Diana considered how she should humour the old lady's wish.
"Sometimes he is like a shepherd leading his flock to pasture," she began. "Sometimes he is like a lifeboat going out to pick up drowning people. Sometimes it is rather a surgeon in a hospital, going round to find out what is the matter with people and make them well. Sometimes he is just the messenger of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all his business is to deliver his message and get people to hear it."
Mrs. Sutphen looked at Diana over the table, and evidently pricked up her ears; but Diana spoke quite simply, rather slowly; she was thinking how Basil had often seemed to her in his ministry, in and out of the pulpit.
"My dear," said the old lady, "if your husband is like that, do you know you are married to quite a remarkable man?"
"I thought as much a great while ago."
"And what sort of a pastor's wife do you make? You are a very handsome woman to be a minister's wife."
"Am I? Why should not a handsome woman be the wife of a minister?"
"Why, she should, if she can make up her mind to it. Well, my dear, if you will have no more breakfast, perhaps you will like to go and rest. Do you enjoy bathing?"
Diana did not take the bearing of the question.
"I go into the water every morning," the old lady explained. "You had better do the same. It will strengthen you."