Was he in love with Lydia Orr? Honestly, he didn’t know. He had half thought he was, for a whole month, during which Lydia had faced him across Mrs. Solomon Black’s table three times a day.
As he walked up and down, he viewed the situation. Lydia had declared, not once but often, that she wanted friends. Women always talked that way, and meant otherwise. But did she? The minister shook his head dubiously. He thought of Lydia Orr, of her beauty, of her elusive sweetness. He was ashamed to think of her money, but he owned to himself that he did.
Then he left his study and rambled about the chill rooms of the lower floor. From the windows of the parlor, where he paused to stare out, he could look for some distance up the street. He noticed dully the double row of maples from which yellowed leaves were already beginning to fall and the ugly fronts of houses, behind their shabby picket fences. A wagon was creaking slowly through a shallow sea of mud which had been dust the day before: beyond the hunched figure of the teamster not a human being was in sight. Somewhere, a dog barked fitfully and was answered by other dogs far away; and always the shutter banged at uncertain intervals upstairs. This nuisance, at least, could be abated. He presently located the shutter and closed it; then, because its fastening had rusted quite away, sought for a bit of twine in his pocket and was about to tie it fast when the wind wrenched it again from his hold. As he thrust a black-coated arm from the window to secure the unruly disturber of the peace he saw a man fumbling with the fastening of the parsonage gate. Before he could reach the foot of the stairs the long unused doorbell jangled noisily.
He did not recognize the figure which confronted him on the stoop, when at last he succeeded in undoing the door. The man wore a raincoat turned up about his chin and the soft brim of a felt hat dripped water upon its close-buttoned front.
“Good-morning, good-morning, sir!” said the stranger, as if his words had awaited the opening of the door with scant patience. “You are the—er—local clergyman, I suppose?”
At uncertain periods Wesley Elliot had been visited by a migratory colporteur, and less frequently by impecunious persons representing themselves to be fellow warriors on the walls of Zion, temporarily out of ammunition. In the brief interval during which he convoyed the stranger from the chilly obscurity of the hall to the dubious comfort of his study, he endeavored to place his visitor in one of these two classes, but without success.
“Didn’t stop for an umbrella,” explained the man, rubbing his hands before the stove, in which the minister was striving to kindle a livelier blaze.
Divested of his dripping coat and hat he appeared somewhat stooped and feeble; he coughed slightly, as he gazed about the room.
“What’s the matter here?” he inquired abruptly; “don’t they pay you your salary?”
The minister explained in brief his slight occupancy of the parsonage; whereat the stranger shook his head: