"Tell Doc Mitchell that if he don't get my new set of teeth ready for the thrashing I'll hev the law on him for breaking up my happy home. Two of my old beaux're coming to the thrashing and if they was to see me without my teeth they'd jest naturally make Jim miserable and me a divorcee."
Mrs. Bodin was sending her daughter, Stella, some little overalls made over for the twins from their grandpa's and a bottle of home made cough medicine "and one of my first squash pies for Al. And here's a pie for your trouble, Hank, and a few of these cookies you said you like."
Hank stowed everything carefully away, with no show of nervous haste, and when they were well started remarked to John Churchill Knight:
"You know the best part of staying sober is that you get taken in on so many things and almost you might say into so many families. People tell you things and ask your help and advice and by gum after awhile you get to feeling that maybe you're somebody too instead of jest a mess of miserableness. Why, I've got friends jest about everywhere, I guess.
"There's them as asks me sarcastic like if I don't find this kind of work dry and lonesome but I jest ask them to come along and see. Why, do you see that there house yonder? Those folks are relatives of Billy Evans' and as soon as ever I turn this corner, Mollie, that's the youngest girl, will start the graphophone going with my favorite piece. The last time I come by I found a box of candy on the mail box for me. That was from Winnie, the oldest, for bringing home her new dress from the dressmaker's.
"Yes, sir, it's jest wonderful how human and pleasant everybody is. Why, if I jest keep on a-being sober and associating with folks like this—why—I'm jest naturally bound to be kind of decent myself. And when you think of what I was—well—there's no use in talking—I was low—jest low. Ask anybody but Billy Evans and they'll tell you fast enough. Of course Billy's naturally prejudiced and his word ain't hardly to be credited.
"And here I am on a nice summer morning riding with the minister and with the whole country acting as if I'd always been decent."
Maybe it was Hank who first called him the minister. It may of course have been that old Mrs. Rosenwinkle, who, not knowing his name for some time, explained him to her daughter as "the new preacher of the lost."
At any rate, when Fanny Foster came to make her periodical report it was found that to the lonely, the outcast and the generally unfit Cynthia's son was "the new minister." And his influence was already felt by those who as yet regarded him as just a Green Valley boy who was helping out. Fanny Foster voiced this sentiment in Joe Baldwin's shop when she was paying for the four patches Joe had just put on her second best pair of shoes.
"Well—I shouldn't wonder if Green Valley hadn't got a minister to its taste at last. He hasn't been regularly appointed and I guess he don't realize himself that he's it but I'm pretty sure that the minute Parson Courtney steps out that's just what's going to happen. Of course there's them that says it can't. Mr. Austin says it would be a terrible mistake, that he's too young; and Seth Curtis says no rich man would be fool enough to pester himself with a dinky country church. But I guess people like Seth and Mr. Austin ain't the kind of people that have much to say. He's doing regular minister's work, comforting the sick and picking up the fallen and pacifying the quarrelsome, and it's work like that that'll elect him.