"Dear me, you're the least inclined to gossip of any man I ever saw. Why, I heard Mrs. Prymmer myself telling you all about that rich man who is so odd, and who often sends for Justin to go away and see him. Don't you know she asked you not to tell?"
"I don't remember hearing of him."
"Gossip just goes in one ear and out the other with you," she said, admiringly. "Well, he's a man that—"
"What is the Christian name of this young lady?" asked the clergyman, as she paused to take breath for what promised to be a lengthy recital.
"Derrice; I don't know whether she has any middle name or not, but I can easily find out. I wish you would take an interest in her, for if you do, and just speak to Mrs. Prymmer a few words about submission to the will of Providence, it will comb things out beautifully. You have a kind of way with women that makes them mind what you say."
The young clergyman's face grew a yet deeper colour. "What way do you mean?"
"A kind of settling way. Just look at the quarrels you've made up in this church. You see you have had experience in life. You have been rich and influential, and you have travelled more than the most of us. That gives you weight," and in sturdy, honest admiration, her dun-coloured eyes shone briskly at him through her glasses.
"I have not had as much experience as you think," he said, with only a remnant of his irritation. She had exorcised the demon,—she could now leave him, and a sudden cry hastened her tarrying feet. "Goodness, there is that baby again. If he has croup I'll have to send out and borrow alum. I haven't a bit in the house."
Her thoughts, however, were not altogether on the baby, as her little feet pattered over the painted wooden floor of the hall. "Thank God, that fit came on him when he was alone. It is strange that he gets so dissatisfied. I wish I could always be with him, but that's impossible— Now, baby, what's the matter with you?" and she bent over a red-faced child sitting up and coughing in a crib.
Mr. Huntington closed and locked the door after she left the room. His next proceeding was to dig a hole in a flower-pot on the window and empty the rest of the gruel in it. Then he took from a shelf a small box and, drawing a key from his pocket, threw back the lid. Inside were several photographs, all of women. He turned them out to find a pencil sketch at the bottom. A young girl sat in the centre of a clearing among prairie grass, her hands crossed, her face turned up to the sky. At a little distance stood a man watching her. The girl was the young wife next door, the man was himself,—Bernal Huntington, former worldling, now a humble minister of the gospel.