Gail looked at her watch and rose energetically.
“I shall be late at Lucile’s, Uncle Jim. I don’t think I can wait for you.”
“I’m sorry,” regretted Sargent. “I don’t like to have you drive around alone.”
“I’ll be very happy to take Miss Sargent anywhere she’d like to go,” offered Allison, almost instantaneously.
“Much obliged, Allison,” accepted Sargent heartily; “that is, if she’ll go with you.”
“Thank you,” said Gail simply, as she stepped out of the pew.
The gentlemen of the vestry rose as one man. Old Nicholas Van Ploon even attempted to stand gracefully on one leg, while his vest bulged over the back of the pew in front of him.
“I think we’ll have to make you a permanent member of the vestry,” smiled Manning, the patriarch, as he bowed his adieus. “We’ve been needing a brightening influence for some time.”
Willis Cunningham, the thoughtful one, wedged his Vandyke between the heads of Standard Cereal Clark and Banker Chisholm.
“We hope to see you often, Miss Sargent,” was his thoughtful remark.