A memorandum of instructions accompanied this letter.
CHAPTER XVII
HOW THINGS WENT ON IN BAYPORT
Guy was pleased with the prospect of a return to America, especially as it was but for a short time. He would not have liked to feel that his journeyings were over, and he was to go back there permanently.
He had been some months away from his home in Bayport, and during this time he had not heard anything from his father or the friends he left behind.
He felt that he had been remarkably successful. He left Bayport a raw boy, and now, after six months, he represented a wealthy merchant in Bombay, was worth a considerable sum in money, and had a prospect of continued employment at a good salary.
He had not thought much of it till now, but as the day of his sailing for New York approached he began to be anxious about his father’s health. He also troubled himself lest rumors might have come to him about disaffection in the parish, and the schemes of Deacon Crane to oust him from the position he had so long and so honorably held, and to put in his place a younger man.
While Guy is on the Atlantic, speeding for home on the good steamer Etruria, we will precede him and let the reader know how matters are going on in Bayport.
Deacon Crane had gathered at his house three or four members of the church one Thursday evening, and was seeking to bring them over to his views on parish matters.
“I tell you what, Brother Ainsworth,” said he, addressing the village storekeeper, “it’s time we had a change in the minister. Mr. Fenwick is behind the times. He isn’t a hustler. Why, the parish is at a standstill. There are not more members than there were five years ago.”
“That may be, Deacon Crane, but Bayport itself has been at a standstill. I don’t believe the population has increased twenty-five in those five years.”