A FAVOUR SOLICITED.
Mrs. Prymmer's next-door neighbour was her clergyman,—the Rev. Bernal Huntington, pastor of the church of the United Brethren. It was an immense satisfaction to her to have so near the one who ministered to her in spiritual things, but whether it was an equal satisfaction to the Rev. Mr. Huntington that young man had never been heard to assert.
The third day after Justin's arrival home was Sunday, and a solemn quiet brooded over the little parsonage standing half hidden in the shadow of the stone mansion.
The services of the day were over, and the minister had shut himself up in his study. He had preached two moving sermons, conducted a Bible class and attended a funeral out in the country. Probably he was tired. Even his magnificent physique was capable of fatigue, and to the minds of several of his fair parishioners, whose thoughts had a trick of running toward and after him, he was at the present moment pictured in a recumbent attitude on his haircloth sofa, musing in orthodox fashion on the stirring evangelical eloquence with which he had that day delighted the hearts of his hearers.
But the minister was not resting. The sly, sleepy fire spying at him from the small stove could have revealed another state of affairs. Stealthily it watched him as he inwardly raged to and fro in the tiny room, threading his way among tables and chairs, footstools, and heaped-up books and piles of manuscript. "Peace, peace to the weary," he had been preaching, but there was no peace for his soul. He was in the throes of some mental conflict that furrowed his handsome face with emotion.
Not only mentally but physically was he out of touch with his environment. The badly made clerical coat hung scantily over his athletic figure. His well-shaped auburn head almost touched the low ceiling. He seemed like a triumphant wrestler thrust from the prize-ring into the deserted haunt of a dead clergyman.
He had taken the place of a man much older than himself, a consistent saint, a model of all the virtues. He had just been thinking about this man, and an unutterable disgust of self oppressed him. "Unworthy—unworthy," he muttered," I must give it up. I shall leave here. This is unendurable."
He was stretching out his arms as if to fly away to a more congenial atmosphere when his attention was distracted by a clattering outside his door and a subsequent exclamation.
"Look out, my dear boy! I'm coming; what—no light!" and a little woman bearing a huge bowl in her hands rushed in, and, stumbling over papers and books, managed to deposit her burden on the stove.
She was a very commonplace little woman. Her age hovered about the middle time of life, though she had a quick, alert, almost girlish manner. Her prevailing colour was drab,—hair, dress, and complexion. She wore a black lace cap on her head. Each side of it were pendent curls embracing her cheeks of dubious complexion. Her eyes were bright and sharp, and she had a way of holding her head well up and looking shrewdly through her spectacles at persons to whom she was talking, as if to delude them into the belief that she was a very fierce and quarrelsome little woman, a regular Tartar, a woman who could neither be deceived nor beguiled into anything approaching to softness or amiability of behaviour.