Mrs. Davies poured herself some more hot coffee, and nodded.
“She refused him.”
“Oh!” and acute distress settled on Grace Sargent’s brow, with such a firm clutch that it threatened to homestead the location. Mrs. Sargent shared the belief of the Reverend Smith Boyd’s mother, that Smith Boyd was the finest young man in the world; and Gail’s aunt was speechless with dismay and disappointment.
“I have ceased to worry about Gail’s future,” went on Mrs. Davies complacently. “It is her present condition about which I am most concerned. She is so conscientious and self-analytical that she may distress herself over this affair, and I must get in Arly and Lucile, and plan a series of gaieties which will keep her mind occupied from morning until night.”
In consequence of this kindly decision, Gail was plunged into gaiety until she loathed the scrape of a violin! The mere fact that she had no time to think did not remove the fact that she had a great deal to think about, and the gaiety only added dismally to her troubled burden.
Meanwhile, the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press went merrily onward with its righteous Vedder Court crusade, until it had the public indignation properly aroused. The public indignation rose to such a pitch that it almost meant something. There is not the slightest doubt that, if the public had not been busy with affairs of its own, and if it had not been in the habit of leaving everything to be seen to by the people financially interested, and if it had not consisted chiefly of a few active vocal cords, there is not the slightest doubt, it is worth repeating, that the public might have done something about Vedder Court! As things were, it grew most satisfactorily indignant. It talked of nothing else, in the subways and on the “L’s” and on the surface lines, and on the cindery commuter trains; and on the third day of the agitation, before something else should happen to shake the populace to the very foundation of its being, the city authorities condemned the Vedder Court property as unsanitary, inhuman, and unsafe, as a menace to the public morals, health and life, and as a blot upon civilisation; this last being a fancy touch added by Tim Corman himself, who, in his old age, had a tendency to link poetry to his practicability. In consequence of this decision, the city authorities ordered Vedder Court to be forthwith torn down, demolished, and removed from the face of the earth; thereby justifying, after all, the existence of the free and entirely uncurbed metropolitan press! The exact psychological moment had been chosen. The public, caught at the very height of its frenzy, applauded, and ate its dinner in virtuous satisfaction; and Gail Sargent’s distress crystallised into a much easier thing to handle; just plain anger!
And so Market Square Church had persisted in clutching its greedy hold on a commercial advantage so vile that even a notoriously corrupt city government had ordered it destroyed! Her mind was immensely relieved about the Reverend Smith Boyd. She had chosen well, and wisely!
CHAPTER XXII
THE REV. SMITH BOYD PROTESTS
The doves which in summer flitted about the quiet little vestry yard, and cooed over the vestry door, would have flown away had they been at home; for it was a stormy affair, with loud voices and clashing wills and a general atmosphere of tensity, which was somewhat at variance with the red-robed figure of the Good Shepherd in the pointed window of the vestry. The late arrival was Joseph G. Clark, and his eye sought that of Banker Chisholm, before he nodded to the others and took his seat at the Gothic table. The Reverend Smith Boyd, who was particularly straight and tall to-day, and particularly in earnest, paused long enough for the slight disturbance to subside, and then he finished his speech.
“That is my unalterable position in the matter,” he declared. “If Market Square Church has a mission, it is the responsibility for these miserable human wrecks whom we have made our wards.”