"Not in the best room, even if Mr. N. did not come."
"No, indeed!"
"But really I don't see, Jane, how we can turn him out of doors. He doesn't look like a strong man, and it's full three miles to D——."
"It's too much; he ought to have gone on while he had daylight, and not lingered here, as he did, till it got dark."
"We can't turn him out of doors, Jane, and it's no use to think of it. He'll have to stay somehow."
"But what can we do with him?"
"He seems like a decent man at least; and doesn't look as if he had anything bad about him. We might make a bed on the floor."
When Mr. W. returned to the kitchen, where the stranger had seated himself before the fire, he informed him that he had decided to let him stay all night. The man expressed in few words his grateful sense of their kindness, and then became silent and thoughtful. Soon after the farmer's wife, giving up all hope of Mr. N.'s arrival, had supper taken up, which consisted of coffee, warm short-cake, and broiled chicken. After all was on the table, a short conference was held as to whether it would do not to invite the stranger to take supper. It was true they had given him as much bread and bacon as he could eat, but then, as long as he was going to stay all night, it looked too inhospitable to sit down to the table and not ask him to join them. So, making a virtue of necessity, he was kindly asked to come to supper—an invitation which he did not decline. Grace was said over the meal by Mr. W., and the coffee poured, and the bread helped, and the meat carved.
There was a fine little boy, six years old, at the table, who had been brightened up and dressed in his best, in order to grace the minister's reception. Charles was full of talk, and the parents felt a mutual pride in showing him off, even before their humble guest, who noticed him particularly, though he had not much to say. "Come, Charley," said Mr. W., after the meal was over, and he sat leaning in his chair, "can't you repeat the pretty hymn mamma taught you last Sabbath?"
Charley started off without any further invitation, and repeated very accurately two or three verses of a camp-meeting hymn, that was then popular.