He had been introduced at the church social, and had not seen her since, but he grasped her hand as eagerly as Deacon Belknap had.
"I hear good news of you," he said simply, with a glad look on his face. Something in his tones made Dorothy understand what he meant.
"Is it good news?" she asked him doubtfully.
"Is it? The very best in the world. You don't doubt it, I hope? Are you going to stay to Sunday school? Come over and join our class. We are getting-up a new class, and we are going to ask Mr. Butler to take it. I never thought I should care to have him; but it seems to me now just as though he would be a good teacher. Do you believe he will take a class?"
Then Dorothy, remembering his hand-clasp and the light in his eyes, said,—
"Yes; I should think he would. But I can't stay, I suppose. Oh, how I should like to!"
"Like to what?" Louise questioned, just at her side. "Oh, you are talking about Sunday school. I think we can manage it. Lewis has been asked to take a class, and I am wanted to supply a vacancy; and father said stay if we wanted to—he was in no hurry."
Then Dorothy went over to the new class that was forming; and the minister came presently and shook hands with them all, and said he felt honoured by being chosen as their teacher, and wondered that none of them had ever thought of it before. And to Dorothy it seemed as though the millennium were coming, or it would have so seemed had she known anything about that word or its meaning. It was a matter of surprise to many where that new class suddenly came from, or who started it; but the simple truth was, that what had been lingering in a sort of homesick way in Carey Martyn's heart for weeks took shape and form along with the hand-clasp of his pastor at that church social. He was used to Sabbath school, and his old class had been taught by his old pastor.
Taken all in all, it was a white day to Dorothy Morgan. Her first Sunday in a new world; a Sunday in which she had received greetings from the brethren and sisters of the kingdom, and been counted in; a Sunday in which she had actually joined in the hymns and the prayers and the readings, and attempted to follow the sermon, though, truth to tell, Dorothy had gotten very little from the sermon. Try as she would to become interested, her thoughts would wander; but they wandered constantly to the hymn that had just been sung, the words of which she felt, and to the prayer of the pastor, the spirit of which she understood.
"Why can't ministers preach just as they pray?" wondered Dorothy.