The servant pursed her lips and her round cheeks expanded till her little eyes were almost hidden. She muttered discontentedly: “Again, Excellency?”
“Yes,” he said, “again. What are you waiting for?”
She shuffled unwillingly from the room, drawing the doors behind her. Suddenly she opened them again.
“Excellency,” she said, “she is not truly convert—no! That is a lie!”
He smiled. The maid’s jealousy of all his parishioners gave him amusement. She was envious even of their possible conversion.
“That will do, Natsu,” he said. “Don’t keep our visitor waiting.”
The woman muttered ill-temperedly as she passed along the hall.
The minister waited in pleasing anticipation. He had not expected her at this hour. She came usually in the afternoon. He remembered with what fearful shyness she had first entered his house, and the tremulous, almost breathless, fashion in which she had replied to his questions. He was of a hopeful, sanguine disposition. Though he knew that his small congregation consisted of those induced by sen to come to church, those who came from curiosity and others still—young boys and girls—from mischief solely, still he believed that his labor would bear eventual fruit, and lo, at last a convert! She was very young, somewhat fragile and in her own strange fashion lovely. From the first he had likened her to a timid wild bird. Even after she had entered his house, she had turned backward as though to retreat; then as his deep serious eyes met hers she spoke as if urged by some impulse, and repeated her faltering words in English.
“Minister, I am convert unto you!”
At first her visits had been irregular and spasmodic. She would come as far as the hill, then turn back. Again, her courage emboldened, she would reach his garden gate, there to linger but a moment, the antagonistic face of the minister’s servant affrighting her. But in the absence of the maid, Azalea would daringly pass beyond the gate. A few moments later the minister would meet her in the path and lead her into his house.