“Doctor Lindley telephoned that he’d be in to see you at eleven. You have no engagements and I told him all right.”
“Lindley? What does Lindley want?” Mills demanded, without looking up from a bank statement he was scanning.
“He didn’t say, sir; but as you always see him——”
“I don’t know that I care to see him today,” Mills mumbled. Mills rarely mumbled; his speech was always clean-cut and definite.
Carroll, listening attentively to his employer’s instructions as to answering letters and sending telegraphic orders for the sale of certain stocks, speculated as to what had caused Mills’s unwonted irascibility.
A few minutes after eleven word was passed from the office boy to the stenographer and thence from Carroll to Mills that the Reverend Doctor Lindley was waiting.
Mills detained Carroll rather unnecessarily to discuss matters of no immediate moment. This in itself was surprising, as the rector of St. Barnabas, the oldest and richest church in town, had heretofore always been admitted without delay. The Mills family had been identified with St. Barnabas from pioneer times and Doctor Lindley was entertained frequently by Mills, not only at home but at the men’s luncheons Mills gave at his clubs for visiting notables.
“Ah, Mills! Hard at it!” exclaimed the minister cheerfully. He was short, rotund and bald, with a large face that radiated good nature. A reputation for breadth of view and public spirit had made him, in the dozen years of his pastorate, one of the best liked men in town. He gave Mills a cordial handshake, asked after Leila and assured Mills that he had never seen him looking better.
Lindley was a dynamic person and his presence had the effect of disturbing the tranquility of the room. Mills wished now that he hadn’t admitted the rector of St. Barnabas, with his professional good cheer and optimism. He remembered that Lindley always wanted something when he came to the office. If it proved to be help for a negro mission St. Barnabas maintained somewhere, Mills resolved to refuse to contribute. He had no intention of encouraging further the idea that he could be relied upon to support all of Lindley’s absurd schemes for widening the sphere of the church. It was a vulgar idea that a sinner should prostrate himself before an imaginary God and beg for forgiveness. Where sin existed the main thing was to keep it decently out of sight. But the whole idea of sin was repellent. He caught himself up sharply. What had he to do with sin?
But outwardly Mills was serene; Lindley was at least a diversion, though Mills reflected that someone ought to warn him against his tendency to obesity. A fat man in a surplice was ridiculous, though Mills hadn’t seen Lindley in vestments since the last fashionable wedding. At the reception following the wedding Mills remembered that he had been annoyed by Lindley’s appetite; more particularly by a glimpse of the rector’s plump hand extended for a second piece of cake—cake with a thick, gooey icing.