"I don't know about that. He might do worse. But you couldn't; for I'll never have anything to say to you if you do."
"Why, mother?" inquired Diana in much surprise. "I should think you'd like him. I should think everybody would. Why don't you like him?"
"He's too masterful for me. Mind what I tell you, Diana."
"It's absurd, mother! Such a one as Mr. Masters never would think of such a one as I am. He's a very cultivated man, mother; and has been accustomed to very different society from what he'll find here. I don't seem to him what I seem to you."
"I hope not!" said Mrs. Starling, "for you seem to me a goose. Cultivated! Who is cultivated, if you are not? Weren't you a whole year at school in Boston? I guess my gentleman hasn't been to a better place. And warn't you for ever reading those musty old books, that make you out of kilter for all my world. If you don't fit his neither, I'm sorry. Society indeed! There's no better society than the folks of Pleasant Valley. Don't you go and set yourself up; nor him neither."
Diana knew better than to carry on the discussion.
Meanwhile the grey horse that bore the minister home kept up that long smooth gallop for a half mile or so, then slackened it to walk up a hill.
"That's a very remarkable girl," the minister was saying to himself; "with much more in her than she knows."
The gallop began again in a few minutes, and was unbroken till he got home. It was but a piece of a home. Mr. Masters had rooms in the house of Mrs. Persimmon, a poor widow living among the hills. The rooms were neat; that was all that could be said for them; little and dark and low, with bits of windows, and with the simplest of furnishing. The sitting-room was cheerful with books, however—as cheerful as books can make a room; and the minister did not look uncheerful, but very grave. If his brow was neither wrinkled nor lined, the quiet eyes beneath it were deep with thought. Mr. Masters' morning was spent on this wise.
First of all, for a good half hour, his knees were bent, and his thoughts, whatever they were, gave him work to do. That work done, the minister threw himself on his bed and slept, as quietly as he did everything else, for an hour or two more. Then he rose, shaved and dressed, took such breakfast as Mrs. Persimmon could give him; mounted his grey again, and was off to a house at some distance where there was a sick child, and another house where there dwelt an infirm old man. Between these two the hours were spent till he rode home to dinner.