“But he reckoned without his host,” Stoddard continued. “The young ladies, I have lately learned, call me Pauline, as a mark of regard or otherwise,—probably otherwise. I give two lectures a week on church history, and I fear my course isn’t popular.”
“But it is something, on the other hand, to be in touch with such an institution. They are a very sightly company, those girls. I enjoy watching them across the garden wall. And I had a closer view of them at the station this morning, when you ran off and deserted me.”
He laughed,—his big wholesome cheering laugh.
“I take good care not to see much of them socially.”
“Afraid of the eternal feminine?”
“Yes, I suppose I am. I’m preparing to go into a Brotherhood, as you probably don’t know. And girls are distracting.”
I glanced at my companion with a new inquiry and interest.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“Yes; I’m spending my year in studies that I may never have a chance for hereafter. I’m going into an order whose members work hard.”
He spoke as though he were planning a summer outing. I had not sat at meat with a clergyman since the death of my parents broke up our old home in Vermont, and my attitude toward the cloth was, I fear, one of antagonism dating from those days.