note," he explained. "First impressions count for such a lot with common people."
"Be genial by all means; I say nothing against that."
"Let's tackle them, then. Gollop's a tremendous Conservative, but we must get Liberal ideas into him, if we can—in reason."
Dennis Masterman was tall, square-shouldered and clean-shaven. He regarded himself as somewhat advanced, but had no intention of sowing his opinions upon the parish before the soil was prepared. He considered his character to be large-minded, tolerant, and sane; and for a man of eight-and-twenty he enjoyed fair measure of these virtues.
His sister was plain, angular, and four years older than Dennis. She wore double eyeglasses and had a gruff voice and a perceptible beard.