"Father!"
"Excuse me, dear, I mean his wife is—very nice indeed."
So the visiting minister came, the Reverend Andrew Boltman, a nervous energetic man with dark eyes, and hair just tinged with gray, and he settled down for a visit in the manse, trying, meanwhile, to effect arrangements for the services, which Mr. Artman still insisted were not desirable at the time.
On the second day of his visit, when Mr. Artman announced his intention of going to a lecture at the college, Mr. Boltman said he preferred to stay quietly at home and read if he might be excused, and his host went away alone, seeming almost relieved to be free to follow his own desires for the afternoon. Doris went serenely about her housework, and Mr. Boltman picked out a comfortable corner in the living-room with his book.
But late in the afternoon, when her father returned, he found Doris alone at the window, impatiently tapping her foot on the floor.
"Where is Mr. Boltman?"
"Gone down-town. Something is wrong with Rosalie. She is up-stairs, crying. It must be pretty bad, for she would not tell me about it."
So Mr. Artman went up-stairs to Rosalie, slowly but without delay, feeling that vague helplessness that comes to men when there is trouble in the family.
She was lying face down on the bed, rigid, her hands clenched tightly, but her shoulders rose and fell with heavy sobs.
Something in her attitude told him that this was vital, not just a little tempestuous outburst that could be readily brushed aside. He sat down close by her on the bed, and laid his arm across her shoulders tenderly.