"I think it's perfectly grand, Professor," said Fairy earnestly. "Perfectly splendid. You will do it wonderfully well, I know, and be a big help—in our business."
"But, Professor," said Carol faintly and falteringly, "didn't you tell me you were to get five thousand dollars a year with the institute from this on?"
"Yes. I was."
Carol gazed at her family despairingly. "It would take an awfully loud call to drown the chink of five thousand gold dollars in my ears, I am afraid."
"It was a loud call," he said. And he looked at her curiously, for of all the family she alone seemed distrait and unenthusiastic.
"Professor," she continued anxiously, "I heard one of the bishops say that sometimes young men thought they were called to the ministry when it was too much mince pie for dinner."
"I did not have mince pie for dinner," he answered, smiling, but conscious of keen disappointment in his friend.
"But, Professor," she argued, "can't people do good without preaching? Think of all the lovely things you could do with five thousand dollars! Think of the influence a prominent educator has! Think of—"
"I have thought of it, all of it. But haven't I got to answer the call?"
"It takes nerve to do it, too," said Connie approvingly. "I know just how it is from my own experience. Of course, I haven't been called to enter the ministry, but—it works out the same in other things."