“I disremember,” he said absently. He let the horses walk on the soft, darkly shaded road, where the wheels made a pleasant grinding sound, and set himself sidewise on his front seat, so as to talk to Miss Kilburn more at his ease.
“I d'know,” he began, after clearing his throat, with a conscious air, “as you know we'd got a new minister to our church.”
“No, I hadn't heard of it,” said Miss Kilburn, with her mind full of the monument still. “But I might have heard and forgotten it,” she added. “I was very much taken up toward the last before I left Rome.”
“Well, come to think,” said Bolton; “I don't know's you'd had time to heard. He hain't been here a great while.”
“Is he—satisfactory?” asked Miss Kilburn, feeling how far from satisfactory the Victory was, and formulating an explanatory apology to the committee in her mind.
“Oh yes, he's satisfactory enough, as far forth as that goes. He's talented, and he's right up with the times. Yes, he's progressive. I guess they got pretty tired of Mr. Rogers, even before he died; and they kept the supply a-goin' till—all was blue, before they could settle on anybody. In fact they couldn't seem to agree on anybody till Mr. Peck come.”
Miss Kilburn had got as far, in her tacit interview with the committee, as to have offered to replace at her own expense the Victory with a Volunteer, and she seemed to be listening to Bolton with rapt attention.
“Well, it's like this,” continued the farmer. “He's progressive in his idees, 'n' at the same time he's spiritual-minded; and so I guess he suits pretty well all round. Of course you can't suit everybody. There's always got to be a dog in the manger, it don't matter where you go. But if anybody was to ask me, I should say Mr. Peck suited. Yes, I don't know but what I should.”
Miss Kilburn instantaneously closed her transaction with the committee, removed the Victory, and had the Volunteer unveiled with appropriate ceremonies, opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Peck.
“Peck?” she said. “Did you tell me his name was Peck?”