CHAPTER XIX.
Gifford Woodhouse was not quite honest with himself when he said that he felt it was time to go back to Ashurst to make his aunts a visit. He had been restless and absent-minded very often since that flying trip in the early spring. In spite of his sternest reasoning, hope was beginning to grow up in his heart again. Dick Forsythe had not come to Ashurst, and Helen said plainly that she knew Lois was not engaged to him. So why should not Gifford himself be on the spot?
"Not that I would bother Lois," he argued in his own mind, "but just to know if"—And besides, he really ought to see the two little ladies.
He left Lockhaven a few days after John Ward had preached his sermon on foreign missions at Chester. It was reported to have been "powerful," and Elder Dean said he wished "our own people could have been benefited by it."
"I thought the heathen were expected to be benefited by such sermons," Gifford said, twisting a cigarette between his fingers, as he leaned over the half-door of the elder's shop, lazily watching a long white shaving curl up under his plane. "I thought the object was a large contribution."
The elder looked up solemnly, and opened his lips with vast deliberation. "Lawyer Woodhouse," he said, "that's your mistake. They're fer the purpose of instructing us that the heathen is damned, so that we will rejoice in our own salvation, and make haste to accept it if we are unconverted."
He looked hard at the young man as he spoke, for every one knew Lawyer Woodhouse did not go regularly to church, and so, presumably, was not a Christian.
Then Mr. Dean, while he pulled the shavings out of his plane, and threw them on the fragrant heap at his feet, said one or two things which made Gifford stop lounging and forget his cigarette while he listened with a grave face. "Unbelief in the church," "the example for our youth," "the heresy of the preacher's wife."
This was not the first time Gifford had heard such comments, but there was a threat in Mr. Dean's voice, though he did not put it into words, which made the young man carry a growing anxiety about Helen away with him. He could not forget it, even in the rejoicings of his home-coming, and he gave guarded answers about her which were unlike his usual frankness.