“Billy, Cousin Kate says if I’m not careful I’ll get to be a managing Parsoness; she says I must devote myself to you, not to your poor people.”
“Mrs. Paul has given a great deal of good advice in her day,” the Rev. Billy remarked meditatively, “and I really think very little harm has come from it.”
“She advised your being called to Mercer,” Amy retorted. “Did you know that?”
“Know it? My dear child! how often have I dined at the Pauls’? Just so often have I heard it.”
“Now, Billy, that’s not very nice in you.”
“I but stated a fact; and I have a high regard for Mrs. Paul. Only, when I think how many girls she has tried to make marry me!—but they would none of them look at me.”
“And in two weeks the opportunity will be gone,” she jeered.
“Poor girls!” the minister commiserated; and was reproved for vanity. Indeed, just because happiness is so serious a thing, they became very frivolous, these two, sitting watching the sunset, and the river. Amy told him a funny story about the parish; he responded by another concerning Tom Reilly, a policeman; which reminded Amy to tell him that poor Tom had had an accident, and hurt his hand.
“But it was very stupid in him,” she added, with a little of that resentful goodness that one sees sometimes in women. “I’m not at all sorry for him, because he deserved it. He had been drinking, and as he went stumbling out of a car, he crushed his hand in the door.”