"It's mortal queer, honey," he said aloud, "how I ain't ever able to go places or to do things 'thout expectin' you to come along, yet there's times when it feels like you'd been gone from me forever and then agen when it don't seem more'n a few weeks."
He was afterward leaving the room with his head bent and his eyes misty with tears when suddenly a smile twitched the end of his nose and the corners of his mouth lifted as he turned once more toward his picture.
"Lord, Em'ly darlin', wouldn't you laugh if three old codgers was to get into the race after the widow instid of two? I would admire to see them sure winners beaten by a dark horse!"
Five minutes later, Uncle Ambrose Thompson as he was now called by almost everybody in Pennyroyal, with every trace of lamentation removed clean from his face, was walking toward the new red brick church, having Miner's arm through his after their custom of more than thirty years. Moses could no longer accompany them, but was resting somewhat deeper under the apple tree than had been his habit in life.
While in the course of their walk Miner never once lifted his hat, Ambrose's was seldom allowed to rest for a moment on his head, for women of all ages smiled upon him and children breaking away from grown up hands came to be tossed in the air by his long arms. Uncle Ambrose had grown very popular with the children of Pennyroyal since the death of his and Emily's only child twenty years before, since it was then that he began bringing home to Emily for repairs all the crying babies he could steal, the boys who had stumped their toes and the girls with torn frocks and feelings.
In the Sunday-school room he immediately sailed up to the widow as gallantly as though his ship had not failed to enter her port in nearly forty years, and this when she was sheltered between the law and the gospel. But before Uncle Ambrose could speak a large soft hand grasped his lean and vital one.
"Welcome!" said the minister with unction.
Three years before, the Rev. Elias Tupper had entered Pennyroyal and with this same soft hand had since patted and soothed his congregation into following where their shepherd led. Indeed, the building of the brick church had been a tribute to his powers and to-night's oyster supper a kind of harvest festival to celebrate the last payment of the church's debt.
Nevertheless an unspoken antagonism had always existed between the Reverend Tupper and Ambrose Thompson, and indeed this was the first appearance of the tall man within the new church's domains.
Brother Tupper was a man of only medium height, but of considerable breadth, with cheeks as smooth and clean as a woman's. And while his lips were thin and his eyes expressionless his face managed to give the impression of a permanent smile, the kind of smile that can come from but one source, having nothing to do with amusement over people or things, nor even contentment in God's plan for His universe, but manifests only a supreme and personal self-satisfaction.