“Yes, you’d got all set for one of those head-up snoozes you take when the sermon bores you. Well, let me tell you, if you’d stayed, you wouldn’t have got any chance to sleep. He may be a kid—though he doesn’t look so much like one when you get close—lines in his face if you notice—he may be a kid, but he’s got the goods, and by George, he delivered ’em this morning all right. Sleep! I wasn’t over and above wide awake myself through the preliminaries, but I found myself sitting up with a jerk when he let go his first bolt.”
“Bolt, eh?” Burns began to eat his soup with relish. As it happened he had had no time for breakfast, and this was his first meal of the day. “Jolly, this is good soup!” he said. “Well!—I thought they always spoke softly when they first came, and only fired up later. Didn’t he begin on the ‘Dear Brethren, I’m pleased to be with you’ line? I thought he looked rather conventional myself—and abominably young. I’m not fond of green salad.”
“Green salad!” This was Martha Macauley, flushing and indignant. “Why, he’s a man, Red, and a very fine one, if I’m any judge. And he can preach—oh, how he can preach!”
“I’m not asking any woman, Marty.” Burns gave his sister-in-law a cynical little smile. “Trust any woman to fall for a handsome young preacher with black eyes and a good voice, whatever he says. To be sure, Ellen——”
“Oh, yes—you think Ellen is the only woman in the world with any sense. Well, let me tell you Len ‘fell for him,’ just as much as I did—only she never gives herself away, and probably won’t now, if you ask her.”
Burns’ eyes met his wife’s. “Like him, eh, Len?” he asked. “Did the black eyes—and his being a Southerner—get you, too?”
Mrs. Redfield Pepper Burns was an unusual woman. If she had not been, at this challenge, she would have answered one of two things. Either she would have said defiantly: “I certainly did like him—why shouldn’t I, when Jim did—and he’s a man! Why are you always prejudiced against ministers?” or she would have said softly: “If you had heard him, dear, I think you would have liked him yourself.” Instead she answered, as a man might—only she was not in the least like a man—“It’s hard to tell how one likes any minister at first sight. It’s not the first sermon, but the twentieth, that tells the story. And plenty of other things besides the preaching.”
“But you certainly got a good first impression, Len?” Martha cried, at the same moment that James Macauley chuckled, “My, but that was a clever stall!”
Mrs. Burns smiled at her husband, whose hazel eyes were studying her intently. Red never ceased to wonder at the way people didn’t succeed in cornering Ellen. She might find her way out with a smile alone, or with a flash of those wonderful black-lashed eyes of hers, but find her way out she always did. She found it now.
“Mr. Lockhart told me confidentially this morning that Mr. Black said he wasn’t good enough for us. So at least we have been forewarned. He’ll have to prove himself against his own admission.”