Juliana flushed more deeply still. "I heard him last Sunday evening," she said.
The rector was silent, and his sister, as if impelled to speak, went on,
"And I don't see, Edward, how anyone could think him a hard or bigoted man in his creed. He walked home with me to the gate just now, and he was speaking of all the sin in the world, and of how few, how very few people, can be saved, and how many will have to be burned as worthless; and he spoke so beautifully. He regrets it, Edward, regrets it deeply. It is a real grief to him."
On which Juliana, half in anger, withdrew, and her brother the rector sat back in his chair with smiles rippling all over his saintly face. For he had been wondering whether it would be possible, even remotely possible, to get his sister to invite the Dumfarthings to high tea at the rectory some day at six o'clock (evening dinner was out of the question), and now he knew within himself that the thing was as good as done.
While such things as these were happening and about to happen, there were many others of the congregation of St. Asaph's beside the rector to whom the growing situation gave cause for serious perplexities. Indeed, all who were interested in the church, the trustees and the mortgagees and the underlying debenture-holders, were feeling anxious. For some of them underlay the Sunday School, whose scholars' offerings had declined forty per cent, and others underlay the new organ, not yet paid for, while others were lying deeper still beneath the ground site of the church with seven dollars and a half a square foot resting on them.
"I don't like it," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe to Mr. Newberry (they were both prominent members of the congregation). "I don't like the look of things. I took up a block of Furlong's bonds on his Guild building from what seemed at the time the best of motives. The interest appeared absolutely certain. Now it's a month overdue on the last quarter. I feel alarmed."
"Neither do I like it," said Mr. Newberry, shaking his head; "and I'm sorry for Fareforth Furlong. An excellent fellow, Fyshe, excellent. I keep wondering Sunday after Sunday, if there isn't something I can do to help him out. One might do something further, perhaps, in the way of new buildings or alterations. I have, in fact, offered—by myself, I mean, and without other aid—to dynamite out the front of his church, underpin it, and put him in a Norman gateway; either that, or blast out the back of it where the choir sit, just as he likes. I was thinking about it last Sunday as they were singing the anthem, and realizing what a lot one might do there with a few sticks of dynamite."
"I doubt it," said Mr. Fyshe. "In fact, Newberry, to speak very frankly, I begin to ask myself, Is Furlong the man for the post?"
"Oh, surely," said Mr. Newberry in protest.