"Pleasure?"
"Yes. It makes me feel as if I were of some use."
She considered this.
"Well," she observed, reviled by the coffee, "you're the queerest minister I ever saw."
When they had reached the pavement she asked him where they were going.
"To see a friend of mine, and a friend of yours," he told her. "He does net live far from here."
She was silent again, acquiescing. The rain had stopped, the sun was peeping out furtively through the clouds, the early loiterers in Dalton Street stared at them curiously. But Hodder was thinking of that house whither they were bound with a new gratitude, a new wonder that it should exist. Thus they came to the sheltered vestibule with its glistening white paint, its polished name plate and doorknob. The grinning, hospitable darky appeared in answer to the rector's ring.
"Good morning, Sam," he said; "is Mr. Bentley in?"
Sam ushered them ceremoniously into the library, and gate Marcy gazed about her with awe, as at something absolutely foreign to her experience: the New Barrington Hotel, the latest pride of the city, recently erected at the corner of Tower and Jefferson and furnished in the French style, she might partially have understood. Had she been marvellously and suddenly transported and established there, existence might still have evinced a certain continuity. But this house! . .
Mr. Bentley rose from the desk in the corner.