“Well?” he prompted sourly.
“It was what caused me to take a particular interest in the weather”—the priest waved his cigar philosophically. “I shall have to walk, I presume. I am not expected until to-morrow, and the conductor tells me there is nothing but a small station where we stop.”
Raymond would have to walk too.
“It is unfortunate!” he observed sarcastically. “I should have thought that you would have provided against any such contingencies by making inquiries before you started.”
“That is true,” admitted the priest simply. “I am entirely to blame, and I must not complain. I was pleasurably over-excited perhaps. It is my first charge, you see. The curé of St. Marleau, Father Allard, went away yesterday for a vacation—for the summer—his first in many years—he is quite an old man”—the young priest was waxing garrulous, and was no longer interesting. Raymond peered out of the car window with a new and personal concern in the weather. There was no rain, but the howl of the wind was distinctly audible over the roar of the train.
“I was to have arrived to-morrow, as I said”—the priest was rattling on—“but having my preparations all completed to-day and nothing to detain me, I—well, as you see, I am here.”
Raymond was picturing realistically, and none too happily, a three-mile walk on a stormy night over a black, rutted country road. The prospect was not a soothing one.
“Monsieur is perhaps a commercial traveller?” ventured the young curé amiably, by way of continuing the conversation.
Raymond folded his paper deliberately, and replaced it in his pocket. There was a quick, twisted smile on his lips, but for the first time his voice was cordiality itself.
“Oh, no,” he said. “On the contrary, I make my living precisely as does Monsieur le Curé, except perhaps that I have not always the same certainty of success.”